Reflections from the Sixth Water Information Summit

Year of publication: 2004

Introduction

The Sixth Water Information Summit (WIS 6) was held in Delft from 9-12 September 2003, under the title "Breaking the barriers: Let water information flow!” and attended by 150 participants". Various renowned international experts on water and knowledge management will stress the global importance of this topic and the summit that, for the first time, is being held in Europe. The opening day of the summit also celebrates the 35th anniversary of the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. Speakers will draw together some of the most pressing current issues on the international agenda .

“ I greatly appreciate the synergy at your summit between water and information. I am willing and happy to work with you and your worthy cause and get away from making money.”

Sam Pitroda, CEO of the London-based WorldTel.

WorldTel is an organisation set up by the International Telecommunications Union committed to developing communications infrastructures on a commercial basis in the Third World. Mr. Pitroda is also founder of several companies in Europe and North America and the first chairman of India's Telecom Commission.

WIS6: Let water information flow

There are huge inequities in access to water and sanitation services from one part of the world to another. While the people of Europe and North America generally enjoy secure good quality water supplies and dependable safe disposal of wastewater, more than a billion citizens of Africa, Asia and Latin America are without a safe water supply and well over 2 billion have no means of hygienic sanitation. These disparities have become a prime target for action in the Millennium Development Goals, which seek to halve the proportion of people lacking these basic services by 2015.

A major plank in achieving those goals is knowledge sharing - ensuring that the most up-to-date approaches and appropriate technologies are used to bring sustainable services to those who lack them. Sadly, access to knowledge is as inequitable as access to water and sanitation. For the high-tech North, with satellite dishes, optical fibres, broadband Internet access and personal computers omnipresent, the latest data, experiences and trends are accessible at the click of a mouse. At the agency and community level in developing countries, where that knowledge has to be put to good use, communication is more basic and networking more rudimentary.

Bridging the digital divide and making timely relevant information available to communities and their supporters in developing countries has been the goal of successive Water Information Summits. The Sixth such summit, and the first in Europe, was organised jointly by the WaterWeb Consortium and the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. It was held in Delft, The Netherlands, on 9-12 September 2003, with the title Breaking the Barriers: Let Water Information Flow.

The 150 participants saw presentations of the latest knowledge management (KM) techniques and heard from KM and networking specialists from North and South about ideas for improving the quality, dissemination and use of data, information and knowledge at all levels. The presentations and summaries of the discussions at the Sixth Water Information Summit (WIS6) are available on a CD-ROM from IRC and are also posted on the IRC website (www.irc.nl). The purpose of this booklet is to set the Summit conclusions into the context of the water and sanitation sector as a whole and to assess how they can best be incorporated into the future work programmes of IRC and its partners.