Water is the source of all life on earth; So its importance
for each form of development can not be overestimated.
The United Nations are well aware of this. Therefore they proclaimed
2003 as The International Fresh Water Year.
This year the UN will put into the spotlight the goals of the
Millennium and the World
Top for Sustainable Development of Johannesburg (2002). The unsustainable
consumption of water must stop, so that in 2015:
- the amount
of the world population, having no access to drinking
water must be reduced by half.
- the amount of the world population
, having no access to the treatment of waste water
must be reduced by half.
This aspect was brought to the attention at the SDIT meeting
of December 2002 (Mol) by Nathalie Draulans, a member of the
Belgian delegation at the Johannesburg World Top.She also gave
more information on the Third World Water
Forum of Kyoto,Japan,
March 16 to 23 2003, in which she was going to participate.
In the same meeting, Danny Vanderveken presented SPLASH, the
third Youth Congress for Water,organised in the same context.
The sustainable use of water will also be the subject in the
two NMS training sessions next year. In the SDIT training Mol
this will take place during the visit to Hidridoe and VITO (Flemish
Institute for technological Research ).
VITO has indeed an enormous expertise concerning water, water
pollution and sustainable water consumption. In 2OO1 they published
an “Inventory Study of rational water consumption.” for
five economic sectors, with lists of the major water using processes,
and water saving measures, with examples of a water balance scheme
and a checklist for screening companies on their water consumption.
Sustainable use of water will of course also be on the agenda
of the BISEL in-service training on Cyprus, an almost Middle
Eastern country, where water just as oil is regarded as a reason
for strategic warfare.
Besides the chemical analysis, VITO also uses the biotic index
to define water quality.
It stands at the top in waste water treatment by membrane filtration.
