Conger

The Bishop of Liverpool questioned the government last week on its efforts to implement provisions of the Millennium Development Goals, and asked if it would support international treaties to manage fresh water resources.

On Dec 11, Bishop James Jones tabled a question in the House of Lords asking what progress had been made in implementing the UN’s Convention on the Law of Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses “which seeks to alleviate tensions between nations with shared water resources.”

The Minister of State for Africa, Asia and the UN at the Foreign Office, Lord Malloch-Brown responded the government had “no immediate plans to accede” to the treaty as only 16 nations had so far endorsed it.

“With 35 countries required, there is little prospect of the convention entering into force,” he said.

Notwithstanding its failure to garner support, Lord Malloch-Brown said “its principles are widely applied.” The government had implemented water-sharing processes in the Middle East and Africa and would pursue this work independently of the UN convention.

Bishop Jones expressed his disappointment at the failure of the treaty to move forward and questioned the minister about the consequences. “Given the warnings about the impact of climate change on fresh water resources, and given the millennium development goal that hopes to reduce by half the number of people without access to fresh water, will the United Kingdom ensure at the Bali conference that priority is given to the allocation of funding for the management of fresh water resources?”

Lord Malloch-Brown agreed that Bishop Jones had raised “an important point” and assured him the government would draw the attention of the Bali conference on the environment to this issue.

“Africa is the region that is most vulnerable to climate change,” he said. “It is projected that by 2020 between 75 million and 250 million people will be exposed to an increase in water stress due to climate change, and that agricultural productivity will have been severely compromised by at least a 10 per cent decline in rainfall.”

Britain would press this point at the Bali conference and at other international gatherings seek “to secure more resources to redress the matter.”