STILL WATERS RUN DEEP, THE VOICES THAT NEED TO BE HEARD

by ZANE HWANG

While I expected a highly organized academic conference, the chaotic nature on the ground surprised me. Having previously been to the United Nations (UN) as a tourist, stepping into the facilities with a badge around my neck that read "Press" was a surreal experience. Journalists asked other journalists if they could "borrow" their passes into certain rooms, many (including myself) relying on the goodwill of UN guards for entry and elevators being commandeered with no warning for heads of state. While I managed to get into many of the events and witness historic commitments from prominent figures of governments and the private sector, much of my learning occurred outside of the conference rooms.

I spoke to royalty from halfway across the world over slices of pizza, met acclaimed activists and journalists while waiting in line, and bumped into and exchanged contacts with leaders out of sheer coincidence. While I had initially decided to write about the water conference from the perspective of an American college student, these conversations made me realize how narrow of a view I had on water issues. In recognizing the limits of my perspective, I sought the help of three additional voices to supplement gaps in my understanding:

Bonnie Barclay, a representative from International Rivers, an established NGO focused on the environment, water, and human rights.

Rani Ukhengching Marma, the ceremonial queen of Mong Circle from the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, represents "The Mong Circle Chief's Office," an indigenous government institution.

Shomy Hasan Chowdhury, a Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) activist from Bangladesh and Co-Founder of global youth-led org Awareness 360

Through conversations with these three and others at the conference, I gathered six critical takeaways regarding the water conference and the global water crisis at large:

In March this year, we set out a young Zane Hwang to cover the Water Conference in New York. We wanted her to broaden her horizons and experience an important event crucial to our environment - the state of water in a global arena, with the guidance of Dr. Patricia H A Perez, Ph.D. Associate Professor at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, Zane was able to experience and express her thoughts as a youth representative at the United Nations for Premier Magazine. Here's her piece, which we do not often read about, the voice of a future adult tracing her steps toward an uncertain yet hopeful future.

Zane Hwang is a Vanderbilt University senior studying political science and human and organizational development. They have studied the interaction between governments, businesses, individuals, and the environment, particularly in water and clean energy infrastructure.

© UN SDG Water Conference

© UN SDG Water Conference, NYC

- The water crisis is inextricably linked to the climate crisis. Not only does climate change directly impact water sources through droughts and flooding, but it also has secondary impacts. Natural disasters, aggravated by a changing climate, destroy crucial water infrastructure. Water pollution, in addition to changing environments, causes massive losses in biodiversity. Combating climate change is tackling the water crisis.

- Inequitable access to water disproportionately negatively affects women Girls and women collectively spend over 200 million hours walking to fetch water. This significantly burdens their ability to get an education, join the workforce, and care for their children. While they make this trek daily, they put themselves at risk of violence. Increasing ease of access to clean water can be liberating to many women

- Indigenous communities are a vital part of addressing the water crisis. Indigenous people have long since protected biodiversity and indigenous knowledge has been monumental in conservation efforts. At the same time, indigenous people disproportionately lack access to clean water and have been displaced from their homes. Not only does the rest of the world have much to learn from them, but we must also consider their rights respected.

" Water wars" are not a reality ...yet. While issues surrounding access to water have certainly aggravated conflicts in places like Syria and the countries surrounding the Nile, experts I spoke with say many other factors are at play. To attribute any conflict or tensions, we see solely or even primarily to water would be reductive. On the other hand, these same people stressed the need for cooperation and solidarity between countries dependent on the exact water source to prevent any conflicts that may arise as water becomes more scarce.

- Sanitation and hygiene should be considered as components of the water crisis. Many preventable deaths stem from an available water source being unsanitary or not readily available enough to be used for washing, or both. The water crisis is just as much about ensuring an environment that will allow for proper sanitation and hygiene through purification and infrastructure as it is about addressing water scarcity

- The youth is crucial to building global solidarity and solving the water crisis. Millennials, particularly Gen Z, have been monumental in bringing attention to and demanding action on the climate crisis. In doing so, they have built a movement that transcends nations for a crisis that transcends nations? the same type of movement being constructed for the water crisis.

Bonnie, Ukhengching, and Shomy all want to see a change in the world. In my last conversations with them, I asked if they had a message they wanted to share. Here are their responses:

Bonnie: "I think that, well, because we're an International Rivers group, we focus on policy action around the rivers, and we do have a universal declaration for the Rights of Rivers. And it would be great for people to check that out, and you can also sign on to that and share that. It does talk about, like you said, changing a mindset about valuing our ecosystem to have the same rights that we value for ourselves as human species. So I think that's a call to action, to understand that, share it, and sign on. I also think that it's essential for young people and all people, decision-makers, but young people too. Understand and call for the connection of our tackling the global crises together. So the biodiversity we're in is struggling with a bio biodiversity crisis. We are seeing biodiversity plummet around the world, especially the freshwater species. We are also tackling the climate crisis. We are also tackling the suppression and oppression of people's human rights. So we have to intertwine those goals and see the connectedness of those issues and why they feed into each other. Because they do, there's a lot of connection therebetween. You know, the different types of power dynamics and corruption when someone, when we, we think about how the climate crisis came to be. So think about all those crises and how we achieve intertwined, connected goals for those major crises. So to me, that's, uh, people need to understand that and then call for that. So we're not pursuing a policy. It may benefit climate emissions but harms communities and our biodiverse ecosystems. That doesn't make sense for us to pursue. There are aligned ways to do this, and we have to do it."

Ukhengching: "Indigenous people [will] suffer the most in the ongoing climate and water crises. Suppose the government or the other stakeholders initiate development projects. In that case, they should include the voices of the indigenous people, as indigenous people have been the solver of the climate crisis and defenders of biodiversity for thousands of years. For their daily livelihoods and social, cultural, and spiritual well-being, water is precious to indigenous communities. I belong to the Marma community; water is very sacred to us. Our people have developed our community and civilization for hundreds of years near the water. Without water, we cannot survive. Our people have suffered from the ongoing climate and water crisis for decades. We want solutions to these crises, and we need to adapt to these crises, and we need support from the government or the international community. A lot of funding needs to be contributed for the betterment of indigenous communities as well, not just for water but also for the adaptation to [the] climate crisis, health, education, and [our] livelihoods."

Shomy: "Many people ask me what is the first step. To become a leader, change-maker, or entrepreneur, I think the first step is to find your passion, and you can find your love in what bothers you. We often associate power with things that give us joy, happiness, or a sense of fulfillment, but I think we can also find our love in things that bother us and believe that we want to change severely. So in that sense, I was bothered by the fact that people don't have access to wash and are dying from preventable diseases, which is why I took action. So I think you can also start by finding what, out of the million causes that are out there, uh, what is it that bothers you the most? And then, do your research and educate yourself about that. Do a community mapping. Find out what are the existing solutions, existing campaigns, existing organizations, and existing people who are already addressing that cause. Join hands with them, share your ideas with them, help them, and do not in, too. I think that's important because we should not duplicate efforts. It is time to collaborate. It's not like a one-person or a one-person army. It is supposed to be a collective effort. We don't have much time to work alone anyway. So, I would encourage everyone to find their passion, find the right people on board, join them, and we can all, hopefully, make this world a better place."

Beyond these learnings, seeing how many governments and private sector members collaborated in discussion gave me hope. Acknowledgment of the problem is an essential first step, and we have seen in the past with the Montreal Protocol how surprisingly effective the UN can be. On the other hand, while hearing about Starbucks committing to ensure clean water for its farmers and hearing government after government saves millions upon billions of dollars to "tackle the water and climate crisis," Firstly, and most obviously, the reason the water crisis and the climate crisis exist to this extent is mainly because of action by the private sector and inaction by governments. Local water sources are often bled dry or contaminated beyond human consumption by the private sector, particularly in agriculture and manufacturing. Climate change, primarily brought on by the fossil fuel industry, makes existing water issues far worse. Governments have allowed these things to occur or, in some cases, developed laws to prioritize the water needs of these companies over the communities that share their water source with them. Secondly, none of these commitments made at the UN Water Conference, or any UN conference, are binding. There is no legal enforcement system, and there have been many instances where governments or private sector entities have refused and ignored the public's outrage, calling them out. Many of my conversations, particularly with delegations and representatives from the Global South, revolved around this lack of accountability. Some even recanted personal experiences in which their country was promised investment from wealthy nations or corporations only to have been turned back on. For these reasons, when I was walking out of the UN headquarters on the conference's final day, I could feel nothing more than tentative optimism.

Zane Hwang at the UN Water Conference in NYC last March 2023.

Photo by UN SDG Water Conference.