PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – The United Nations World Water Development Report 2023 was launched here on Wednesday amid concerns that Caribbean countries are amongst the most water stress globally.
Addressing a press briefing on behalf of the head of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Sub-regional Headquarters for the Caribbean, Artie Dubrie said she was sure that the report would be a leading document during the UN Water Conference that got underway in New York on Wednesday.
Dubrie, the coordinator Sustainable Development, and Disaster Unit at ECLAC, said the Caribbean region heavily depends on rainfall as its primary source of freshwater from direct rain and through surface and groundwater systems.
“Freshwater is often classified as a scarce finite natural resource. Sustainable management of water resources, including access to safe, fresh water and sanitation, are indispensable for human health and well-being,” she said, adding that it is a crucial driver of economic and social development and critical in maintaining the integrity of the natural environment and ecosystems.
She said that meeting this finite natural resource’s current and future demands requires water resources management structures to be integrated and systematized across sustainable development’s social, economic, environmental, and developmental realms. “
The ECLAC official acknowledged that the freshwater resource supplies vary across the subregion. This variation is due to climate, climate change impacts, rainfall pattern and intensity, geology, safe availability, and accessibility through established infrastructure and institutional systems.
“Concerning freshwater resources, the Caribbean countries are amongst the most water stress globally. The World Resources Institute has identified seven Caribbean countries as having “extremely high” levels of water stress,” she said.
These countries are Dominica, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, and St. Kitts-Nevis. The latter three are also designated as water scarcity.
Dubrie said for the Caribbean multi-island states. Freshwater availability can also vary across the archipelago. For example, in the case of the Bahamas, there is a notable decrease in groundwater availability from the northern to the southern islands.
She said these subjects addressed in the World Water Development Report are crucial in the work of the entire region, but especially for the Caribbean countries.
“For the Caribbean region, climate change and its impacts pose significant risks to the sustainable development of countries in this sub-region,” Dubrie said that the significant and most frequent climate-related disasters in the Caribbean small island developing states (SIDS) are hydroclimatic, with the impact of floodings, landslides, watershed degradation, droughts, storm surges, sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and freshwater salination among others.
Dubrie said that these factors reduce freshwater resources’ availability to meet human requirements for healthy ecosystems.
She gave some recent examples of hydroclimatic events in the Caribbean region. The heavy rainfall during May and July of 2021 and 2022 significantly impacted Guyana and Suriname.
The ECLAC official said during the 2022 floods in Trinidad, over 100,000 persons were affected. The impacts of climatic events were compounded by the 2021 volcanic eruption of La Soufrière volcano, causing major population dislocation, damage, and loss in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, and Barbados.
Similar catastrophic multi-dimensional events were experienced in Haiti in 2021, with a 7.2 magnitude earthquake and hydroclimatic events. In the first quarter of 2023, many Caribbean countries are being warned of looming drought conditions, Dubrie added.
The United Nations World Water Development Report 2023: Partnerships and Cooperation focus on the need for cooperation among organizations and institutions – across all dimensions of sustainable development – to boost progress on achieving water and sanitation for all (SDG6) by 2030.
“Safeguarding water, food, and energy security through sustainable water management, providing water supply and sanitation services to all, supporting human health and livelihoods, mitigating the impacts of climate change and extreme events, and sustaining and restoring ecosystems and the valuable services they provide, are all pieces of a great and complex puzzle. Only through partnerships and cooperation can the pieces come together. And everyone has a role to play,” it noted.
In her address, the ECLAC official said that in preparation for the UN-World Water report, a Latin America and Caribbean Regional Water Action Dialogue was conducted and that the results from this dialogue concluded on key four pillars of action.
These are Promoting human rights to water and sanitation, leaving no one behind, and promoting regulatory and normative changes to ensure equitable and affordable access.
This includes addressing water scarcity and promoting innovative practices such as rainwater harvesting.
Reversal of growing negative externalities associated with water pollution, over-extraction amongst others and promote moving for linear to circular water use management.
and then 