Issue 9. March 2004


Editorial Comment: Dr. Zafar Adeel, Assistant Director, UNU International Network on Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH)
Hamilton, Canada

Evolution of Capacity Needs for POPs Pollution

The challenges for wisely managing our water resources are great, though not insurmountable. In terms of the water quality and supply, the challenge is characteristically embodied in the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to reduce the fraction of people without access to clean water by half no later that 2015. Some might argue with the moral validity of this goal in the humanitarian context of leaving behind the other half of this population without access to clean water. In other words, why should we not endeavor to provide clean water to everyone by 2015 - or any other arbitrary date?

The answer to the question partly lies in the shortfall of capacity in developing countries. In order to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) for drinking water by 2015, sufficient numbers of professional, technical and governance professionals must be trained to provide water and sanitation services to over 300,000 people per day, every day, for the next 12 years. To date, there has not been a systematic and integrated review of the human, technological, managerial and institutional skills needed to undertake this massive development in developing countries.

The United Nations University (UNU) has responded to the challenges set out in the MDG's and reiterated during the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, by focusing on the strengthening of human, technological, managerial and institutional capacity to improve water management. The East Asian Hydrosphere project - which involves the Environment and Sustainable Development (ESD) Programme at UNU Centre in Tokyo, and since last year, UNU-INWEH in Hamilton - has contributed significantly to such capacity building.

The more obvious capacity development included providing state-of-the-science analytical equipment to the eight countries participating in this project and training of laboratory staff in use of this equipment. The credit for this goes, in large part, to our funding partner, Shimadzu Corporation of Kyoto, Japan. There are also more intangible elements of institutional development. These come in the form of: (a) raising awareness of key governmental and policy institutions on pollution and its impacts, particularly endocrine disruption; and (b) indirectly facilitating contribution to the international dialogue on monitoring of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the context of the Stockholm Convention, where most of the national coordinators from this project are involved in their own respective capacities. In an informal review of the project undertaken two years ago, it was apparent that this capacity was being put to use for initiatives outside the realm of the project - something that we consider as an indicator of success.

With the notable successes in capacity development, it is perhaps an appropriate time to review the approaches used within this project and evaluate the capacity needs in the coming few years. These capacity needs have indeed evolved over the years. With many national monitoring programmes in place within the participating countries, we should ponder on ways to facilitate these and provide further capacity building. A number of directions may be obvious for such a future outlook, but a rigorous dialogue on capacity needs is urgently needed. I would like to highlight here two specific areas that have elicited significant interest in the context of the UNU project.

First, to supplement national and international programmes, there is a need to undertake impact analysis and evaluation of POPs pollution. This information is critical to how the policymakers in these countries incorporate pollution control into national development strategies, which in turn is driven by public perception on these issues. To date, this does not seem to be happening to any significant extent. If we can quantify the impacts of POPs pollution on ecosystems, the food chain and human society, half the battle for pollution control is won. This obviously requires indigenous capacity to measure impacts on ecosystems and humans, to scientifically evaluate the findings, and to translate these findings into policy-relevant recommendations.

Some national coordinators within UNU's project have expressed their strong interest in undertaking work to investigate pollution impacts of POPs. This also ties in to development of newer analytical techniques - including improvements on existing sample extraction and analysis procedures as well as innovative technologies that involve biomonitoring. Use of pollutant-specific enzymes for monitoring technologies can radically improve the capability to monitor pollution while greatly reducing the costs. Successful development of these techniques requires dedication of resources and an expression of commitment from the potential partners.

Second, there is also interest in replicating the East Asian capacity development success to other regions of the world. Over the years, there has been a stream of queries to UNU asking for involvement of other countries into the UNU project. Availability of human and financial resources has been a key constraint in our ability to comply with such requests. The time is now ripe to have a fuller discussion on how to undertake this replication of capacity development. Many key regions - South Asia, Central Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean - can be potentially included.

While the UNU International Symposium in Beijing (24-25 May 2004) primarily focuses on POPs pollution from urban sources, it will also provide an avenue for further dialogue on these evolving capacity needs.

I would like to also invite readers of this newsletter to express their opinions on the subject. We will collate these and publish them in the next issue of the East Asia Monitor. Let us together chart out a course that will lead to an environment free of POPs pollution.

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