Thank you very much my good friend Clovis.  I'm pleased to be here for many reasons.  One of the reasons being that there are many friends here... good friends with whom we've worked in the past few years inside and outside of the U.N.  Some of these individuals have added the quality contribution to the work of our organization and continue to do so.  I'm also proud to be associated with A.U. and with the Center for the Global South.  Once I come because I believe today very sincerely that any institution worth its name the University research organization but particularly a University cannot afford to make it its business to only generate knowledge, disseminate knowledge, deepen knowledge.  It's my firm conviction that universities must be institutions for human development.  I say that because if institutions of higher learning don't engage in issues that animate the International System that work on issues of the human welfare in real time then they are not making a relevant contribution.  Used to be that knowledge used to be guided, called distilled, studied, analyzed, then transformed into books and taught 50 years down the road in institutions who are always allowed time in other way.  Today the issues are more complex, rate of change is too fast. What's at stake is so much that we have to teach as we discover, as we rush headlong into the 21st century for which I think in this particular field of water we are woefully unprepared.  I do believe that the 21st century in history at this particular point on our human journey the reality of the city as the habitat of mankind is upon us and reality is frustrating a lot of us throwing us into confusion, into frustration, perhaps into despair.  It is therefore important that we try to understand a little bit more this dance between water and human settlements, this historic embrace throughout history mankind has lived by the water, used the water, evolved from the water and evolved with the water.  The complexities of the 21st century and the reality of globalization as a phenomenon with its stresses and strains, with its harshness, with its competition may yet turn this dance into a dance macabre and I think this is what we've been hearing for the last two days.  I think that our task together, people in and outside of this room is to build the foundation with a great effort of building a foundation of quality to meeting this challenge. I understand better this relationship between cities, water, globalization, and our human future.  It's a relationship which fortunes we have to follow with great attention and great vigilance.  There are seven factors that have come into play in recent years.  One of them is the fact that globalization is a result of organization.  The global economy is working because some cities work, their telecommunications work, their banking works, air travel working, transportation works, insurance works, so if the city doesn't work the global economy doesn't work.  At the national level, it is the same in most of our countries, in most of the global south.  If the capital city fails, the economy fails and the nation fails.  This relationship is again a very interesting one, a very new one.  It's an unprecedented closeness in the relationship between cities and the global economy, importantly for water.  Unless the cities work, water supply doesn't work for human families.  Unless cities work, sanitation will never work no matter how brilliant the plans, no matter how many ideas we have, no matter how much the resources are that we've willing to commit.  So there is a very interesting relationship.  There's another reality... it is that there is a power shift, there's an era being born in which governments, by their own admission, are giving space to civil society effort in their work at the national level, in the national life and institutions and internationally.  We believe that this partnership is crucial to the attack we're launching on this challenge of water scarcity in the next millennium.  Who are these partners?  Here I must refer to the work of one individual who is in this room: Richard Falk. He  has taught me about this civil society relationship and our human future.  This partnership brings vitality to the works of governments, brings a tremendous contribution of ideas, brings energy, brings vividness and value to everything we do.  They protest, they analyze, they demonstrate, they litigate, they carry on and they make things happen.  We need them as partners in this struggle that we are fashioning.  The private sector, as we've heard this morning, in many places, especially in the city, usually own the services of water.  They usually do some research and development themselves.  They own the jobs which create the livelihoods for people to be able to afford water.  They are crucial and they too can make an intellectual contribution to the efforts that we are launching today.  Local authorities - another important member of this partnership - are really the captains of the city.  You cannot do anything about the water services of most big cities without engaging the local authorities and their energies and their ideas and their commitment.  Universities - another member of the civil society family - are really the representatives of the 21st century in terms of their own constituencies.  Young people are the owners of the 21st century and really starting without them within the confines of the University and engaging them as we saw this morning with the effort at the global school.  The global classroom is a very important component of the future.  We believe in this partnership.  Women's organizations, the water managers for excellence of the world, especially in the developing one.  One missing membership is the media because really, truly we all are running a race into how fast we can change and educate bring a new literacy. This morning somebody called it a new vocabulary.  How fast we can inform the human family about the risks that are attendant upon the future or the alternatives to that process which would be catastrophe especially in the water area.  So this vast network of private sector parliamentarians who really are legislators make the rules that govern the society.  They make the rules about water: Who uses it?  How it's going to be used?  They too are important partners in this process.  That's another reality we face.  But by what concepts must we be animated?  How do we insure that what we learn is shared (the knowledge we generate is useful to others)?  How do we record the stories of what has worked and what has failed?  I believe again that initiatives such as the Global Classroom can build a global databank which has some predictability in that it can be accessed by many partners, not only by students that can share the results of what has worked in this vast field of water.  There's another question that suggests itself how do we nations and groups and people and organizations measure their success.  We need indicators and I think we need more discussion on that.  I didn't hear in the past two days much discussion on how we create this indicator program which will measure how far we've able to come.  Then there's what needs to be done by the government.  We, in the UN, are primarily an organization of member states and it's very important that the governmental role, its leadership in terms of creating the natural context enabling this participation in this partnership to come into operation, investment, centralization, participation as we heard this morning from Ms. Lowi, the application of science, even big science.  I think Sid-Ahmed mentions that this morning is very crucial.  That institutions and also an enabling international environment,  the promise of adequate water for all will be greatly influenced by the international economy and the presence of organization is linked to economic development, it's linked to environmental protection. It is very important that international economy also be considered an important factor, therefore we're looking for an integrated approach. It's been mentioned policy issues, legislation, technology, management training, the development of human capital, but how do we relate it to what else the UN is doing or has done?  Agenda 21, chapter 18, especially the need to incorporate the principles and strategies contained in this agenda and the Habitat agenda.  I noticed the real declaration particularly those dealing with the restoration of contaminated land, conservation of water system, restoration of polluted areas and rebuilding of damaged wetlands and water sheds.  These are very important components.  I believe also that in our own UN there's a gap now. I speak in my own capacity... there's a missing UN agency; it is the agency for water.  We have them for most of the areas except the field of water.  Perhaps it's complicated, perhaps that is not the reason, but suddenly I think we should be looking at that.  It is important than in doing all of this we know that the fundamental challenge is reduction worldwide.  We also need to take property into account all the relevant conventions that I enforce, in particular, the conventions by diversity on the certification on climate change and wetland, the convention of the endangered species and all the recommendations of major conferences of the UN and global plans of action from model plata to the Dublin principles.  It's very important that these be a part and parcel of the effort as we move into this new era of competition, of strife, globalization, and fragmentation while making sure that the competition resulting from the global economy doesn't destroy our power to act on the water challenge, that we don't leave people behind because of the fragility of regional peace, because possibly of  the fragility of international peace.  We should watch with great vigilance this relationship, organization, globalization, water shortage in the urban 21st century.  The reality we must confront is that we can never solve water and sanitation without workable cities.  These cities, in most parts of the world, don't work.  The megacities are not working and they're working especially in areas where they're the biggest, or are expected to be the biggest in the next few years.  Let me come to the important question of how we regard water.  There's been some dichotomy.  There's been some arguments even; Is water a public good?  Is it a commodity? We believe that it has to be regarded both as an economic and as social and applying our economic instruments.  A balance must be struck between economic, social, and environmental goals.  This means for us that the economic instruments that we have described in the past two days must be so carefully selected and so carefully applied with special sensitivity for social justice and equity while we can continue working for quick recovery where applicable in water prizing.  Let me end on this note, "some people say the poor pay," Ismail, my good friend, said yesterday.  I think Ismail is wrong on that one.  I think all the people... the poor pay because the alternative to paying is death.  They will pay two hundred times more than the going price if there's no water for them to drink.  I believe that the question we must ask is : What do they give up to be able to pay four times more?  They give up education for their kids sometimes, they give up paying their rents sometimes, they give up buying medicine sometimes, that is what they pay to get the water.  So, indeed, even as we prepare for this future of economics, we must also remember that there may just be the need for the right for water.  The progressive realization of such a right, water for the poor, water for people who cannot otherwise afford it.  I want to say finally that this era of we win and other people loose in the global scheme of things era no longer works.  Issues are too complex, the risks are too great.  It is very important that human solidarity intervenes in this harshness that competition has forced upon us because of the global economy, that human solidarity will provide the cement that our societies need to stay together.  We'll avoid conflict and contention.  We'll perhaps even avoid war.  It is very important that this vision which we have crafted here and elsewhere be engaged within the context of a new definition of security.  That definition of security doesn't have much to do with armies, it doesn't have much to do with generals, police stations, and jails.  It has to do with meeting the needs for food, for water, for shelter, in order that the 21st century will be more workable.  It's been a privilege to associate myself with the work of the center and we in the UN feel honored to be asked to be part of your effort.

We thank you all very much.
 
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 Let me say among Clovis's many gifts, he has a great talent for embarrassing me because he's created expectations that intensify my sense of inadequacy.  Even if he had not said anything, I would have been quite intimidated by this effort to talk at the end of such an array of presentations that distinguish themselves particularly by their diversity, the richness of specific content, and the many valuable broader ideas that were presented to us.  I'm also conscious that we've been sitting in the same room for two long days and listening is harder than talking and I don't want to presume too much longer on your patience.  So that's sort of a pledge to be brief on my part and let me finally end this introducing the remarks I will make.  I thank once more the Center for the Global South and Clovis Maksoud for really creating an opportunity for all of us to explore this complex issue which bears so centrally on human survival and well-being and it has the special character, I think, of touching us in the most concrete individual personal way and yet being a dimension of the ultimate destiny of the human species and so it's been an extraordinary privilege to be part of the experience of the conference and I'm very grateful for it.  Fortunately, the very excellent rapporteurs removed any need even to pretend to make a summary of what had been said in the past two days and what I propose to do and hopefully not in a definitive way but maybe in a provocative way is to provide a kind of response that tries to both identify what I think was the shared understanding but also tried to focus on what I think was a central cleavage of division that needs to be reconciled.  I think that there's a very important, perhaps self-evident, consensus that does unite all these diverse perspectives that have been represented here and that is the central view that global water policy can no longer be taken for granted as a matter of background of interest to a special subset of experts who are concerned with technical and specific issues of water policy.  I think that in any adequate understanding of the way in which global policy needs to be conceptualized and understood, water needs to be placed in a very prominent position and that implies a massive educational challenge.  I think again that's an area where there's lots of consensus.  There needs to be a climate of opinion created that will have the effect of persuading leaders and citizens to support much more heavy investments in the solution of water policy challenges that this requires not only money, but energy and creativity at the highest level.  That kind of mobilization of awareness, so that we can focus in an effective way on the multidimensional complexity of the water challenge, is, I think, a common point of departure where as I say there's no disagreement and this common point of departure I think also includes the understanding that water policy has been extraordinarily important in the pre-industrial age of humanity where empires were often organized around the control of river systems and hydropolitics was the essence, in a sense, of ancient empirial policies and many conflicts were involved.  Tribal conflicts and other conflicts rested on struggles to control scarce fresh-water access and supplies and that when the industrial age came, we moved into the modern world.  Water then became back grounded as an issue of preoccupying importance that the grand epics of modernity were concerned with precious metals like gold and silver than with coal, iron and steel and finally with oil.  They were the critical resource dimensions and in that sense water was aside from the local specific problem and the efforts to use water for irrigation and to bring greater prosperity to people.  Water was seen as essentially abundant in relation to the presence of the human species on the planet as a global problem and so the fundamental adjustment that we're making is to move from this era of a basic sense of the abundance of water, to a realization of its scarcity and what does that mean in relation to the use of resources to the nature of decision-making to the way in which we conceptualize the relationship to water.  I think that's the area that I would identify as the central consensus that this understanding that we move from abundance to scarcity and how do we respond to that and in this context is where I think the cleavage comes.  The division comes because one set of views that was very prominently and effectively presented here the last couple of days that has an essentially realist view of politics and of the problem-solving capabilities of the world system.  Politics is the art of the possible and the possible is very much delimited by the structure of power and authority organized around sovereign states essentially and in this view that is what's essentially a realist view of how to respond, technology is very important as it has provided the solution for most of the problems of the modern age and so one looks to technology to overcome the appearance of scarcity and to either through the desalination or through access to ground water to make very crucial changes in the supply of water that's available to meet human needs.  It also looks to states as the indispensable actors and main problem-solvers and it looks to instruments of state such as in a position to contribute to the solution of these problems provided that background awareness is created.  This view is also optimistic about lawmaking contributions and looks at an instrument like the convention on International Water Courses as a milestone as it was said.  One can also look at it as a mirage in that it really doesn't come to terms with the gravity of the problem and so the other world view on these issues, the other kind of response is that doing problem-solving as usual through the framework of the state maximizing the role of private initiative is insufficient structurally and normatively.  It's structurally insufficient because it doesn't recognize the degree to which the era of globalization has limited capacity of the state to meet the challenges of humanity that the state is being bypassed both from below by the rise of civil society and from above by the emergence of global market forces and what I call the discipline of global capital so that globalization from above and globalization from below have restricted the problem-solving capacity of states particularly where the release of large-scale commitments are necessary that are dedicated to public goods.  One of the elements of globalization that needs to be better understood is that it has exerted an enormous downward pressure on the capacity of governments to support global public good and despite all economic growth and this is true of prosperous countries as well as countries that are poorer.  It is more difficult to mobilize resources for the UN for the protection of the global common good and within countries for welfare, health, education that the privatization of our own problem-solving orientation has been one of the forces that has diminished the capacity of states to meet the challenges so that the other view which is the second outlook which is partly a normative one starts with the view that one must put people at the center of the human drama that its not even about growth, its about the well-being of people and that means that one needs to think at all levels of social reality, local, national, regional and global and that the existing ideas about problem-solving are insufficient therefore we heard frequently calls for need for new vision for paradigm change. I think all of those in a sense are part of the resonance that's being expressed towards the idea, that doing things in the familiar ways is not enough, is not really responsive to the depth of the challenge that is being posed and if we rely on the familiar ways we're going to end up with so called water wars and very ugly human deprivations of a severe and traumatic sort.  When we move toward that sense of how does one articulate an alternative vision we've heard various normative ideas that I think are important such as the common heritage of humanity or the new partnership between states, markets and civil society.  The idea of creating some new politics that's animated by a deeper sense of human solidarity and also by a stronger sense of ecological integrity so part of the discrepancy between the problems and the solutions arises out of the fact that there's this tension between what was called the water map and the political map or the ecosystems map and this I think leads one to a greater feeling that maybe the kind of development that's taking place in Europe at a regional level might provide the most promising radical solution on a global level.  In other words, if the EU succeeds in creating more than just a Brussels arrangement for trade and investment and economic growth, but also creates a space for ethnic and national identities with in a larger community, I think that maybe a very charismatic model for the rest of the world and it will take time of course for that model to disseminate but regionalism offers a great deal, I think, in not necessitating the embrace of a Utopian globalism and yet possessing many of the functional and normative and civitizational and cultural requirements for cooperation on a much broader basis that is possible within the exclusive states' structures that we're now dependent on so that I think we need to try to develop this sense of the potentialities of both perspectives.  I don't think one needs to reject one, I'm enough of a Hindu to believe that one can have both.  One doesn't need to make the choice between the two and that we need to maximize the potential for problem-solving within essentially a status framework including the use of education and technology and law-making, but we also need to evolve and this is especially a role for civil society.  We need to evolve a credible vision of a different sort of world that is animated by these normative ideas of sharing a future of a sense that water as a critical resource needs to be approached from a perspective that recognizes not only its practical roles but also its spiritual relevance to human identity and that leads me also in a sense to a conclusionary view that I think its very important that we find in this more structural view of the problems a way of expressing the normative ideas seriously.  It's enough to say that we're concerned about the poor and that women have suffered the most from the way in which water policy is administered in the world.  I think one needs to connect those concerns with a human rights perspective with a rights perspective that is taken very seriously as an unfulfilled human right for many of the peoples of the world.  Indigenous people and women have made great steps forward, I think, by connecting their aspirations with a human rights perspective.  I think we need to take advantage of that possibility in relation to the normative agenda associated with water and I think if we develop these two perspectives in a clear way and move toward maybe a future discussion around how they can be reconciled and complimentary rather than in some kind of adverse relation to one another we may indeed be able to celebrate that March 22nd year 2000, not by disasters and grievances but with the sense that can move hopefully into the next century and millennium.
 Thank you very much.

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