Cairns, 14 May 2004 - Two issues of major international concern to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) will be tackled together following the launch of a new campaign in Cairns, Australia today.

The WET-WASH (Wastewater Emission Targets - Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for all) campaign aims to clean up our seas by ensuring that people have access to toilets and safe drinking water.

"Achieving this will require alternatives to traditional large-scale investment projects," says UNEP's Veerle Vandeweerd, Coordinator of the Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities. "We need more innovative approaches to technology, infrastructure development, financing and management, including more use of natural sewage filtering systems like ponds, reed beds and mangrove swamps."

Eighty per cent of the pollution load in the oceans comes from land-based activities and half our coasts - home to one billion people - have become threatened by development activity.

"WET-WASH is significant because of the linkages between WETs and the UN Millennium Development Goals for water and sanitation that are vital for poverty alleviation and sustainable development efforts," says Jan Pronk, Chairman of the WSSCC. The initiative calls for national and regional WETs and to have them backed up by better quality indicators and reliable monitoring. WETs would be similar to those targets developed in many parts of the world to cut emissions of toxic chemicals and noxious gases from power stations and factories. The WET-WASH campaign would ensure that the global targets on Water and Sanitation include all aspects, in particular hygiene awareness and the safe discharge and re-use of wastewater.

Globally, sewage is the largest source of marine contamination by volume; although industrial pollution and more diffuse sources, such as from agricultural practices and sedimentation due to deforestation and mining operations, also pose a significant threat to the health and productivity of coastal resources. The global economic burden due to ill-health, disease and death related to the pollution of coastal waters is estimated at US$16 billion dollars a year. There are more and more so-called "dead zones", oxygen-starved areas in the world's oceans and seas whose proliferation could be a greater threat to fish stocks than over-fishing. These 'dead zones are linked to an excess of nutrients, mainly nitrogen, that originate from agricultural fertilizers, vehicle and factory emissions and domestic wastes. Low-levels of oxygen in the water make it difficult for fish, oysters and other marine creatures to survive as well as for important habitats such as sea grass beds.

In South Asia alone, over 800 million people have no access to basic sanitation, putting them at high risk from sewage-related diseases and death. It also means that the level of untreated domestic wastes being discharged into the region's coastal waters are likely to be the highest in the world, increasing the risk of shellfish contamination and the chance of toxic, algal blooms poisoning fish and wildlife. Precious habitats, such as South Asia's coral reefs, are likely to be under increased stress as a result of the high levels of nutrients and suspended solids linked with the discharges.

The second most vulnerable region is the seas of East Asia. Here, more than 500 million people are without access to proper sanitation, followed by the seas of the North West Pacific, where over 400 million people have no access to basic sanitation services. However, the WSSCC says that success stories from Asia, Africa and Latin America have shown that people-centered, community-led approaches and innovative sanitation technologies have led to reducing poverty, improving health and restoring human dignity to the poorest of the poor.

The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for all (WASH) campaign was initiated by the WSSCC in 2001 to place sanitation, hygiene and water in the forefront of the political agenda, ahead of several global conferences such as the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), the 2003 Third World Water Forum and the Commission on Sustainable Development sessions on water, sanitation and human settlements in 2004-2005.

The WET-WASH campaign was launched at the end of the Global H20 - Hilltops-2-Oceans Partnership Conference in Cairns that took place from 11-14 May, to discuss the links between integrated water resources management and integrated coastal area management. The launch, in which Ministers from China, St. Lucia, and Sri Lanka participated in a 'hand washing' ceremony with WSSCC Chair Jan Pronk and GPA Coordinator Veerle Vandeweerd, was preceded by a video message from a leading WASH advocate, Nelson Mandela.

NOTES TO EDITORS
For more information on the Hilltops-2-Oceans Partnership Conference see http://www.hilltops2oceans.org/

The report, "Water Supply and Sanitation Coverage in UNEP Regional Seas - Need for Wastewater Emission Targets and other information about the UNEP Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-Based Activities (GPA), based in the Hague, The Netherlands, can be found at http://www.gpa.unep.org/

The WET initiative was developed by UNEP and major partners such as WHO, WSSCC and UN-Habitat, during the WSSD in September 2002, as a key component of the H20 From Hilltops-2-Oceans Type II Partnership proposal.

For more information on the WSSCC and the WASH campaign, please see http://www.wsscc.org

The WSSCC publication "Listening: to those working with communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to achieve the UN goals for water and sanitation" can be found at http://www.wsscc.org/listening

The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and WSSD agreed upon a sanitation target to complement the existing MDG on water, to halve the proportion of people without access to these services by 2015. See more at http://www.developmentgoals.org/

For more information, please contact:
Tim Higham, Regional Information Officer, UNEP Bangkok, Thailand, Tel. +66 2 288 2127, mobile phone +66 9 128 3803, email: higham@un.org

Eirah Gorre-Dale, Special Representative of the WSSCC to the UN, New York, USA, mobile phone +1(914) 309-5491; Tel. +1(914) 923-8575; email: eirahgd@aol.co

Sören Bauer, Communications and External Relations Officer, WSSCC, Geneva, Switzerland, Tel.+41 22 917 8674; email: bauers@who.int