CSIS Report: GLOBAL WATER FUTURES - a roadmap for future US water policy

http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_pubs/task,view/id,4876/

The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies has produced a report on the state and future of United States international water policy. The current state of US water policy is one focused largely around water as a humanitarian relief and development issue. USAID has taken a lead in this realm, but the report encourages a re-tooling of government efforts to bring more strategic thinking about water as an economic and security issue.

The report promotes forging a cohesive integrated effort to pull together currently disjointed agencies dealing with water - the State Department's Bureau of Oceans and Intenraitonal Environmental and Scientific Affairs, USAID, EPA, Army Corps of Engineers, Agriculture Department, Interior (reclamation etc.) under a unified water policy committee or secretariat. These traditional water actors would act in concert with partners in defense, national security, health and intelligence. (There are currently 15 agencies involved in US international water projects.)

Water must be integrated into key strategic elements of US foreign policy planning, the report argues, in recognition that the rapidly growing significance of water as a factor in international security and stability and economic opportunity.

One factor that guided the report was Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act, signed into the law on Dec. 1, 2005 which calls for an increase in the percentage of drinking water and sanitiation asssitance directed towards high-priority developing countries and for the State department to develop a strategy to provde affordable and equitable safe drinking water and sanitiation.

See: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/events/docs/WFPA%20-%20LAW.pdf