It gives the impression that water is plentiful and indeed it is. However, pictures can be deceiving. Freshwater only accounts for 2.15 per cent of all the Earth's water. But even that percentage is deceiving because 99.5 per cent of all surface freshwater is locked away in continental ice. Freshwater, therefore, is a scarce resource, often a limiting factor for development, and one which we should take great care to protect.
Cities are the biggest consumers of freshwater, while being the biggest polluters.
As both issues are closely interlinked with each other, IETC tries to tackle both issuesin relation to the other. The IETC strategy is based primarily on Agenda 21, which emerged from the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. In addressing urban and freshwater problems, IETC, instead of addressing each problem directly, tries to support initiatives of relevant governments and decision-makers, so that they can choose the most appropriate sustainable options based upon their needs. In order to provide better access to information on ESTs, IETC developed a searchable directory called ''maESTro''. It is a tool to collect information on ESTs from disparate sources around the world, and to make them available for everybody in all different media such as floppy diskettes, CD-ROMs, the Internet and printed reports.