The panel concluded that biotechnology, including recombinant DNA technology, provides uncommon opportunities for improving food and water security in the 21st century. The panel therefore urges the World Commission on water for 21st Century to sponsor the organisation of a Global Biotechnology Research Partnership for Water Security in the 21st Century . This will be a meaningful way of helping developing countries suffering from drought, coastal and inland salinity and water pollution to face the challenges of water scarcity and pollution. The issues of water are becoming increasingly important to human health, food security and the environment. Water is becoming more scarce, and more difficult to access.
Less water is available for maintaining ecosystems.
And conflicts over shared water resources is growing. There is an urgent need to ensure that potential crisis is confronted on all fronts - from research to policy to action. The Commision assisted by a secretariate in Paris will be developing a long term vision on Water, Life and the Environment in the 21st century. Its objectives are to develop knowledge on what is happening in the water sector regionally and globally, produce a consensus on a World Water Vision for the year 2025, raise awareness of water issues among policy makers and general population, and utilise the knowledge and support generated to contribute to a framework for action. Recent advances in biotechnology have opened up big potential to save water, prinicipally by reducing the water consumption of plants and by treating wastewater.