Also, we thank the Council and the Dutch Government for hosting the 2nd World Water Forum and Ministerial Conference, and to all those who have given their support to the Vision process. And as Patron of IUCN I would especially like to thank Ms Yolanda Kakabadse, and the rest of the IUCN team, for their seminal efforts and ongoing hard work. That hard work has gathered together an unprecedented coalition of the world s foremost experts on water management. Neither we nor the planet can survive without it. The link between us and it is ineluctable.
Water can be a source of life or of death.
In my own region, it is a prerequisite for health, economic growth and development, but it is finite resource and a potential source of conflict. When we have enough, it can seem the most innocuous of substances, but, as we see in Mozambique, in excess, or especially as we are beginning to see around the world, in scarcity, it can be immensely powerful. But in our modern, commodified world, those connotations have been lost. That kind of reverence is the vision we must recapture towards our world s water. Out of that reverence will grow shared concern and willingness, and collaborative effort to move from vision to action.