All of us were sensitive to the needs of human development as we listened to the aspirations, the pain and the anguish of individual people. But neither is it merely another example of Relativism. It stands against those previous relativistic truths of individual special interests who interpret dams according to their own narrowly defined local, financial, personal, temporal, ecological, global, ideological, institutional, academic, economic, social, or technical angles. A framework that is global in scope, but local its authority, a multi-stakeholder decision that brings about a single outcome, an authority that comes from below, rather than from above. In that way we can meet the coming water scarcity with confidence and assurance, knowing that water is not for fighting over.
Water is for conserving.
Water is for bathing. Water is for drinking. Water is for sharing. Water can be our catalyst for peace. May the generosity, philosophy and prominence of the Zayed Prize, now and in the future, continue to flow and nourish that peace.