World Water Week opening ceremony highlights sharing and sustainability

The winner of the 2017 Stockholm Water Prize, professor Stephen McCaffrey, a pioneer in International Water Law, called attention to the need to create legal milestones to promote and ensure the sharing of transboundary water. The professor enhanced, however, that “this doesn’t mean to create equal rights, but equality of rights”.

McCaffrey pointed out that “60% of the world’s freshwater is shared by two or more countries” and creating rules can reduce water conflicts. According to him, this sharing must be seen in the context of climate changes. “With extreme droughts being increasingly often and intense, water conflicts tend to increase in the world. That’s why we need to share water and solutions to these problems”, he emphasized.