This year’s World Water Week, which runs from 21 to 27 August, starts this week in the beautiful waterfront city of Stockholm, capital of Sweden. The event comes just weeks ahead of the United Nations’ five-year review of progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The giant event, which runs from 21 to 27 August, brings together expertise from around the world with the aim of solving many of the world’s unnecessary social ills that have their roots in a lack of clean water and good sanitation.

Reports and presentations by over 1,300 leading experts from 100 countries will be given on concrete examples that illustrate the extent to which global problems of poverty, hunger, disease, environmental degradation and gender inequality can be solved by the implementation of clean water and sanitation.

A press release by the Stockholm Institute of Water outlined a two-pronged plan for meeting future water and sanitation development needs. It said that since development had occurred differently throughout the world and were influence by varying regional climates and conditions, a “soft” approach and “hard” approach would be applied depending on the need.

The soft approach works with NGOS and world organisations, as well as government departments, women’s groups, the private sector and the media to promote general hygiene and behavioural changes.

The hard approach takes this a step further by providing the tools necessary for good sanitation, such as improved water storage capacity. Something as simple as this can make national economies more resilient to rainfall variability and boost economic growth.

“In many cases, a mix of ‘hard’ approaches such as technology and ‘soft’ tools such as community participation may be needed,” said Anders Berntell, Executive Director of the SIWI. “Tailoring solutions to situations will be a key focus during the week,” he said.

According to the SIWI, countries with access to improved water and sanitation services enjoyed an annual average growth of 3.7% GDP, in comparison to a meagre 0.1% rise in countries without.

Water Week will be attended by the European Union’s Water Initiative, the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, and UN-Water, as well as 60 other smaller organisations working towards cleaner water and sanitation for people in poorer regions.

Workshops, seminars, side events and exhibitions will be held by the organisations on the issues of climate variability, corruption, financing, gender equality, large-scale infrastructure, sanitation, and water pollution abatement, among others.

The 2005 Stockholm Water Prize of US$150,000 will also be awarded to Ms Sunita Narain on behalf of India’s Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. The Centre was chosen for the way it has “shown great respect for science and technology, and always with a social conscience that puts people first”.