Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands speaks highly of China's efforts in providing safe drinking water

Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands spoke highly of China's efforts in providing safe drinking water and access to decent sanitation in an interview with People's Daily Online reporter Xuefei Chen during the annual World Water Week which is going on in Stockholm17-23 August.

The Prince is a member of the International Olympic Committee and Chair of UN Secretary General's Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation.

In his early speech at the opening plenary session of the Water Week, the Prince said the quality of Beijing's sanitation is impressive and sustainable.

Reporter: What was your comment about the efforts China has made in providing drinking water and sanitation to the people?

Prince: China is a large country with basically all the water problems. We have China very much on our radar screen, but we also noticed that a lot of problems are being solved by China. For the biggest problem in China is the shortage of water, especially in the north. But you have the projects of creating three canals to divert water from Yangtze River to Beijing region. And pollution is a major issue.

And then the floods are often related to rain or quick lakes, for example the recent earthquake in Sichuan province formed a lot of lakes and dams which affect people's lives after the earthquake. We see a lot of water problems in China. On the other hand, we see the incredible way that you are actually solving them yourselves. China is going to achieve the Millennium Goals by halving the number of people without drinking water and sanitation well before the deadline of 2015. China is reporting its achievements on water and sanitation, Chinese number has been added into the new joint monitoring program, that's why we see the great decline of people. China's achievement is creating good figures now. In another word, due to China's achievement of the millennium goal, the number of people who lack drinking water and sanitation will reduce substantially.

Reporter: As a Prince, how did you become interested in and concerned about water issue?

Prince: My country is a small country. But we are fighting for about 900 years for water as one of our first democratic institutions was Water Board. And everybody living within certain area has the right to vote on how the water should be run. So with these institutions about 900 years old, especially the sense of flood prevention is in our gene. With that we have been active very much all over the world including in China, Japan and Indonesia and all over Africa through colonial times with water management. So in that sense, it is quite natural for me to play an active role in it, because water is becoming more and more important. Electricity is important, IT is important, but we are not leading in those fields. But we have the knowledge and experience on how to deal with water for hundreds of years. My father who grew up in Africa was involved a lot in development in Africa. He said water is the prime resources, if you can't manage water, you cannot develop. For me, I can feel the importance of water, be it drinking water or for agriculture.
You in China is experiencing very much now. I mean China is looking abroad to import water. According to the virtual water theory, rice produced in Mozambique is actually being imported as water because you don't have enough water to produce rice in China itself, you are looking in Africa, South America for food production. What you do is actually importing a lot of water in the form of food.

It is also interesting to see that Chinese people's disposable income is increasing and the diet is also increasing. For example, one kg of rice costs 3400 liters of water while one kg beef cost 16000 liters of water. In that sense, the demand of water for Chinese is tremendous.

Reporter: Do you think people should control their diet? Eating less beef and becoming vegetarian?

Prince: The Stockholm Water Prize Laureate is calling for that. But the main impact might be in technical innovation so that the water for agriculture is halved.

Reporter: In your opinion, what was the main problem behind the number that 2.6 billion people still don't have access to safe drinking water and decent sanitation?

Prince: The decision-makers and politicians are not affected by lack of sanitation. They don't feel that problem. AIDs, power shortage and drinking water shortages affect the society at all levels of the population, but the sanitation issue is not a popular topic to talk about because they don't have access to decent sanitation. It is very much like a taboo or in the mindset, it is very difficult to openly talk about toilet issue. In many cultures, it is very difficult. We have to break these taboos and that is what we are achieving in this international year of sanitation.

Reporter: Briefly what are the progress being made?
Prince: My board was created by Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General. Obviously the access to sanitation goal was far behind other millennium goals. This board was set to give extra impulse.

The drinking water goal probably will be achieved according to schedule, but the sanitation goal is still lagging far behind. We asked the UN to launch this sanitation year to boost the speed, and then we will keep the speed. Regional conferences in Latin America, Africa and Asia have come to really good results. All these regional cooperation is coming on the ground. That's fine. When the regional efforts become effective, then we follow it and make the countries to invest in it so the money follows with concrete steps. Implementation will follow. So political awareness have been clear, papers are being signed and goes to minister of finance. This is really accelerated during this year.

Reporter: So you don't worry about money.

Prince: People look for long term investment. People look forward to sanitation and water supply. These are very interesting investment because people will always need them. So if you get good return from it, it is like investment in the pension fund. Sanitation and pension fund are both long term. They match the horizons of investments. There is so much money available there if you make good investment in them.

Reporter: Thank you very much.

By Xuefei Chen People's Daily Online correspondent in Stockholm.