Jan 08 – UN Secretary-General Urges Business to Act on Water

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in a plenary address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, called on business leaders to make water sustainability a corporate priority and urged them to endorse the UN Global Compact’s CEO Water Mandate.

“Governments must engage—and lead. But we also need private enterprise,”, the Secretary-General said. “For too long, business has been seen as a culprit. The smokestacks of industry contaminate our atmosphere, the effluents from power plants spoil our rivers. But this is a misleading picture. More often than not, today, business is becoming part of the solution, not the problem,” he added.

The Secretary-General praised the leadership of the chief executive officers from Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and Dow Chemical for their efforts in addressing water scarcity and sanitation through initiatives such as The CEO Water Mandate.

He noted that 20 companies have endorsed The CEO Water Mandate since its launch in July 2007, and urged other companies to join this call-to-action and management framework.

The CEO Water Mandate will convene its first implementation conference for endorsers on 5 March 2008 at UN Headquarters in New York.

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Please click here to access the homepage of The CEO Water Mandate.
Please click here to access the UN News Centre’s coverage of the Secretary-General’s speech.

Contact

Gavin Power
Senior Advisor, UN Global Compact
powerg@un.org
+1-917-679-8144

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CEO Water Mandate Secretariat
The CEO Water Mandate is a special initiative of the UN Secretary-General and the UN Global Compact, implemented in partnership with the Pacific Institute. These key partners work together as the CEO Water Mandate Secretariat. The Mandate Secretariat supports the initiative’s mission in many ways, including: 1) developing research, guidance, and tools that advance corporate water stewardship; 2) convening multi-stakeholder events to identify, explore, and solve key water challenges; 3) facilitating meaningful collective action to improve conditions in at-risk river basins.