Why ANWE?

WHY ESTABLISH ANWE?

The establishment of ANWE is to incorporate Water Ethics in all the tools of IWRM intended to contribute alleviating the Arab water crisis. The approach is based on a holistic and comprehensive systemic analysis. This is dependent on examining relationships among different components of the system of water resource management. Such an endeavor requires the choice of appropriate strategies for an integrated system. The systems metaphor also embraces the mental model scientists hold about crucial system properties, such as controllability and predictability. Any strategy must start from an analysis of the coupled "environment-technology-human" system and aim at an improved design of it (Claudia Pahl-Wostl, 2002).

In this context the reflection of the strategy is going to be on how best Arabs can actualize the Arab Water Vision 2030?; and mobilize all forces for responding positively to the complexity of the water crisis. We need as Arabs to walk our talk and take specific steps to make this vision a reality.

In addition it is now the eighth year since the establishment of UNESCO World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST)1 in 1998 (COMEST, 2004), as well as, the Sub-Commission on water ethics. The Sub-Commission on water ethics has enriched the relatively young topic of "water and ethics", with a series of publications handling the various ethical issues and principles of water use and management. By the year 2001, “Global Research and Ethical Network Embracing Water”  (RENEW) had been created as part of UNESCO’s World Commission on Ethics of Science and Technology (COMEST).  These node points of RENEW started to take shape in the three geographic regions:  Bergen for the Scandinavian region, Canberra for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and Cairo for the Arab region.

ANWE strategy draws upon the work of Sub-Commission on water ethics reports and recommendations for the sake actualising water use ethics in the Arab region.