By Pavel P. Antonov Illustration: Laszlo Falvay THICK BROTH: With so many different ingredients, the recipe for sustainability will be difficult to figure out. Of all the topics, themes, perspectives and opinions that cooked together during this year's World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, one seemed to be of overwhelming importance: Water. A likely reason for the urgency of the topic is the very real prospect that at least 3.5 billion people, or almost half the world's population, will face water scarcity in 25 years. This clear warning came from the Water, Energy, Health, Agriculture and Biodiversity Working Group (WEHAB), UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's initiative to provide focus and impetus to action in five key areas that are integral to sustainable development. And water was the one area where some promising progress was made in Johannesburg. An agreement to halve the number of people without proper access to clean water by 2015 was made since the 2000 Millennium summit. Almost surprisingly the delegates in Johannesburg added to it access to proper sanitation a new target that each year could save the lives of 2 million people, who die from drinking dirty water. It was a target for which the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) lobbied. Despite common belief, sanitation and wastewater treatment are also pressing issues in this region. Many have said Johannesburg was a huge disappointment partially because it lacked the high spirit of the Earth Summit in Rio, 10 years ago, and partially because most of the Johannesburg summit's final documents contained commitments to meet targets that had existed previously. The 60,000 cooks, with different national, organisational and cultural priorities who gathered in Johannesburg prepared a stew that was already cold and lacked flavour. Some of its ingredients were old and well known from before like the commitments to halve the world's poverty by 2015, or to support phasing out of lead in petrol, paint and other sources. Others were actually rotten, apparently aiming to fill the pockets of big business instead of the hungry mouths of today and tomorrow. This seemed to be the case with the decision to allow for voluntary regional and national targets for access to renewable energy. What's worse, the summit made little progress in reducing the huge gap between the rich and the poor an essential precondition for any sustainable development. Despite the disappointments of Johannesburg, the agreement on drinking water and sanitation, and other water-related agreements on protecting fish and the marine environment, were positive developments. It seems that delegates at the summit at least understood the urgency of dealing with the threats to water. We, from CEE understood that as well. Preserving bodies of water, like Lake Ohrid in South Eastern Europe, the Baltic Sea in the north, or the Danube, dictates international cooperation whether it's between a few countries in the region or the kind of worldwide gathering that took place in Johannesburg. The countries of CEE are ready for international cooperation, but, as Hungary's most experienced sustainability negotiator Tibor Farago explains, it was easier for them to make promises 10 years ago than to live up to those promises today. One of the biggest believers in Johannesburg's potential to make a real difference, the UN's Annan, had to acknowledge that the summit could do little more than set the stage and the tone for the further work that must be done to achieve sustainability. The rest is in our hands.

Global water crisis hits Central and Eastern Europe