Water will be the link of integration in this century and from this day forward.

There are hundreds of alternative types of energy, but there is no alternative to water.

The 8th World Water Forum held in Brazil in March 2018, more than a large gathering of citizens from all over the world who met to talk about management and solutions for water resources, showed that water needs to be in people’s agenda.

We are a planet with almost 8 billion inhabitants, and the water available to their lives today is the same as it was in nature hundreds of years ago, and it should be with us in the years to come. That is, the equation “water availability x human life” has to be maintained by us, citizens.

This enormous responsibility, which is now recognized by all, was strengthened at the 8th World Forum in Brasilia. In an environment built to integrate people and share knowledge, more than 120,000 people talked about water, learned about water and, primarily, shared water.

In this scenario, for us, organizers of the CITIZEN FORUM, the recognition that citizens are the real actors in this dynamic of caring for water was fundamental, since all of us are somehow the driving levers that move the world for the well being of humanity.

We have created an enabling environment to welcome all participants from all over the planet. We conceive and reach in the spaces created, broaden the dialogue with conversation and roundtables, empower and qualify people with workshops and presentations, develop sensorial and interactive experiences with water through the magic of the senses, present information, show good practices, and it is worth highlighting: unprecedented in any other World Forum editions. We built an environment for all citizens, in synergy, just thinking about water, the Citizen Village, which received more than 110 thousand visitors, among them, more than 40 thousand children, soldiers of our future in defense of our water.

It becomes a legacy built by many hands during the 8th World Water Forum, summarized in the 10 Principles that should guide our actions for our waters in the future ahead. Principles that drive us to further engage in the cause, to mobilize for solutions, and fundamentally, to all forces, to engage more and more in the world of ‘taking care of water’.

LUPERCIO ZIROLDO ANTONIO

Coordinator of the CITIZEN FORUM Process at the 8th World Water Forum. He is a Civil Engineer, Honorary Governor of the World Water Council, President of the Brazil Network of River Basin Organizations and Permanent Technical Secretary of the Latin American Network of River Basin Organizations. He is the Director of the Baixo Tietê Basin of DAEE, Autarchy of the Secretariat of Infrastructure and Environment of the São Paulo State.