13 December 2022
(PRE-RECORDED)
Your Royal Highness, Excellencies,
I convey my heartfelt congratulations to this year’s recipients of the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prizes for Water.
Your groundbreaking innovations provide prospective solutions to the water challenges our world is facing.
I also commend the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for its long-standing support for cutting-edge research on this critical issue for humanity.
We can all agree that our world is in multiple crises – our central focus is on how to emerge from them.
If we want to tackle the crises, our decisions must be guided by science-based evidence.
Our actions should be driven by scientific solutions – such as those provided by the awardees today.
Nowhere are these actions more needed than on the question of water.
As you know, climate change is appearing to us – and hitting us – primarily as a water crisis.
The recent COP27 made, for the first time, direct references to water in the final declaration.
This represents a long overdue breakthrough for water in climate action.
In another important development, the stakeholder consultations that I convened in October, where over 1,200 representatives from the scientific community and other actors came up with several “game-changers”.
These are ideas that have the potential to transform policies and translate today’s water commitments into tomorrow’s reality.
The next big event on water action will be the UN Water Conference in March.
It will be a vital opportunity to move beyond reactive water management to coming up with proactive steps in our struggle with the water crisis.
I encourage you all to add your important perspectives to the transformation ahead of us.
Along with these ideas, the pioneering materials, methods and models developed by today’s awardees, are changing how we approach water challenges in the future.
Yes, it will be a long and difficult journey – but we have no other option if we want to reach our destination: sustainability.
I thank you.
