Ambassador Marcia Bernicat on the U.S. Global Water Strategy

The overarching goal of the U.S. Global Water Strategy is to create a more water secure world, said Ambassador Marcia Bernicat, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Oceans, and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs at the U.S. Department of State at a recent Wilson Center event . “Simply put,” she said, “a world where people have the water they need, where they need it, when they need it, without living in fear of floods or droughts.”

In honor of World Water Day 2019, Ambassador Bernicat took a look back at the challenges and objectives included in the U.S. Global Water Strategy, which was released in November 2017.

Three Main Challenges

“We addressed three major challenges in that strategy,” said Ambassador Bernicat. The first challenge is that a significant portion of the population in many countries still lacks access to safe drinking water and sanitation, she said. Nearly two billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water and nearly four billion lack access to safely managed sanitation services.

“This is not only a threat to human health,” she said, “but a factor in migration, civil unrest, and terrorist recruitment.”

Second, […]

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