 My name is John Hamery, president here at CSIS, and I have my role here as ornamental, which is sad, but it is to really be here, because I have two of my trustees here, and when trustees are here, I'm here. One of my other trustees, Henrietta Fore, is here. Thank you, Henrietta. Delighted to have you here, because these guys approve my salary every year, so I have to be here to make sure they know how important I think they are in my life. But I did want to say just a word of serious welcome to all of you, and special thanks to Neville Isdale and to Bill Frist. You know, Eric's going to really introduce the program, but I would like, when I introduce this, I'd like to try to give somebody just a little bit of an insight on something I know about these people that you may not know. To give you a sense of the content of their character. I remember first meeting Senator Frist when he was the majority leader, and we were working on our HIV AIDS project, and he, along with Senator John Kerry, were the early chairs of that, and when I went up to meet with Senator Frist to thank him for agreeing to do that, he had pictures out on his desk in the Senate, and these were pictures of his last visit to Africa where he did open heart surgery in the bush. And taking the time. I mean, other senators, they're going home for recess, and they're not going to Rwanda to do open heart surgery on the poor. It's an important insight into the content of this man's character. When I went down to visit Neville Isdale when he joined the board, and Neville, at the time, was the president and CEO, chairman for Coca-Cola, and much to my surprise, there was one picture on the wall in his office, and that was a picture of him as a young man meeting Nelson Mandela. Neville is from South Africa, and that set in his heart a commitment to a progressive leadership style that he brought into Coca-Cola. And when Coca-Cola about a year and a half ago, two years ago, maybe it was, announced it was going to be water-neutral in China, that was an astounding commitment for a major corporation about its role and responsibility in today's society. And it's just that sort of leadership that informed his tenure throughout life and certainly these last years at Coca-Cola. So you all know we've been talking with you for some time about our aspirations to make American leadership on water a pathway back to America's moral standing in the world. I think there's nothing, nothing would do more to lift up the world's perceptions of America than if we were to embrace a goal of ensuring that within 10 years, every human being on the planet would have access to fresh and clean water. I mean, nothing would do more than that. These two men embraced that vision. They embraced it out of their respective histories, their respective passions, and agreed that they would work with us on this little effort. So Eric, let me turn to you to get this off for real. I do want to say thank you to both of you for such important service to the world and giving us a chance to be your partners. Eric, let me turn to you. Thank you very much, John. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We're so deeply grateful that you would cut into your schedules to join us here today. For us, this is quite a remarkable moment. We've been working on this declaration in one way or another for many months now. We have, as you can see in the back of the document that you have in front of you, 37 signatories, in addition to our two co-chairs. We also have on our website the capacity in the future for others who are not on the list now to join on. We'll come back to that in a little bit. I would like to tee up our discussion before our co-chairs approach the podium by saying a few words about where things stand right now with respect to this remarkable opportunity that we believe that we have with respect to U.S. engagement on water-related issues. I'd like to very briefly touch on three issues. First, to talk about what all of the 22,000 water experts who have now converged in Istanbul are now thinking about, namely, the scope of this challenge that we call water. Next, I'd like to touch very briefly on the case for an expanded U.S. policy with respect to water. Finally, I'll lay out the elements of the declaration that you have in front of you on a telescopic basis. We can get into details with the co-chairs in our Q&A period. Let me begin here by saying that probably we are seeing much more by way of recognition now on water than we've seen for quite some time and with good reason. This is a critical resource that we see only too infrequently embedded in one way or another in various aspects of policy across the world. When you look at the global scope of this challenge that we call water, I think you can probably break it into four parts. It begins, of course, necessarily with access, then water quality is a key issue, sanitation and finally impact on broader economic development. Let me just say very briefly a couple of words on each of these. When it comes to access, hard to believe, but you and I now live in a world in which more than 880 million people don't have access to the water that you and I take for granted. Every sip that they take is a leap of faith. 80 countries are involved, very significant scope. And as those of us who are in the projection sphere are only too painfully aware, high correlation between most rapid population growth in the driest areas of the world. I was interested to see an OECD projection that recently suggested that as many as 3.9 billion people out of year 2030 could face some level of water stress. Water quality, another critical issue, many here acutely aware. As we think about this, we need to be thinking about the fact that the social and medical and health care costs, including environmental sustainability issues, are simply off the charts. When it comes to sanitation, the figure is about 2.5 billion people that don't have access to the sanitation that you and I take for granted. The opportunity cost here yet again is tremendously high. And then the foregone opportunities in economic development. We can think about what this means in the high growth countries like India. 177 countries recently surveyed suggested that women lose an estimated 40 billion working hours each year. You talk about opportunity cost, I would argue that that certainly makes the case. In India, I thought that this point about 73 million lost working days would serve to highlight the very significant labor cost that factor in this as well. The bottom line here is that this scope, this key resource called water, has to be somehow at the center of the policy attention. Now, as we think about embedding it in U.S. policy and we think about the totality of U.S. interests, I would argue that there is a tremendously compelling case to be made. There's the healthcare case that Senator Frist, no doubt, will touch on. There's the broader issue of humanitarian response that we've seen recently, especially after the significant issues in Asia after the tsunami. When we think about the broader gender equality case, that point that I made about women walking long distances to fetch water, their issues about young girls in school, all of these have tremendous implications for gender-related issues. Economic development, if you look, for example, at countries like Ethiopia, look at rainfall variability and track that on GDP variations, very close correlation, at least according to data of the World Bank. The bottom line here is that this has tremendous implications for economic development as well. And then, finally, there's a very strong case for environment and stability and security. When you think about it, this is a high-definition challenge, crossing the entire spectrum of critical U.S. interests across the world. So the bottom line here is that we have a critical resource, tremendous scope of challenge, and it's embedded across a spectrum of critical U.S. interests. So where does that lead us? It leads us to the conclusion that we can and should be doing more, the essence of what is this declaration on U.S. international water policy. Now, I'd like to briefly set out what the main recommendations are. But the bottom line, as far as the recommendations are concerned, is that we now have a tremendous opportunity to do well by doing good when it comes to U.S. international water policy. We need, as a first recommendation in our report, as you'll see elaborated more fully in the report that you have in front of you, we need to launch a major campaign to bring water across the spectrum of U.S. policy interests. Beyond that, we needed integrated strategy to inform such a campaign. That means bringing together the 14-plus agencies of government, all of which have some play in the broader water challenge going across the board. Third, we need a voice for water and government even beyond what we've had in the past. And here, we thought that it would be useful to appoint a high-level representative whose purpose it would be to advocate for broader water issues and integration. That person needs to be backed up, reinforced. There are a number of very committed individuals now pushing the water agenda, but there are too few and under-resourced. They need more significant reinforcement. Next, we had heroic legislation only a few years back. The Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act was cosponsored by Senator Frist, Senator Reed, Earl Blumenauer, and Henry Hyde on Houseside. That was a tremendous step forward, and we're honored to have Patty Simon here today. Patty, where are you? Here. Under that legislation, we have now seen a commitment of monies to the broader issue of water, but we can and should do more. And here, we thought, and for the purposes of this declaration, that we need to be cranking up this commitment. Why? There are a number of good reasons, not least of which is that the rate of return on water is quite high. We need to be thinking about broader social and national rate of return on this critical investment. Number six is catalyzing international efforts. We've heard from the World Bank and the broader IFI community about the need to modernize infrastructure in a number of areas. We're leading up to the G20 meeting right now, but in the end, it's incumbent on us in terms of a national strategy to do what we can to catalyze a range of broader efforts, both multilateral and bilateral. And finally, public-private sector partnerships. No doubt, Neville Isdell will be addressing himself to this, but it's so critical that we bring a range of organizations, government, private sector, NGOs, research, and others together, as we think about pushing this broader agenda. So there you have it. The right time, a critical area, a marriage of interests, and the possibility to do well by doing good. That is the essence of this report. And we're very grateful not only to our two co-chairmen, from whom you'll be hearing momentarily, but we're grateful to the 37 signatories that you'll see on this page, and on this page, and on this page. We couldn't put them all on the screen. You have them in the back of your book, but we're absolutely delighted to have them engaged together with others who we hope will add their names to this list through our website in the future. I think that of this list, there are about a dozen of you here, and we're deeply grateful to you for endorsing this document. We had a lot of very interesting give and take as we went forward. So with that now, I'd like you to turn to the two chairmen, the principals who made this all happen. I begin by introducing or going in alphabetical order, Senator Bill Frist. You all know that he's raised in Nashville, Tennessee. As you heard from John Hamery, he specialized in healthcare policy and international relations. He started at Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, medical degree, Harvard Medical School, pioneer in lung and heart transplantation, became director of Vanderbilt University's Medical Center, Heart and Lung Transplantation Program in the 1980s, 20 years in medicine, and he shifts gears to public service in Congress. As you know, he served as a deputy whip, chairman of the National Republican Senator, Senatorial Committee, and then of course as the majority leader of the Senate. We know him as a champion of water and broader public health issues on Capitol Hill, and we are pleased and privileged and honored that he would agree to serve as co-chair of this declaration. Senator Frist. Thank you. Eric, thank you, and what an honor it is for me to be able to share these remarks, but also the leadership or the co-chairmanship with Neville Isdell, who is a true leader and who is somebody who can speak very strongly to the fundamentals of public-private partnerships and why this focus on water is so fundamental to the issues of oneness of humanity, of development, of health, of security, and the list goes on and on. So Neville, it's an honor to be able to join you in this endeavor. And I'm excited to be here. I don't spend that much time in Washington anymore. I come up about once a week or so, and as I come back, it sort of puts things in perspective, having spent 12 years here. And as I was coming back this morning, I was reflecting a little bit in the excitement of being able to come back with something that is so fundamental to relating to my life, and that is fighting global disease into your lives and to this oneness of humanity. It's so fundamental to fighting the extreme poverty around the world that so many of us in other ways are addressing. As you may know, it was four years ago in March of 2005 that I stood on the floor of the United States Senate. And I have to say, because all of you know how important staff is in everything that we do in Washington around the country, in the back of the room is Bill Hogan, who was in the back of the room then, who was then a budget director for the Majority Leader's Office in the United States Senate. But on that floor, I spoke about the importance of just safe drinking water and sanitation. And Senator Paul Simon, Water for the Poor Act, indeed shortly after that, was signed into law with extraordinarily bipartisan support in both the House and in the Senate. The law and the importance of that, which we continue to build upon, and we heard Senator Durbin talk about it yesterday, is to elevate the spotlight, to elevate water to what it is fundamentally in the public mind. We established a strategy for the first time for expanding access to that clean water that we see, to that sanitation, especially in developing countries. That same year, with our partner countries in the United Nations, the United States agreed to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and the International Decade for Action Water for Life. Among other things, this bound us to the target of collectively cutting in half the number of people in the world who lack access to safe drinking water and sanitation. Over time, we have seen progress. In fact, indeed, since 1990, over one billion people have gained access to improved water supply across the world, and we actually are on track to meet the U.N. Millennium Development Goal, according to the World Health Organization. But much more progress is needed. Harry cited the data, the statistics, and everybody agrees to them. Well over 800 million people without access to that clean water, with two and a half billion people without that access to clean sanitation. Very closely to my own life in terms of focus, in terms of maternal and child health, the fact that one child dies every 15 seconds, one child dies every 15 seconds of a water-borne disease, a product of not having clean sanitation or clean water. The fact that, as Eric said, 40 billion working hours every day are sacrificed by women who could be using their lives much more productively in terms of their own family, in terms of education, in terms of economic development, those 40 billion hours dedicated to carrying water. As all these statistics reveal, these realities have huge implications on economic development, and thus that linkage to lifting people out of poverty with this kind of infrastructure provision of clean water. As John said, and as Eric referred to, every year in the United States Senate, every year, and you don't see that much of it in Washington, D.C. I would disappear for a week or two weeks or three weeks or a month, yes, even as Majority Leader of the United States Senate. Would disappear and go to certain areas, go to Sri Lanka, spend about six days after the tsunami hit, and see the impact of what clean water does when it is washed out, there's no infrastructure there, and those wells are filled up with water, in many cases dirty water. Of going to Mozambique with the Millennium Water Alliance, and looking and pumping, taking other senators there, some of them that many had never been to Africa, and have them do that first hand pump that ultimately means many more kids will be going to school, and means that mothers will not be walking those two to three hours of going to Mozambique even this summer where I was doing surgery, and looking on behalf of the Millennium Challenge Corporation of the focus on these dirty rivers that we're running through North and Mozambique, and cleaning those up to have the access to that clean water. Regarding sanitation, we are not on track. Without an immediate acceleration in progress, the world will not achieve even half of the UN Millennium Development Goals sanitation target by the year 2015. The bright side of this challenge is that we have the ability to solve it. Faith-based groups and elementary schools, rotary clubs, universities are taking action today at almost the grassroots level to bring safe drinking water in sanitation to communities all over the developing world. For instance, Blood Water Mission, a nonprofit launched by the band Jars of Clay, has been able to build and fix up and sustain over 617 wells and latrines in sub-Saharan Africa with the support of all of their faithful fans who come out to hear a concert with students in many churches, reaching out, dropping that banner down to get the message out. Vanderbilt University, where I teach now, Owen School of Management, has a course now on social enterprise and poverty, where that is a focal point and people from all sorts of schools throughout Vanderbilt come together to collaborate and figure out how to have these sustainable initiatives around water and clean water and sanitation. I'm currently on the board of the Millennium Challenge Corporation. A lot of people don't know what it is, but it's your taxpayer money, about $7 billion of your taxpayer money, that for the last five years has invested in infrastructure to fight poverty with sustainable economic development. One of the main pillars of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, indeed, is clean water. The largest component in a compact in Mozambique, I mentioned that I was doing surgery there this summer. And while I was there and looking up through the northern province there, we were looking at how to take both the sanitation and clean water and elevate it, and indeed, in the compact or the contract, that the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a public private corporation funded by American taxpayer dollars, can invest to make a difference. And in that contract, we have put aside $203 million to supply water and sanitation services to six cities and provinces in Mozambique. I mentioned everything from the rock band out to circulating and capturing the youth today all the way up to the Millennium Challenge Corporation to demonstrate the sort of efforts that are being made. But our government's commitment remains far below what is needed if we're going to meet these goals. The United States has got to establish, and we took that first step, we took that first step, but has got to establish a national strategy for water to fulfill the obligations of the Water for the Poor Act. And we need to increase aid toward water issues and help lead, be that beacon for others around the world, around which they can rally to support water and sanitation. And it's in the developing countries, yes, but also in the developed nations. The United States must lead. If we focused on water as a priority instrument for Washington's engagement with the rest of the world, it would enable policymakers to achieve a range of all our foreign policy goals in an integrated, efficient fashion. It pulls it all together. It's the glue. It ties that overall policy together. Water is absolutely central to supporting public health commitments, such as the issues of HIV, AIDS, and malaria, and tuberculosis, as well as education and economic development. In the coming years, no matter how our foreign assistance instruments and institutions are reformed, and we will see a lot of change over the next year, I predict, water must be integrated as a key element moving forward. Thank you. Thank you, Senator. Now it's with great pleasure that I introduce our other co-chair, Neville Isdell, who, of course, as you know, is chairman of the board of the Coca-Cola Company. Remarkable with his background that he has lived in 11 countries on five continents. And he's flown from another area of the world to be with us this morning with his bride, Pamela. And we're very grateful that they are with us as well. Neville was born in Northern Ireland, raised in Africa. He was educated as a social worker. And then for 43 years, he has been working for the Coca-Cola system around the world. During that time, he's engaged Coca-Cola's nearly 1 million system employees. He's embedded sustainability into the corporation's business model. He's built a range of new partnerships. Many of us who have been tracking water, certainly are fully aware of that, between business, government, and civil society, on a whole range of issues, not least of which are water conservation, sustainable packaging, energy, and climate change. He serves on the board of the Global Water Challenge. He received a bachelor's degree in social science from the University of Cape Town, and is a graduate of the Harvard Business School Program for Management Development. Neville, thank you so very much for joining us here today and for your leadership also on this project. Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Eric. Thank you, John. And also, I want to thank my co-chair, Bill, Senator Frist, for what you have done to make happen today, where I think we're putting forward to you something that is probably the most important work that CSIS has undertaken, certainly in the last months, but not in the last years, if we look at it, in the overall global context that Bill outlined. So I'm pleased to be here today to help launch the declaration on what I hope and I think we all hope will be a sustained and a very serious focus on addressing the planet's water challenge. Now, I agree to co-chair this declaration, and I'm here today really representing the business community because I want to encourage the business community to step up in their overall collaborative efforts on water sustainability. And I think there's a broader context for business within this as well in terms of businesses linkage with society, particularly in the difficult times that we have at present. To me, each role of society, each piece of society, rather, has a role to play, business, government, and civil society. And working separately as so often we have done is no longer enough. We have to come together as partners to create literally a triangle of sustainability that will generate the scale and the speed that is required for a challenge of this very significant magnitude. So companies need to take their role in the solution. But what is the appropriate role for business? I believe that business must do three things. Address our footprint, extend our handprint, and help shape the public policy blueprint. Before I turn to each of those, I just want you to understand why the Coca-Cola company cares about water. It's actually very simple. It's the key ingredient, the key ingredient to our beverages. But it's also critical, Bill has outlined this, to the health and economic prosperity of the communities that we serve. And we recognize that if communities are not sustainable, we do not have a sustainable business, period. And that's the broader context. So let's start with the first role for business to address our footprint, which basically is how our company's operations directly utilize water resources. It starts with understanding how we use water and how much water we actually use. So we started within the four walls of our own business and looked at ways to become more efficient. And then we've also looked beyond that and how we use water up and down our supply and distribution chains. Now we've set metrics, specific goals, to return an amount of water equal to what we use in our beverages, so that's what we sell, and in our production, and to put it back to the communities and to nature. The water neutrality that John mentioned. We're working on that through basically three steps. First is very simple, reducing the amount of water we use by increasing our efficiency. From 2002 to 2007, we improved our water use efficiency by over 20%. At the same time, we were growing volume, by the way, at over 21%. So our total water usage, actually, even with all that growth, was reduced by some 3%. Now, it's very simple but very complicated because these are little pieces of a puzzle that you have to connect in the right way. And we work with our bottling partners. We work with other areas of civil society. Our prime one on this is the WWF. And we've set system-wide targets to further improve our water efficiency by 20% between the period, starting at the base of 2004, by 2012. So that's the internal piece. The second is recycling to address what we do with the water that we actually use in manufacturing our products and our processes and returning it to the environment in a level that supports aquatic life. And here I mean fish. So essentially, nature-identical form. Currently, 85% of our nearly 1,000 facilities around the world return the water that they use in the processes to nature at a level that can support aquatic life. And we will achieve 100% of those 1,000 facilities by the end of 2010. So then, we're talking about replenishing water in communities and nature. And that's replenishing what we actually sell as a beverage. And we're doing that by supporting healthy water sheds, by community water programs to balance that water we use in our beverages. So I just want to give you that because this is a very complex issue, but I just want to give you some specific company examples of how to do this. And that's how we, in fact, are addressing our water footprint. And as I've spoken to other business leaders, because I do go around and talk about water a great deal, I've heard the very basic objections you normally get about cost and about commitment. Some say they cannot afford to make water investments in this tough economic climate. Well, I say that if water is a cost for your business, then addressing your water footprint now will actually save you money and make your business more sustainable. And that is exactly what we are finding to be true. The other objection is a belief that to make a difference on water a business needs to be very large. So it's easy for the Coca-Cola's of this world to make the investments. But difficult for smaller enterprises. Not true. The truth is that any business can make a first step on water stewardship. And I invite you to learn more about the CEO Water Mandate, which is initiative which we share with a number of other businesses and a number of NGOs under the UN Global Contact. It offers a roadmap for sustainability and it only requires a commitment to engage in addressing those water challenges. So that's addressing the footprint. Now the handprint. Our handprint is what we can do that goes far beyond what we directly affect through our business. There are interventions that allow us to have a larger impact on society and just as important to have a multiplier effect to act as a catalyst, partnering with others and frankly by taking a leadership role, it's how we can reach scale. Handprint really speaks to the declaration's seventh action step. Reinforcing the overall public-private partnership. And we're extending our handprint through partnerships with governments and civil society. Currently we have more than 200 community water projects in more than 60 countries. And we've recently announced a new partnership of $60 million over the next five years in 19 countries in Africa to add to that. And these programs already provide water but they help protect and preserve water resources. But the prime area is to give access to water and sanitation. Our partners very broadly based include such organizations, USAID, CARE, UNDP, WWF, but also very importantly local governments and communities, because unless we work at the local level as well, we will not get the impact. I talk about very often we go out to do things to people rather than thinking about how we can enable people to do things for themselves. And that is also part of the philosophy about how we work and how we work with NGOs. So the second step then is to extend our handprint by building on those public and private partnerships as the declaration encourages. But finally, businesses should help shape the public policy blueprint, which is essentially why I'm here today. We do have shared interests. Governments, the public and businesses all want a sustainable clean water supply that enables not inhibits economic growth that encourages public health and social development. Both governments and businesses are really exposed to reputational and significant political risks when access to clean water is negatively effective. The political dimension is huge. And there are really, really many opportunities for businesses at large and for everyone to partner and to support policies like this declaration. We've talked about the Millennium Development Goals. I joined a group of leaders to the G8 urging them to make the emerging water crisis a global priority. And these are the voices that I'm pleading to people in this room as well, and I brought more broadly to the overall business community to put this forward as a real priority. We have, of course, lobbied in support of the Water for the Poor Act with the US Congress. And as I say, all of these small elements from one company hopefully have a multiplier effect to help shape the blueprint for the future. So in closing, businesses that want to take action on water should number one, address their footprint, extend their handprint and help shape the public policy blueprint. The important thing really is that any business can take the first step, and there is no better time than today to take that step because it will make your business more sustainable. Thank you. Thank you very much, Neville. We're deeply grateful for those comments, deeply grateful to both of you, co-chairmen, for your leadership on this project. Now we have a little time for give and take, and I'd like to propose that we begin our discussion here by asking those of you in this audience who are current signatories to this declaration if you would like to add anything to the mix. I see a number of you here. What is our microphone protocol? Do we have microphones nearby? Otherwise, we can ask you to come up to the podium. But perhaps, David, could I look to you as a signatory? Would you like to begin just by saying a couple words? Obviously, this was prepared, ladies and gentlemen. You can tell. Sir, come on up. Come on up, please. My name is David Douglas. I work with a number of people in this room in an organization called Water Advocates. It's the country's first organization to be full-time on behalf of the issue of drinking water sanitation. And we have a sunset clause at the end of 2010, so it's been a sprint for all of us and not a marathon. But as I look around the room, and particularly at the table here today, you realize this room is filled with water advocates. The issue is not going away. We are dealing with one of the three most critical issues of the 21st century, along with food and energy. Water will be one of the three key issues of the 21st century. Action that a number of people in this room today, some of the signatories and some of the people that Eric and Rachel and CSIS brought together have helped to create an additional framework to build on the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act that would allow the US to be a leader in this role. And yesterday's speech by Senator Richard Durbin, which I think together with the speech that Senator Frist made on the floor of the US Senate several years ago are two of the most compelling, powerful testaments by American political leaders in our lifetime on the importance of this issue reinforce that this will continue to be a bipartisan issue that can pull people that get together on very few other issues in Washington DC on one of the most important issues of the 21st century. We will, the United States will be able to save lives, undergird economic development, and reassert its leadership on this key issue. So I thank you all for being here. I would just ask Senator Frist and Neville Isdell to, if they were to, before they leave today, to not so much ask them, but to let them know how many people in this audience and elsewhere have been grateful for their leadership in this issue and how often their personal names, not only the relationship of the Senator Frist to the Senate and Neville Isdell to cope, but how much their personal names have been invoked with gratitude for what you have done. So thank you, thank you very much. All right, we now have a microphone. Are there any other? Thank you, David, for those eloquent comments on demand. Are there any other of the signatories who would like to stand up and make a comment? Malcolm Morris. Good morning. Thank you, Eric. Malcolm Morris, Chairman of the Millennium Water Alliance. I cannot tell you when we had an idea to bring competitors and an NGO sense together to say how can we work together in order to solve this crisis, not by saying we're from America and we're gonna do it for you, but by working with people on the ground at the village level and getting those projects done. It was just another signatory here, Ambassador John McDonald, sitting here on the front row just made a comment. He said, I was in South Korea and he said, do you know of any group working together where they're bringing partnerships to make things happen on the ground to solve the global water crisis? And he said, yes, there is one, the Millennium Water Alliance. I can tell you that Bill Hogan, I'm sitting here looking at you. Thank you, Senator Frisk, for acknowledging your aid. I do not know anybody who accomplished more to help get that water for the poor act past who did all the work, I think, between what, midnight and six a.m. or something. I know some of that. Yeah. But Senator Frisk, you were a great leader. I know that you put him up to it. You kept him up all night and you made it happen and we just gotta say thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for the leadership of Coca-Cola. Thank you for your commitment to Africa and thank you again for all the water advocates in this room. Charlie, you haven't signed yet, but you're gonna sign. Would you like to tell them what Rotary's doing? I represent Rotary International. And Rotary International, as you know, has a lot of boots on the ground around the world. We're using our polio model, our elimination of polio worldwide model, as a model to follow for clean water, safe water, and safe sanitation. We've only, I'm afraid, just got started on the safe sanitation, but we focused a good deal in Africa now and our Rotary clubs around the world are now taking up that challenge also. We are happy to be with you. We would be happy to work with you. Charlie, thank you very much. Delighted to have you here. All right, other signatories or shall we open up to general question, answer, comment please? Yes, please. John Mumford, one of the proud signatories of this declaration, I am a longtime Washingtonian in and out of government and doing a book this fall on the leadership challenges facing our country and water is number two. I just came back from China a spring a year ago and lectured in two of the top universities. And the point was water is your number one challenge in China for the 21st century. So thanks to the co-chairs and what you all are doing at CSIS, this is very important work. Thank you, John. Thank you very much. Please. My name is Hattie Babbitt. I'm the vice chair of the Global Water Challenge along with Neve Lizdell. And I thought I'd really like to ask Paul Faith who runs the shop to say a few words. We, board members are important, but not nearly as important as the people who actually run these organizations. Paul, thank you for coming and Ambassador, thank you for. I like being from the spot, but thanks Hattie for the call out. We're very excited about this because the, as you mentioned, the politics, we think this is a huge opportunity for the administration not only to sort of help rebuild our reputation, but to do a lot of good work. Senator Fisher mentioned the same thing. This is an incredible opportunity from that point of view and we are urging the administration to do all they can to make this happen in that regard. I think there's so many people also that David mentioned who have supported the Water for the Poor Act. We've worked with Water Advocates and actually seven major companies including Coca-Cola to support that. And I'd like to thank those companies in terms of the leadership that they've showed as well. Thank you Paul, thank you very much. Other comments or questions, all of you please. Thank you. My name's Martin Apple. I'm president of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents. I'd like to pursue the question. Somebody raised the issue that there were three major issues, agriculture, energy, and water. Actually the water footprint of the other two is also a crucial decider of our future. Alternative energies for example, may vary as much as 10,000 fold in replacement of fossil fuels in their use of water. And agriculture is the major consumptive user of water around the world. And so until these are both addressed also, the crisis of water will not be solved in my judgment. Thank you. Thank you for that comment. If you don't mind, I'll presume to respond directly to that. In fact, in the next stage of our work here at CSIS we are exploring the possibility of doing some modeling, reconciliation of modeling in these critical areas of food, water, and energy for precisely the reasons that you state. Our knowledge about the complex interactions between these resources is substantial but still not full. And as we look at what I think we all can agree is a tremendously dynamic outlook in all three areas, it behooves us to be thinking in terms of system linkages and then whatever secondary or tertiary information that can provide leaders in their decision making in a range of other areas. But in case after case it comes down to a whole range of how you define the issue, by which methodology you do projections and how heroic they are, the assumptions that you take. So we'll be working on this in the future. Other comments? Can I add to that? Yes, please, thank you. I think that whole linkage between food, energy, and water is a very important one. And we tend to look at these issues in silos when they don't work in silos and the connectivity is very important. And what we're trying to do is to track, this is really where we were moving to the second stage, the whole value chain. And how much embedded water is in food products which then gets to food and agriculture and what you use and also energy. I mean, I don't know how many of you had an egg for breakfast this morning, but the latest calculation I've seen that every time you have an egg, that's 450 liters of water. We don't think in those terms. We're starting to try and track that and to look at how we impact that. Therefore, moving in our juice business, moving from overhead irrigation to drip irrigation, what that does, et cetera. There's a huge issue here because when it comes to water, people disagree on the number, but roughly 70% of the water usage is the right agriculture. So that's where it's embedded. So as in water stress areas and the food issue, I mean, that linkage is one that I don't think has been properly identified. And what we're proposing here is to fund the activity so we really get a clear issue about what needs to be done in the broader context as well as the narrower context. And I think, again, you can see the response into the nerve that you struck. This relationship between water and other, I use the word infrastructure because the water's kind of hard to put in pigeonholes somewhere. But there are elements of our government who get it. And I mentioned Millennium Challenge Corporation, which is still, there's no longer an experiment, it's only five years old, but $7 billion that a set of your money has gone out. If you're gonna really lift people out of poverty in sustainable economic development, not just give them glass of water or make sure they have clean sanitation, you have to look at it hand in hand. Indeed, if you look at what the Millennium Challenge Corporation has done, and it uses objective criteria, is invest about $530 million in water, but at the same time relates that to about $400 million investment of water in agriculture. And that to me, and the whole goal is to lift people up, economic development in a sustainable way, that integration is what the principles, backups, really what they stand for, so that policy makers can say, yeah, I get it. I get the linkage between the two, and obviously we just talked about energy as well. But there are institutions in government today who get the linkage. What we need to do is give them firepower, and policy, and understanding, which is what these principles begin. It's in the declaration we have very concrete steps, and I'm wondering about the timeline that might go with that, what's potential, what's hoped for. The declaration does present some concrete and some more generalized recommendations. The timeline that we were looking at in terms of the broader increase in financial commitment was over the next four years. Now, we started this process thanks to the leadership of our co-chairs. We started this process before the onset of the current economic circumstances in which we now find ourselves. But I think for the same reason that Neville Isdell talked about a commitment in the context of the private sector, that we need to be thinking about ramping up with respect to aggregate commitment on water within USG. And for that reason, we put a one billion commitment over the next four years. That, of course, is a notional figure that contingents on a range of pressures that exist. But nevertheless, the point here, the takeaway is that we need a commitment or an investment of an order of magnitude higher than what we're seeing even under what was the hard fought Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act. And we heard a little bit about this as David Douglas mentioned in the comments from Senator Durbin on Capitol Hill yesterday. But in the end, we need to be thinking about a significant increase, especially in light of what we've argued is a high rate of return across a number of US interests going forward. Would you gentlemen like to add anything to that? Or we've got, yes please. Maury. It's Tobin of the Tobin Foundation. I just returned from Calcutta and I was very impressed that industry had stepped forward because as you know, it's a land of lots of open sewers and very little fresh water. And I've found them using a packet of from Procter and Gamble that added to a gallon of water and a half hour later it was drinkable. It's very impressive from industry. You know, I'll just add because when I went to Sri Lanka, I went early on, very early on before our military arrived. And it was really interesting in terms of the response. So there was sort of an acute response. Everybody had their own wells and then you had the tsunami come in, killed 150 million people, a lot of people, but also the contamination of the water. And there again, different types. It happened to be Procter and Gamble there. The little packets were delivered. It could be used acutely early on. I think it's not the end all and be all, but it does demonstrate the importance of the private sector, public sector working hand in hand on efforts, innovation, inexpensive, pretty remarkable based on science and it's demonstrable. Similarly, I spent time at Bangladesh and I was in Bangladesh last year and doing the medical work, same old things on the ground. You sort of sense what's really going on. In the hospital I was working in, there were 1,100 admissions every single day for cholera. Waterborne, sanitation, 11, this is one hospital of, those of you who've been to Bangladesh, it's crowded there and there are lots of hospitals. This is one hospital I was on the ground treating. And then all of a sudden you see how all of a sudden, if you put a little bit of innovation there, a little bit of technology, a little bit of public and private around these larger principles that have to be pushed at the government level, all of a sudden those 1,100 admissions every single day, day after day after day after day in one hospital for cholera, waterborne disease can disappear. Ladies and gentlemen, it's unbelievable that an hour has already come and gone. It's flown by. But I'd like to close by thanking you again for coming. This is a very significant point to take on a very significant issue. We're very grateful to our co-chairs and for the signatories here with us today, as well as those who couldn't be here with us today for playing a role here. And we're looking forward to engaging with you on this critical issue in the future. More to come from CSIS. And would you please join me in thanking again our co-chairs.