Meeting in Stockholm from 17 to 23 August for World Water Week, 2,400 experts and government and civil society representatives from over 100 countries concluded their work with an alarming message: the world's water resources are facing ever greater and potentially unbearable pressure from population growth, higher demand for food, climate change and the growing production of biomass. Together with slow progress on sanitation, there is a real danger that the Millennium Development Goals (halving the percentage of the population lacking sustainable access to drinking water by 2015) will not be achieved. Weak water management policies in the face of "exploding" demand are pushing the planet closer to a global water crisis. Sanitation and hygiene, the climate, water management, ecosystems and economic issues were the focus of the talks. The experts, who consider it "urgent to act", noted that increases in water used for agriculture affect the quantity of water available for other uses, including the preservation of ecosystems.
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