Hu Jintao, general-secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and thus the country's most powerful leader, has once again been lauded by the official media for a performance which "received worldwide attention".

Li Datong is a Chinese journalist and a former editor of Bingdian (Freezing Point), a weekly supplement of the China Youth Daily newspaper Among Li Datong's recent articles in openDemocracy:

"Beijing's Olympics, China's politics" (22 August 2007)

"China's media change: talking with Angela Merkel" (6 September 2007)

"Shanghai: new history, old politics" (19 September 2007)

"China's leadership: the next generation" (3 October 2007)

"China's communist princelings" (17 October 2007)

"China's Youth League faction: incubus of power?" (31 October 2007)

"China's age of expression" (14 November 2007)

"China's modernisation: a unique path?" (28 November 2007)

"Taipei and Beijing: attitudes to historical truth" (12 December 2007)

"Xiamen: the triumph of public will" (16 January 2008)

"China's soft-power failure" (16 May 2008)

"China and the earthquake" (2 June 2008)

"China: after the quake, the debate" (16 June 2008)

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The Millennium Development Goals (MDG), the blueprint of eight key areas where progress by 2015 would make a real difference to the lives of the world's poorest people, were agreed at the United Nations "millennium summit" in September 2000. This year, 2008, thus represents the pivotal half-term period - reflected in the way that international development agencies have carefully prepared a series of events to focus on the MDGs' delivery.

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The architects of the "war on terror" in the George W Bush administration will soon be leaving office. But the four months until the United States presidential election on 4 November 2008 could be momentous. In Iraq and Iran, what happens in the next four months - or does not happen - will shape events in the next four years and even beyond (see "Washington's choice: subdue Iran, secure Iraq", 12 June 2008).

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The leftwing government of Evo Morales suffered a significant political reverse on 29 June 2008, when an opposition candidate was elected the new prefect of the southern department of Chuquisaca. However, the real clincher is likely to be 10 August; on that day Bolivia's president, his vice-president, and eight other departmental prefects will face voters in a "recall referendum" on the country's national and regional executive authorities.

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It used to be peaceful here. The border of Chechnya and Ingushetia marked the line between war and peace. Crossing this line, returning from war to peace, you sighed every time: "Now everything will be fine. It's safe here..." Of course, there's poverty, dirt, corruption, but people don't get killed, shot or kidnapped here. There it's part of everyday life

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The global food crisis of 2007-08 has propelled governments and international agencies into a series of emergency responses, designed both to meet the needs of desperate citizens in many of the world's poorest countries and to maintain their own authority in face of a surge of popular protest. The flurry of activity and discussion around the issue has tended to deflect attention from the global problems associated with the source of food: water. If the questions of agriculture, land use, supply, distribution and price that lie at the heart of the food crisis are to be addressed, the clouds over the world's water future must also be taken far more seriously (see Paul Rogers, "The world's food insecurity", 24 April 2008).

Mike Muller is professor in South Africa's Witwatersrand University graduate school of public and development management. He is a former director-general of South Africa's department of water affairs and forestry

Mike Muller was invited to CSD16 to address delegates on the issue of improving water management in the face of climate change and other challenges

Also by Mike Muller in openDemocracy:

"A global thirst: water, power and the poor" (10 November 2006)There is a slow evolution of understanding among governments that tackling global development requires an integrated focus in which climate change, poverty and food security are among the constituent parts of a whole rather than separable concerns. It remains to be seen whether the G8 summit in Hokkaido on 7-9 July 2008 will advance policy or mere rhetoric in this respect - and whether the leaders and their advisers will recognise how vital water is in relation to these other topics. If they do, they may find that their capacity to make water part of a global-development strategy has been seriously weakened over the past decades by the way that the resources for its management have been allowed to dwindle.

The problem

United Nations member-states are usually too careful to set targets for themselves that may later going to embarrass them. One such target did slip through, however, during late-night negotiations at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in 2002: that all countries should produce integrated water-resource management and water-efficiency plans by 2005.

Three years after the requisite date, the sixteenth annual review of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) found in its May 2008 report that more than half of eighty countries surveyed still had no plan in place. Moreover, many of those that had a plan were not implementing it. Just one more failure of an well-intentioned but impossibly impracticable system of global governance? Yes, but something more.

The problem is that water is a complex subject and its challenges differ widely from one place to another. So there is no generic "roadmap" setting out how water should be managed to contribute to national well-being. This is the precise reason for the initial agreement by countries to design approaches suitable to their particular circumstances.

Something that needs to work is not working. The enormity of the challenge of (for example) sustaining the population of burgeoning cities while producing more food and more energy crops without destroying the natural environment is recognised. It does not take a great deal of technical knowledge to understand that climate change will make this challenge even more acute. The climatic impacts of the increasing use of carbon-emitting energy use include the drying up of rivers and the desiccation of land. This suggests that if energy is the focus for mitigating climate change, water will need to be the focus of adaptation efforts.

The countries who made the WSSD commitment may not have produced the documents promised, but all at least agreed that it was critical to have an integrated approach to the management of the water that underpins so many development projects. A huge amount of work is needed to ensure that competing demands on this limited resource can be balanced.
Also on water, conflict and climate change in openDemocracy:

Stephan Harrison, "Kazakhstan: glaciers and geopolitics" (27 May 2005)

Ian Christie, "When the levee breaks" (2 September 2005)

Ken Worpole, "Living on water: welcome to a shedboatshed world" (14 December 2005)

Simon Roughneen, "Hard to believe your eyes: drought in Kenya and Ethiopia" (15 May 2006)

Ehsan Masood, "The world's thirst" (26 January 2007)

Anna Husarska, "Water problems in Somalia: a photo-essay" (9 October 2007)

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A leading Conservative politician in Britain and former shadow home secretary has broken ranks with the political and media establishment to launch a campaign linking government plans to extend the time suspects can be held without charge to a wider erosion of rights and liberties. openDemocracy's founder Anthony Barnett assesses what is at stake and sees this moment as a historic test of democratic commitment for liberals and radicals. Read the rest of this post... -->

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