UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Assistant to the Administrator Michele Sumilas at the G20 Development Ministerial Meeting Session on Ensuring Access to Water and Sanitation

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

ASSISTANT TO THE ADMINISTRATOR MICHELE SUMILAS: Let me begin by congratulating Brazil on their presidency and the important statements that we are endorsing today and over the coming days. The United States is pleased to join in endorsing the “G20 Call to Action on Strengthening Drinking-water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Services.” I am grateful to Brazil for your leadership on WASH [water, sanitation, and hygiene].

Water has a transformational effect on the lives and livelihoods of all people around the world. Despite its importance, access to safe and reliable water and sanitation is too often taken for granted.

That is why the Biden-Harris Administration has made historic investments in water and sanitation at home and abroad, and marshaled the full capabilities of the United States government to respond to this enormous challenge.

But the scale of need, the financing gaps, and the growing risk of setbacks, including those from conflict and impacts of climate change, are too great for isolated leadership or initiatives to solve alone.

As highlighted in the Call to Action, elevating political will for WASH is essential if we are to achieve universal access to these basic services by 2030.

To do so requires two key approaches.

First, we must collectively build political will for water and sanitation as stand-alone priorities, not just as inputs to other goals.

Second, we must expand our coalition and build allies across the SDG [Sustainment Development Goal] framework.

Without WASH, we cannot achieve gender equality, improve health or education, or end hunger. We must invite those sectors to the WASH table, and seek a seat for WASH at theirs.

We must also acknowledge that the financing gap for water and sanitation infrastructure, operations, and maintenance – estimated at US $140.8 billion every year – is too great for donors to fill alone. The 2015 United Nations Financing for Development conference emphasized the importance of domestic resource mobilization for developing countries to achieve the SDGs. Yet, annual spending in the water sector for low-income countries is only about .5 percent of total GDP.

This is why the United States is engaging with finance ministers, commercial banks, multilateral development banks, private water and sanitation service providers, and other market actors who can help close these financial gaps and create self-sustaining water and sanitation businesses that serve their communities.

The United States is grateful to Brazil for ensuring that climate resilience and water resources management were included in the WASH Call to Action.

Impacts of climate change and poor governance, among other challenges, threaten the health of freshwater ecosystems, which can result in floods and droughts in water basins the world over.

Water quality is also increasingly compromised by a range of pollutants, including industrial and municipal waste and agricultural runoffs, and heavy metals such as lead and mercury, that threaten livestock and public health, agriculture, and livelihoods everywhere.

This is why the United States stands with the G20 commitment to take a systems approach to WASH.

Systems approaches enable our partner countries to help ensure water is safe to drink, water sources are protected, and local markets can meet needs, whether for pipes, plumbing parts, or menstrual health supplies.

As the global community implements the voluntary Water Action Agenda developed during the 2023 UN Water Conference and seeks to make the 2026 UN Water Conference even more impactful, partnerships are needed now more than ever.

To achieve SDG 6 by 2030, G20 members must look beyond traditional WASH partnerships and leverage or strengthen – not duplicate – partnerships that already exist.

As our Canadian colleague mentioned during his remarks, collaboration and partnership is very important and we are proud to jointly fund the Natural Infrastructure for Water Security in Peru with Canada, including its focus in empowering Indigenous peoples to lead on water protection.

Today, I’m thrilled to announce that the United States and Germany are launching a new trilateral partnership in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We applaud Brazil’s focus on trilateral partnerships and are pleased to announce this new effort here.

Under two new agreements, USAID will provide a total of $29.7 million in initial support to the German development bank KFW, to build decentralized water infrastructure, and to bolster GIZ’s technical support wrap-around services to ensure the infrastructure succeeds in improving access.

This partnership leverages each of our government’s long standing work with the Government of DRC, and will engage both the national water utility and provincial governments with the goal of putting them in the lead of their own water solutions.

Finally, we must engage in collective action with marginalized communities, including Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities, people living in informal settlements, as well as women and girls, in all their diversity.

Through domestic and international cooperation with these communities and others, we can put the vision of universal access within reach.

We are also pleased that the G20 Call to Action highlights the role of international technical cooperation to combat water pollution, including lead exposure, among other pollutants. This is the first time that a G20 Ministerial document has referenced the need to reduce lead levels in water and other products. It sets an important marker to drive us towards greater collective action to address this critical development challenge, which limits educational, health and economic attainment for all with a heightened impact on children.

My thanks again to the Brazilian presidency for your leadership on WASH this year