Environment: Rio+20 Conference

Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

I cannot give my noble friend a specific answer now, but I will write to him. On a more general basis, on 20 April, at the Sanitation and Water for All high-level meeting, the Secretary of State for International Development committed to doubling the UK’s ambitions on water, sanitation and hygiene to reach at least 60 million people by 2015.

[The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an ambassador for WaterAid and acknowledge that the Rio+20 conference in June followed the Johannesburg summit at which world leaders agreed that the current millennium development goals on sanitation remain substantially off-track in terms of global development targets. Can the Minister kindly give some further information on what the United Kingdom is doing to help to reverse this neglect, which kills more than 700,000 people a year, 90% of them children under five?

[Lord De Mauley]

There are a number of questions within the right reverend Prelate’s question. He referred to the millennium development goals. We are committed to those goals. There is also the question, of course, of the link between them and the sustainable development goals. It is important to look to the framework post-2015, to which we are paying a great deal of attention.