Featured Personality Brit Alison Smale has been Under-Secretary-General for Global Communication for the UN since 2017 What do you expect from the relationship between the United Nations and an organisation like the We Are Water Foundation? Organisations like the We Are Water Foundation are fairly typical of how the world is going to work in the 21st century. While institutions like the United Nations can offer decades of experience in research and analysis on what is happening in the world, perhaps nowadays people need this message to be described in a simpler way. The We Are Water Foundation has a gift for addressing complex issues clearly through design, film production, images and dialogue, which are the twenty-first-century tools we must maintain and protect. In the current cacophony of digital media, people are incapable of eliminating all the noise to get to the essence. Small actions can help to take the big actions to the appropriate scale and the big actions can help to take the small actions to the appropriate scale. What is the United Nations’ communication strategy to deal with climate change? It is increasingly clear that the United Nations will probably be the one to assume leadership in the fight against climate change given that it compiles the data from investigations carried out by the organisation itself. Similarly, the Secretary General constantly reminds us that even if we comply with the objectives of the Paris Agreement, that won’t be enough to prevent climate change from advancing. As chance would have it, we are in Barcelona now on an exceptionally cold day. Seeing that, something is happening to our planet, though we don’t know what exactly. What we need is research and solid data to transmit to people through an adapted message in which the big and small unite to achieve specific measures. I also think that climate change is one of the issues which can make young people gradually become more involved and participate in society, because, in my view, my generation is not leaving them with a good planet. And that is one of the things that they can commit to and that we can teach them: “This is the way things are now. We will help you to fix them.” The United Nations has many problems to solve and to communicate. What would What do you think about the fact to agree with this Agenda. The order can be played aroundwith in many ways, except bringing an end to poverty; I you say is the position of water that water and sanitation are in think it’s fantastic that this is the maxim which appears in and sanitation? sixth position in the Sustainable first place, because it shouldn’t exist. When someone is Development Objectives? Don’t poor, they cannot get out of the situation by themselves That is hard to answer but if we look at the seventeen to become wealthier, and I’m not just talking in economic objectives, at least two or three are directly related to you think it should be at the top of terms but about all types of wealth, and water is one the seawater, the oceans, water supply and sanitation. If it most valuable. constitutes a sixth of the attention we pay to all the world’sthe list? Because without water and issues, that is quite a lot. I come from a maritime country,sanitation, there is no development. the United Kingdom, where water is never far away given that it is an island and where we are very aware of the I think it required a great effort and it was very difficult importance of the sea, like many people in Spain. 70% of to divide them into seventeen different subjects. It was a the Earth’s surface is water, so that gives us an idea of thestruggle to include all of them in the Agenda 2030 and it level of attention we should pay it. was very difficult to persuade all the countries of the world Roca Sanitario, S.A. Avda. Diagonal, 513 08029 Barcelona - Spain Telephone +34 93 366 1200 www.roca.com 8102 anolecraB .A.S ,oiratinaS acoR ©