A statement issued at the WCC consultation calls on churches, governments and the United Nations to ensure universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene, while placing access to water prominently on their post-2015 agendas.
In a talk during the German Protestant Kirchentag in Hamburg, the WCC general secretary stressed the leading role of churches worldwide in the process of establishing justice and an ecologically-friendly way of life.
At the recent World Social Forum, ecumenical voices warned about the grave consequences of extraction of natural resources and mining, which they say generate a tremendous amount of social and ecological debt.
The German Protestant aid agency Brot für die Welt has handed a steering wheel, symbol of its water campaign, over to the WCC, thus symbolically handing responsibility for this concern and a newly formed Ecumenical Water Network.