The 1993 Stockholm Water Symposium addressed a subset of barriers and how they might best be overcome: lack of credible economic rationale for minimising harmful pollutant fluxes, incomplete mechanisms for financing, and gaps in the communication between scientists and decision-makers. The Symposium concluded that there is widespread water illiteracy among both decision-makers and the general public, and that more focus tends to be put on solving small visible problems than on the large less visible ones which are undermining our life support systems.
