World Water Crisis

United Nations Development Programme: read the full article.

World water and sanitation crisis urgently needs a Global Action Plan

A Global Action Plan under G8 leadership is urgently needed to resolve a growing water and sanitation crisis that causes nearly two million child deaths every year, says the 2006 Human Development Report, released here today.

Across much of the developing world, unclean water is an immeasurably greater threat to human security than violent conflict, according to the Report, entitled Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis.

Each year, the authors report, 1.8 million children die from diarrhea that could be prevented with access to clean water and a toilet; 443 million school days are lost to water-related illnesses; and almost 50 percent of all people in developing countries are suffering at any given time from a health problem caused by a lack of water and sanitation. To add to these human costs, the crisis in water and sanitation holds back economic growth, with sub-Saharan Africa losing five percent of GDP annually; far more than the region receives in aid.

Yet unlike wars and natural disasters, this global crisis does not galvanize concerted international action, says the 2006 Human Development Report (HDR). Like hunger, “it is a silent emergency experienced by the poor and tolerated by those with the resources, the technology and the political power to end it,” says the Report. With less than a decade left to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, this needs to change, stress the authors.

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Capped Wells and Pumps Installed in Veil Thom To Date: 87
BioSand Water Filters Installed in Veil Thom To Date: 123

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Facts

20 litres of clean water per day is required for healthy living. While a person in the UK or USA sends 50 litres down the drain each day by simply flushing their toilet, many poor people survive on less than 5 litres of contaminated water per day

In Ethiopia the military budget is 10 times the water and sanitation budget—in Pakistan, 47 times

The 2006 HDR estimates the total additional cost of achieving the MDG on access to water and sanitation – to be sourced domestically and internationally – at about $10 billion a year. The $10 billion price tag for the MDG seems a large sum but it has to be put in context. It represents less than five days worth of global military spending and less than half what rich countries spend each year on mineral water.

The great majority of the world’s malnourished people – estimated now at 830 million – are small farmers, herders, and farm labourers. Climate change threatens to intensify their water insecurity on an unparalleled scale, with parts of sub-Saharan Africa facing crop losses of up to 25 percent.