The following is excerpted from a joint United Nations Environment ProgrammeUnited Nations University press release. The full text is available at Asawww.irc.nl/products/advocacy/wwd99press.html
NAIROBI, 18 March 1999 - Clean, safe water can be brought to the 1.4 billion people around the world without it for as little as $US50 per person, which can prevent many of the 3.35 billion cases of illness and 5.3 million deaths caused each year by unsafe water, says a United Nations analysis.
At any given time, an estimated one half of people in developing countries are suffering from diseases caused either directly by infection through the consumption of contaminated water or food, or indirectly by disease-carrying organisms (vectors), such as mosquitoes, that breed in water. These diseases include diarrhea, schistosomiasis, dengue fever, infection by intestinal worms, malaria, river blindness (onchocerciasis) and trachoma (which alone causes almost six million cases of blindness or severe complications annually).
The UN warns that unless action is stepped up, the number of people without access to safe water will increase to 2.3 billion by 2025, with the number of those who die from unsafe water expected to jump sharply as well.
Right now, 20 percent of the world's population in 30 countries face water shortages, a figure that will rise to 30 percent of the world's population, in 50 countries, by 2025, according to the UN, observing World Day for Water on March 22. The theme of World Water Day 1999 is: "Everyone lives downstream," meant to convey that problems in one part of a watershed, or even in a country abroad, can affect people great distances away.
Every 8 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease; 50 percent of people in developing countries suffer from one or more water-related diseases; 80 percent of diseases in the developing world are caused by contaminated water; 50 percent of people on earth lack adequate sanitation; 20 percent of freshwater fish species have been pushed to the edge of extinction from contaminated water. Getting Water to the Poor The estimated capital cost to provide safe water in rural areas is $US50 per person; $US105 per person in cities, the UN says. Providing sanitation can be done for an additional $US30 or less per person in rural areas, $US145 in urban areas.
The UN estimates the overall price to bring low-cost safe water and sanitation to all those who need it today (and will in the next decade, given population growth) in rural and low-income urban areas at $US23 to $US25 billion per year over eight to 10 years. Current world investment is $US8 billion per year, leaving a $US15 to $US17 billion shortfall an amount roughly equal to annual pet food purchases in Europe and the USA.
Water can be provided with these funds in rural and low-income urban areas through the utilization of low-cost technologies that include handpumps, gravity-fed systems and rainwater collection, which would be built to serve entire rural villages or urban neighborhoods, rather than bringing indoor plumbing to individual houses. The provisions would include pumps, pipes, the training of workers, and the development and strengthening of water management practices.
The consequences of the increasing global water scarcity will largely be felt in the arid and semi-arid areas, in rapidly growing coastal regions and in the megacities of the developing world. Water scientists predict that many of these cities already are, or will be, unable to provide safe, clean water and adequate sanitation facilities for their citizenstwo fundamental requirements for human well being and dignity.
The problem will be magnified by rapid urban growth. In 1950, there were less than 100 cities with a population in excess of 1 million; by 2025, that number is expected to rise to 650. By the year 2000, some 23 cities18 of them in the developing worldwill have populations exceeding 10 million. On a global scale, half of the world's people will live in urban areas.
Some of the world's largest cities, including Beijing, Buenos Aires, Dhaka, Lima and Mexico City, depend heavily on groundwater for their water supply, but it is unlikely that dependence on aquifers, which take many years to recharge, will be sustainable. Groundwater from aquifers beneath or close to Mexico City, for example, provides it with more than 3.2 billion liters per day, but already water shortages occur in many parts of the capital.
The UN University says that as urban populations grow, water use will need to shift from agriculture to municipal and industrial uses, making decisions about allocating between different sectors difficult. Water scarcity is aggravated by four principal human failures:
Reluctance to treat water as an economic as well as a public good; Excessive reliance in many places on inefficient institutions for water and wastewater services; Fragmented management of water between sectors and institutions, with little regard for conflicts between social, economic and environmental objectives; and Inadequate recognition of the health and environmental concerns associated with current practices.
The UN also warns of emerging trends that indicate the world is approaching a 'water crisis' in several regionsmost notably the Middle East and North.
Hydrologists have carefully plotted the water equation. The amount of fresh water on the planet is finiteless than a million cubic kilometers. That was enough in 1700, when less than a billion people shared the planet, and in 1900, when some 2 billion people were alive. Now, there are more than 6 billion people and the freshwater supply is stretched to the limit.By 2025, the same amount of water must feed an additional 3 billion people.
The populations of water-short countries, today estimated to be 550 million, are expected to increase to 1 billion by the year 2010. Water shortages will be especially adverse for agriculture, which takes 70‚80 percent of all available fresh water in the world.
Geography will also contribute to the water conflicts. Nearly 47 percent of the land area of the world, excluding Antarctica, falls within international water basins shared by two or more countries. There are 44 countries with at least 80 per cent of their total areas within international basins. The number of river and lake basins shared by two or more countries are now more than 300. In Africa alone, there are 54 drainage basins covering approximately 50 per cent of the total land area of the continent, including their water resources.
In the coming decades, accelerating environmental pressures could transform the very foundations of the international political system. There are at least 25 million environmental refugees today, a total to be compared with 22 million refugees of the traditional kind. They are mainly located in sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian sub-continent, China, Mexico and Central America. The total may well double by the year 2010, as increasing numbers of impoverished people press ever harder on their already degraded environments, including their water resources.
