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WATER, SANITATION CRISIS KILLS TWO MILLION, 18 February 2007 Print E-mail

Spotlight

New Delhi, 18 February 2007

WATER, SANITATION CRISIS KILLS TWO MILLION

NEW DELHI, February 18 (INFA): Nearly two million children die every year due to the increasing water and sanitation crisis the world is currently facing, according to the UNDP’s Human Development Report 2006 entitled: “Beyond Scarcity; Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis”. The report has also stressed that the acute scarcity was holding back countries’ development especially in Africa.

Across much of the developing world, unclean water is an immeasurably greater threat to human security than violent conflict, warns the UNDP. “National governments need to draw up credible plans and strategies for tackling the crisis in water and sanitation.

Each year, 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 illness; and almost 50 per cent of all people in developing countries are suffering at any given time from a health problem caused by 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 5 per cent of GDP annually far more than the region received in aid, the report states, adding however that unlike wars and natural disasters, this global crisis does not galvanize concerted international action.

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, the report says, warning that with less than a decade left to reach the Millennium. Development Goals (MDGs) this needs left to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) this needs to change.

This MDGs are a set of ambitious targets agreed by world leaders in 2000 that seek to reduce extreme poverty, hunger and other social ills all by 2015.

Each one of the eight Millennium Development Goals is inextricably tied to the next, so if we fail in the water and sanitation goal, hope of reaching the other seven rapidly fades.

In addition to creating a Global Action Plan, the report also recommends the need for making water a human right and mean it: Everyone should have at least 20 litres of clean water per day and the poor should get it for free.

Secondly, draw up national strategies for water and sanitation; Governments should aim at spending a minimum of one per cent GDP on water and sanitation, and enhance equity. Water and sanitation suffer from chronic under-funding, with public spending typically less than 0.5 per cent of GDP.

Research for the Report shows that this figure is dwarfed by military spending. For example, in Ethopia, the military budget is 10 times the water and sanitation budget in Pakistan, it is 47 times.

In regard to International aid, the Report calls for an extra $3.4 billion to $4 billion annually: Development assistance has fallen in real terms over the past decade, but to bring the MDG on water and sanitation into reach, aid flows will have to double.

The Report 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,” it says.---INFA

 

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