On World Water Day, Here are Three U.S. Cities Fighting for Freshwater

by Hailey Wallace, originally published on March 22, 2016

 

Founded in 1993 by the United Nations General Assembly, World Water Day is an annual event designed to call attention to the importance of accessible freshwater and highlight the activism surrounding this issue.

The citizens of Flint, Michigan, joined the 1.8 billion people around the world who are unable to access freshwater when their story made national headlines. Flint exposed the blatant disregard of the water’s lead levels by city and state officials, while exposing how access to clean water has become startlingly jeopardized. In light of World Water Day, here are three more U.S. cities struggling to ensure accessibility to fresh drinking water.

Jackson, Mississippi 

In late February 2016, the City of Jackson and the Mississippi State Health Department confirmed that lead had been found in the city’s water and issued a warning to residents, particularly pregnant women and children.

The unsettlingly high levels of lead were first noticed in June 2015, and went unreported until January 2016. Although 22% of homes tested in June  surpassed the federal “action” lead level (15 parts per billion), city officials maintain this does not violate the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Jackson officials claim that the water is not “unsafe” to drink, but still advises pregnant women and children to stick with bottled or filtered water.

Newark, New Jersey

On March 9, the Newark school district and the state Department of Environmental Protections reported higher-than-normal levels of lead, affecting around 17,000 students.

Data released by the NJ Department of Environmental Protection showed that during the 2014-2015 school term, 72% of school buildings had lead levels above the EPA’s acceptable standards.

Claiming that the school systems helped cover up the issue, the Newark Teachers Union released photos of expired water filters in Newark schools that were not among the 30 that tested positive for high lead levels. Newark Schools Superintendent, Chris Cerf, called the claims “irresponsible.” The Teachers Union has called for his resignation.

Philadelphia

During a joint hearing involving city council members and the Philadelphia Water Department on March 21, Philadelphia’s water commissioner Debra McCary shocked advocates when she stated that “Philadelphia’s water is lead free.”

The meeting was called after The Guardian reported that scientists considered Philadelphia’s water testing methods as “worse than Flint.”

Although 2014 tests reported one home to have lead levels as high as 122 parts per billion, more than eight times the federal limit, the city’s faulty test procedures mean that the issue could actually be far worse.

 

 

World Water Day Reminds Us Of Clean Water’s Value

by David Suzuki, originally published on March 16, 2016

 

Earth’s oceans, lakes, rivers and streams are its circulatory system, providing life’s essentials for people, animals and ecosystems. Canada has one-fifth of the world’s freshwater, a quarter of its remaining wetlands and its longest coastline. With this abundance, it’s easy to take water for granted. Many of our daily rituals require its life-giving force. Yet do we recognize our good fortune in having clean, safe water at the turn of a tap?

Not everyone in Canada is so lucky. On any given day, more than 1,000 boil-water advisories are in place across the country. Imagine having to walk to your local church every morning to fill plastic jugs with clean drinking water for your family. Or having to drive to your town’s fire station or community centre to collect bottled water. Imagine having to boil water for everything you do at home — cooking, cleaning, washing. This is the sad reality for people who live in communities with boil-water advisories, some for decades at a time.

Water problems are dangerous. In May 2000, bacteria in Walkerton, Ontario’s water supply caused seven deaths and more than 2,300 illnesses. A public inquiry blamed the crisis on flaws in the province’s approval and inspection programs, a “lack of training and expertise” among water-supply operators and government budget cuts.

In 2001, nearly half of North Battleford, Saskatchewan’s 14,000 residents became ill from contaminated water. An inquiry concluded provincial oversight was inadequate and ineffective.

Indigenous communities continue to face a widespread drinking water crisis, with people on First Nations reserves 90 times more likely than other Canadians to lack access to clean water.

Health Canada reports that 131 drinking-water advisories were in effect in 87 Indigenous communities at the end of 2015, not including British Columbia. Places like Shoal Lake 40, Grassy Narrows and Neskantaga have been under boil-water advisories for decades. In B.C., the First Nations Health Authority reports that 28 drinking-water advisories were in effect in 25 Indigenous communities as of January 31, 2016.

How can this continue in a water-rich country like Canada?

Canada recognized the right to water at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in 2012. Yet our government has failed to live up to its commitment. As a 2015 UN report points out, “The global water crisis is one of governance, much more than of resource availability, and this is where the bulk of the action is required in order to achieve a water secure world.”

We are the only G8 country, and one of just two OECD countries, without legally enforceable national drinking-water-quality standards. Federal water policy is more than 25 years old and in dire need of revision. We have no national strategy to address urgent water issues and no federal leadership to conserve and protect water. Instead, we rely on a patchwork of provincial water policies, some enshrined in law and some not. Meanwhile, highly intensive industrial activities, agribusiness and pollution are putting water supplies at risk.

The federal government will deliver its first budget on March 22 — World Water Day. The David Suzuki Foundation’s Blue Dot movement is also taking a stand on World Water Day, helping communities across Canada call on the federal government to make good on our human right to clean water by enacting a federal environmental bill of rights.

Canada’s environment and climate change minister has a mandate to “treat our freshwater as a precious resource that deserves protection and careful stewardship.” The government could take a big step toward accomplishing this by recognizing our right to a healthy environment, including our right to clean water.

The government should also implement legally binding national standards for drinking water quality equal to or better than the highest standards in other industrialized nations, and set long-term targets and timelines to reduce water pollution. And it should fulfil our right to water by addressing the drinking water crisis in Indigenous communities and establishing a Canada Water Fund to foster the clean-water tech industry and create a robust national water quality and quantity monitoring system.

Committing to these actions would help ensure all Canadians have access to clean, safe water for generations to come. On World Water Day, help protect the people and places you love by joining the Blue Dot movement.

 

 

Global Poor Spend More Of Their Money On Water Than Rich.. And Basically, Everyone Else

One in 10 people don’t have access to the clean water they need to live.

-by Sarah Ruiz-Grossman, originally published on March 22, 2016

 

To get a drink of water or take a shower, you probably just turn a tap. But for hundreds of millions of people worldwide, accessing safe water is a daily struggle.

 

Around 650 million people worldwide still do not have access to clean water, according to a new WaterAid report. That’s one in 10 people. What’s worse, water costs more for people in poverty than for the wealthy or middle-class.

“It’s often assumed that the poorest people in the world don’t have formal water supplies because they can’t afford the bills,” Sarina Prabasi, WaterAid America chief executive, said in a news release. “In fact, this report shows that the poorest are not only paying — they’re paying far more than most anyone else.”

 

In developed countries, the standard water bill is as low as 0.1 percent of the income of a minimum-wage earner, according to the report. On the other hand, a person living in poverty in Madagascar can spend up to 45 percent of their daily income on water, just to get the minimum recommended amount to meet their needs.

 

This happens because people in impoverished communities don’t always have access to a government-subsidized water source, and instead may be reliant on dirty water from ponds and rivers, or clean water from costly local vendors.

 

“Clean, affordable drinking water is not a privilege: it’s a fundamental human right,” Prabasi said.

 

This is how seven people from around the world get the water they need to live — and the price they pay for it:

 

1. Elizabeth In Papua New Guinea Spends More Than 50 Percent Of Her Income On Water

 

“Sometimes we find it hard to get water, but we are lucky to have a well,” Elizabeth said to WaterAid. Her family lives in a settlement, outside the city’s utility service boundaries and away from existing water mains or sewage pipes. She uses the nearby well for bathing and washing clothes, but it’s not safe to drink. For drinking and cooking, she needs to buy water from a water delivery service that costs more than half of her daily income from the snack stall she runs.

 

Papua New Guinea is the worst country in the world when it comes to the percentage of people without access to safe water. Around 4.5 million people — 60 percent of the country’s population — have no safe water supply. The cost of just 50 liters of water — the minimum WHO-recommended amount to meet basic needs — can eat up to 54 percent of a poor person’s salary.

 

2. In Ethiopia, Water Costs 15 Percent Of A Typical Poor Person’s Salary

“Water comes and sometimes stays on for up to three days, other times it will go off by the end of the day,” Biruktawit said to WaterAid. “The most you can store is 200-300 liters of water in a barrel. But with three children, that won’t last a week.”

 

One in three people in Ethiopia does not have access to safe water. Biruktawit often has to buy her water from vendors at a high price. The water vendors are usually young people struggling to get by themselves by buying water from the utility and then carrying and reselling it to households that need it.

 

 

3. Jennifer In Zambia Spends 37 Percent Of Her Income On Water

“We spend $0.54 per drum [of water], and here at home we use a minimum of two drums,” Jennifer said in the report. “We end up spending $1.08 per day for water.”

 

Jennifer’s average daily income is $2.94. Meeting her family’s water needs — with seven children and a husband — takes up more than a third of their money. Jennifer, like all of her neighbors, doesn’t have access to a proper water supply. She has to buy water from vendors in a wealthier suburb, where people drill boreholes on their property and then sell containers of water to less affluent people, like Jennifer.

 

 

4. In India, Water Costs 17 Percent Of A Typical Poor Person’s Salary

In Kanpur, India, the two girls pictured here wait in line to collect safe water at a tap point. Some communities with insufficient or poor quality water have to fall back on a single or distant source of water, which can lead to disputes and increased discrimination against the primary water fetchers: women and girls.

 

India is the worst country in the world when it comes to the raw number of people without safe water: more than 75 million people don’t have access to safe water.

 

5. Amelia In Mozambique Spends 36 Percent Of Her Salary On Water

“I need 14 jerrycans of [water] every day for cooking, washing, bathing for the whole family and other needs,” Amelia said to WaterAid. “We do not have a water source here in the neighborhood. We have to resort to taps of some people who sell water. It’s too much money. I have no formal work, I sell bread. Life is very difficult here. Today, I already paid 35 meticais (about $0.72) to have water.”

 

Amelia is a mother of three, and her family lives on $2.01 a day. The only way she can obtain water is from illegal vendors. In Mozambique, almost one in two people live without access to safe water.

 

 

6. In Ghana Pays, Water Costs 25 Percent Of A Typical Poor Person’s Salary

Doris Oparebia lives in a shack next to a hotel construction site. She cooks and sells meals to construction workers, making $2.55 a day. She doesn’t have access to a piped water supply, so has to rely on a water truck’s daily deliveries. She pays 50 times more for water than a middle-class household with piped water.

 

In Ghana, 3 million people live without safe water access, and pay up to 25 percent of a poor person’s salary to meet their basic water needs.

 

7. In Burkina Faso, Water Costs Almost 10 Percent Of A Typical Poor Person’s Salary

“Since yesterday I haven’t had water in my house,” Adama said in the report. “Yesterday, I got some from a friend to drink and wash myself. Since this morning, there’s been a water cut at the government fountains. How can you be obliged to beg for water like this? Water is a vital need.”

 

Adama lives on the outskirts of Ouagadougou, where he has no safe water supply and has to buy water from tap stands. In Burkina Faso, almost one in five people lives without safe water access.

Our Water System: What a Waste

by Michael E. Webber, originally published on March 22, 2016

 

Austin, Tex. — AMERICA has a water problem. To put it simply, the national network for providing safe, clean water is falling apart.

This state of affairs, which is the focus of a summit meeting on Tuesday at the White House, threatens more than our drinking water supplies. Water is used in every sector of industry, grows our food, affects our health and props up our energy system.

The price of this neglect will be high. In Flint, Mich., the mayor has estimated that it will cost as much as $1.5 billion to fix or replace lead pipes. Over all, repairing our water and wastewater systems could cost $1.3 trillion or more, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. We need to do this to improve water quality, protect natural ecosystems and ensure a reliable supply for our cities, agriculture and industry.

The problem is a result of many factors, including old, leaky pipes; archaic pricing; and a remarkable lack of data about how much water we use.

In cities across the country, billions of gallons of water disappear every day through leaky pipes. Houston alone lost 22 billion gallons in 2012. As the water expert David Sedlak at the University of California, Berkeley, has noted, the water system is facing a double whammy: It has reached the end of its service life just as climate change and population growth have increased its burdens. No wonder the civil engineers society gave the nation’s drinking water systems a grade of D in 2013.

Wastewater treatment systems are also in serious need of upgrading. Flooding strains treatment plants and sewer systems in many older cities, causing them to discharge untreated sewage whenever rainfall or snowmelt overwhelm them. After Hurricane Sandy, treatment plants in the New York area backed up, with sewage flowing the wrong direction from drainage pipes. The New York Times noted that in one neighborhood “a plume of feces and wastewater burst through the street like a geyser.”

Droughts also jeopardize water supplies, causing cities in the West to reach farther or dig deeper to get their water. Outside Las Vegas, Lake Mead, fed by the Colorado River, was recently measured at 39 percent of capacity.

These problems are compounded by an antiquated system of regulations, dysfunctional water markets, policies that encourage overpumping, and contracts that discourage conservation by requiring customers to pay for water they don’t use. These approaches depress investment and inhibit innovation.

To fix our water systems, we need prices that lead to more rational water use and invite needed investment, data to track water resources and usage, and much more research and development.

Take prices, for example. Water prices should rise or fall according to supply and demand. The idea that the price should be the same in the dry season (when supplies are low and demand for irrigation is high) as the wet season (when supplies are high and demand is low) is nonsense.

Water utilities should take a page out of the energy sector’s playbook. Electric utilities had been plagued for decades by many of the same difficulties. But now they are moving toward time-of-use pricing, with prices rising when demand is up, and inverted block pricing, where prices increase with consumption. Allowing these price shifts would change user behavior. Higher prices would encourage conservation and new technologies.

Regulations can ensure that the first few gallons per person per day are cheap or free, with escalating costs beyond that. Water for necessities such as drinking, cooking and hygiene should be affordable. Beyond that, water for lawns, filling swimming pools, washing cars and other uses should be more expensive.

We also have to fix our data gaps. We are operating blind. Compared to sectors like energy, where robust statistics on prices, production and consumption are generated weekly, key information on water use and supply is missing or published only every few years.

We should increase the federal budgets for water monitoring. Establishing a Water Information Administration, just as the Department of Energy has an Energy Information Administration, to collect, curate and maintain up-to-date, publicly available water data would inform policy makers and the markets.

Congress should also significantly increase support for water research and development, making sure to include the private sector as a partner.

We need breakthroughs in water treatment technology that would enable larger-scale recycling and reuse of treated water, desalination, and aquifer storage and recovery. These improvements range from the mundane — better pumps and home appliances — to advanced nanomaterials for energy-efficient water treatment.

The water industry’s risk-averse culture has resisted innovation. Higher prices and government-backed research and development could help prompt a wave of innovation and investment. This is what happened with hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, two technologies advanced through government research that kicked off the shale boom.

The water problem is daunting. But putting a sensible price on water to invite investment and encourage conservation, increasing the availability of information and doubling down on innovation can go a long way toward solving it.

To empower women, give them better access to water

published on March 22, 2016

Imagine going through your day without ready access to clean water for drinking, cooking, washing or bathing. Around the world, 663 million people face that challenge every day. They get their water from sources that are considered unsafe because they are vulnerable to contamination, such as rivers, streams, ponds and unprotected wells. And the task of providing water for households falls disproportionately to women and girls.

Water, a human right, is critical for human survival and development. A sufficient supply of biologically and chemically safe water is necessary for drinking and personal hygiene to prevent diarrheal diseases, trachoma, intestinal worm infections, stunted growth among children and numerous other deleterious outcomes from chemical contaminants like arsenic and lead.

I have carried out research in India, Bolivia and Kenya on the water and sanitation challenges that women and girls confront and how these experiences influence their lives. In my field work I have seen adolescent girls, pregnant women and mothers with small children carrying water. Through interviews, I have learned of the hardships they face when carrying out this obligatory task.

An insufficient supply of safe and accessible water poses extra risks and challenges for women and girls. Without recognizing the uneven burden of water work that women bear, well-intentioned programs to bring water to places in need will continue to fail to meet their goals.

Heavy loads

So, what is it like for women who live in places where sufficient and safe water is not readily accessible?

First, collecting water takes time. Simply to get water for drinking, bathing, cooking and other household needs, millions of women and girls spend hours every day traveling to water sources, waiting in line and carrying heavy loads – often several times a day. In a study of 25 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, UNICEF estimated that women there spent 16 million hours collecting water each day.

When children or other family members get sick from consuming poor quality water, which can happen even if the water is initially clean when collected, women spend their time providing care. These responsibilities represent lost opportunities for women’s employment, education, leisure or sleep.

Collecting water also requires tremendous physical exertion. Water is heavy. The United Nations recommends 20-50 liters of water per person per day for drinking, cooking and washing. That amounts to hauling between 44 and 110 pounds of water daily for use by each household member. And in many places, water sources are far from homes. In Asia and Africa, women walk an average of 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) per day collecting water. Carrying such loads over long distances can result in strained backs, shoulders and necks, and other injuries if women have to walk over uneven and steep terrain or on busy roads. The burden is even heavier for women who are pregnant or are also carrying small children.

Even when a household or village has access to a safe water source close to home, residents may not use it if they believe the water is inferior in some way. As one woman told my research team in India:

Tube well water quality is not good… water is saline. Cooking is not good due to this water. Not good for drinking either. People are getting water from that neighbouring village…. for cooking we get water from the river.

In this community, the neighboring village was at least a kilometer away.

Fetching water can be very dangerous for women and girls. They can face conflict at water points and the risk of physical or sexual assault. Many of these dangers also arise when women do not have access to safe, clean and private toilets or latrines for urinating, defecating and managing menstruation.

Now imagine that you have managed to get water, but only a limited supply. How will you allocate it? Women need water for hydration, regular handwashing, washing their bodies, and cleaning clothes and materials when they are menstruating in order to prevent urogenital infection.

But in areas where water is scarce, women and girls may sacrifice so that other family members can use water. In a study that assessed how water insecurity affected rural women in Ethiopia, 27.8 percent of women surveyed reduced the amount of water they used for bathing, 12.7 percent went to bed thirsty and 3.7 percent went an entire day without drinking water. One woman described many challenges, including the possibility that no water would be available when she finally reached a source; the struggle to complete domestic tasks, such as washing clothes and cooking, in the time she had left after fetching water; and worries that not completing this work would lead to arguments with family members.

When conditions such as drought make water scarce, women have to travel farther to collect it and make more frequent trips, expending more time and energy. Water scarcity has been shown to increase women’s stress in Bolivia, Brazil, Ethiopia and Mexico.

And global demand for water is increasing. The United Nations forecasts that if current water use patterns do not change, world demand will exceed supply by 40 percent by 2030. In such a scenario, it is hard to imagine that women’s and girls’ experiences will improve without intentional efforts.

A focus on women’s needs

When communities initiate programs to improve access to water, it is critical to ask women about their needs and experiences. Although women and girls play key roles in obtaining and managing water globally, they are rarely offered roles in water improvement programs or on local water committees. They need to be included as a right and as a practical matter. Numerous water projects in developing countries have failed because they did not include women.

And the inclusion of women should not be ornamental. A study in northern Kenya found that although women served on local water management committees, conflict with men at water points persisted because the women often were not invited to meetings or were not allowed to speak.

We also need broader strategies to reduce gender disparities in water access. First we need to collect more data on women’s water burden and how it affects their their health, well-being and personal development. Second, women must be involved in creating and managing targeted programs to mitigate these risks. Third, these programs should be evaluated to determine whether they are truly improving women’s lives. And finally, social messaging affirming the idea that water work belongs only to women must be abandoned.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called empowerment of the world’s women “a global imperative.” To attain that goal, we must reduce the weight of water on women’s shoulders.

 

Striking Photos Show How Important This Basic Necessity Really Is

by Meghan Demaria, originally published on March 22, 2016

 

If you have access to clean water, you probably don’t think twice about it, at least not on a daily basis. We hardly ever think about what it would be like not to have clean water — we turn on the tap at home, grab a bottle after a long run, and barely even notice when the waiter comes to refill our water glass. But for millions of people, having access to clean water isn’t a sure thing.

According to UNICEF, roughly 663 million people worldwide don’t have access to clean drinking water, while 2.4 billion people across the globe don’t have access to sanitation facilities. Almost 1,000 children die every day because of illnesses caused by a lack of clean water, which is one of the leading causes of death for children younger than five years old, UNICEF notes.

But helping people around the world get clean water doesn’t have to be complicated. In honor of World Water Day on March 22, the UNICEF Tap Project is raising money to help provide clean water to children and families. The organization says just $15 can help provide a year of clean water.

You can donate the traditional way here, scroll down the page, or you can take UNICEF’s unique challenge: by visiting their website on a smartphone, and then not using your phone for just five minutes, you’ll unlock a donation from Giorgio Armani Fragrances and S’well that’s equivalent to the cost of water for one day for a child in need. Both companies are also offering donations to UNICEF from the sales of their products this month.

Want to see the impact you’re making by donating your time and money? Ahead, UNICEF shares striking images of refugee families whose lives have been changed by access to clean water.

Amal, pictured with her five children, on the street where they live in the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan. The family fled their home in Syria after their house was destroyed during the conflict. To the right are 15 large plastic containers that represent the amount of water the family uses each day. A water tank has recently been installed that serves the whole street.

“In a camp, it is dusty and dirty,” Amal told UNICEF. “Before [the tank was installed] when we didn’t clean so much due to not having enough water, we were getting scabies and lice. There used to be scabies all over the camp, so hygiene is really important. When I came here, the situation was horrible. The young girls were working, carrying water back to the houses. Because of the chaos outside, the people on the streets, the girls carrying water, I didn’t want my girls to get involved, so I only let them go to school.”

Girls and young women fill containers at a series of taps at a water point in the Nyarugusu refugee camp in Tanzania. Water scarcity is increasing as more refugees flee from conflict in Burundi.

UNICEF’s efforts to deliver water to Burundian families and children form a critical part of the response to the emergency — which ranges from repairing and replacing pumps to delivering chlorine, trucking in water by road, and bringing jerrycans and water purification tablets to refugee families living in shelters.

Girls fill jerrycans at a water point in a collective center in Karkh District, Iraq, that provides temporary accommodation and protection to displaced populations. UNICEF has installed water tanks and separate latrines for men and women, and provided kits to test the water quality, as well as soap and other sanitary items.

Gaderiya, a Syrian mother of four, and her son, Esa, live in a refugee camp in northern Iraq. Gaderiya described to UNICEF the conditions when they first arrived at the camp: “Every other hour, my children were forced to walk a long way to a central tank and use plastic containers to collect water. Supply was very limited, and at times, there would be disagreements between families about how much water each person should get. If there is a lack of water, you can’t do anything.”

Since a water tank was installed close to the family’s tent, life has become much easier. “Before we had the tank, my children could only wash every three days,” Gaderiya told UNICEF. “Now, they have more clean water to drink, and they can wash every two days. I am also able to wash our clothes and sheets more regularly which helps keep us all healthier.”

Bello, 12, washes his hands at a hand pump outside his school before going to class, in the Dar es Salam camp in Chad. Bello, who is attending school for the first time, is a refugee from Nigeria.

Mohammed, 5, Danya, 11, and Mo’men, 4, splash each other with water in the Za’atari refugee camp, Jordan. The family fled their Syrian village in September of 2012, when it was overtaken by military forces. During the summer months, families use water to combat the brutal heat.

Boys in the Al Jamea’a Camp, Iraq, wash their hands with soap after learning about cholera prevention and treatment. Globally, illnesses caused by unsafe drinking water, lack of sanitation, and poor hygiene are among the leading causes of death for children under five, contributing to nearly 1,000 deaths a day.

To learn more about World Water Day and how you can help, check out UNICEF’s press release on the fundraising campaign. You can donate money online — or, if you visit UNICEF’s website on a smartphone (and then leave your phone alone for five minutes), you’ll unlock a donation from Giorgio Armani Fragrances and S’well that’s equivalent to the cost of water for one day for a child in need.

 

 

Haiti – Social : 42% of the Haitian population has no access to drinking water

published on March 22, 2016

 

As part of World Water Day, celebrated this Tuesday, March 22, the UN in Haiti reiterate their support for the country in its efforts to improve access of the population to safe drinking water and sanitation and alert to the fact that 42% of the Haitian population still lacks access to safe drinking water.

Regarding sanitation, the UN welcomes the increase of 18% to 28% of percentage of population with access to improved sanitation between 1990 and 2015. However, still 7.6 million Haitians lack essential facilities for good health and the prevention of waterborne diseases. According to recent studies by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in Haiti, the death rate in children under 5 is 88 per 1,000 children . Water scarcity and water-borne diseases are among the leading causes of death and worsening child malnutrition, causing a hindrance to their intellectual and physical development.

The United Nations Country Team and the Minustah stressed that universal access to safe water and sanitation is a critical development challenge in Haiti. This right is recognized as a fundamental right by the United Nations General Assembly since 2010 and priority in the agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this regard, the UN supports Haiti’s efforts to develop a national policy on water and sanitation and to reform the legal framework based on the rights of citizens to have access to public water services and sanitation.

Moreover, the UN said that women, girls and young children are most affected by lack of access to clean water in a context where about 56% of the population needs more than 30 minutes walk to get water, a task predominantly conducted by children and women. Women are also more vulnerable to lack of water which causes impact on reproductive health and maternity.

Finally note that safe access to water is limited to 35% of the population living in urban areas (1.7 million of the 5 million people living in urban areas) and the risk of waterborne diseases remains high because of the population concentration. Access to clean water is even more limited in rural areas (48%) and also among the most vulnerable, including displaced people living in extreme poverty and those affected by the migration issue with the Dominican Republic.

50-60% of South Sudan lacks access to clean wate

‘We are cheated by water suppliers. They keep raising prices and we have to drink unhealthy Nile water,’ says Juba resident

-by Parach Mach, originally published on March 22, 2016

 

JUBA, South Sudan

South Sudan – the world’s youngest nation, after gaining independence from old Sudan in 2011 – faces many challenges, including a lack of clean water and proper sanitation, leading to several cholera outbreaks.

An estimated 50-60 percent of people in South Sudan – or half of the population – has no access to safe drinking water, such as a hand pump, a protected well, or a piped water supply, which only benefits a minority.

The country’s troubled legacy of conflict, environmental degradation, and under-investment in water infrastructure has seriously affected the availability of drinking water.

Due to a lack of clean water and thereby proper sanitation, there have been several cholera outbreaks in South Sudan. As of July 2015, there were 1,396 cholera cases reported in the Juba and Bor counties in the country’s northeast. In Juba County alone, 1,280 cases of cholera, including 41 deaths, occurred.

Sadly, even those with access to improved water sources often do not receive safe water while those without access to an improved water source often fetch water from rivers, ponds, or open wells.

Less than 15 percent of Juba residents can access municipal water supplied mainly through a small piped network, boreholes, and a single public water filling station on the riverbank. The public system is complemented by a patchwork of small private water suppliers, which end up delivering relatively expensive, low-quality water.

“We are often cheated by water suppliers. They keep on raising water prices and we have resorted to drinking Nile water, which is unhealthy,” Juba resident Monykuer Tuak told Anadolu Agency.

According to South Sudan’s Ministry of Electricity, Dams and Water Resources, there are about 250-300 registered trucks supplying water throughout Juba city. However, the delivery of water to households has fallen by 30 percent as fuel became more expensive following the 2015 South Sudanese currency devaluation.

“Lack of clean water was responsible for the cholera outbreak last year and I am wondering what the government is thinking, especially when rainy season is approaching,” another resident of the capital said.

Eleven private filling stations pump water from the Nile, which is then distributed by water trucks and bicycle vendors. Water is also produced by bottling water factories. But as fuel costs have reportedly increased, operation overheads have also gone up by around 35 percent.

Ethiopian Water Companies went on strike last week after the Juba City Council issued a decree to control water prices.

Yar Paul Kuol, a director of the South Sudan Urban Water Cooperation, blames the poor supply of water on the city’s low power supply, the use of old water filters, and increased water supply to new areas.

The Japanese government earmarked an additional fund for the Project for Improvement of the Water Supply System of Juba, with total disbursement amounting to approximately $40 million to address the cost increase due to the political crisis and keep the project scale as originally planned.

This project aims to improve access to safe water for people in Juba by expanding the capacity of water treatment and scaling up water distribution. In this project, Japan set up a new water treatment plant, a service reservoir, eight water tank stations, and 120 water points in Juba.

By the end of September 2017, officials say, as much as 390,000 of Juba residents will have ready access to safe drinking water at home.

“This project not only fulfills the basic needs of individuals but also facilitates the healthy and productive life of women and children in the communities. Reduction of the work for fetching water will immediately emancipate women and children from labor: women will have extra hours to engage in other employment opportunities, and children, in turn, will learn better in the newly gained hours of studies,” said Kiya Masahiko, the Japanese ambassador to South Sudan.

“Furthermore, improved public health through the use of safe, stable water supply will decrease the morbidity from waterborne diseases such as cholera, diarrhea and typhoid,” he added.

The Millennium Development Goal target for drinking water was reportedly achieved in 2010, but, in 2015, 663 million people still lack improved drinking water sources. The world missed the sanitation target by almost 700 million people, with 2.4 billion still lacking improved sanitation facilities and 946 million practicing open defecation.

If we want water for everyone, we’re going to have to pay for it

by Kevin Rudd, originally published on March 22, 2016

 

More than 800 children die each day from diarrhoea. About 663 million people still use water contaminated by human waste and other pollutants. And roughly 2.4 billion people still lack access to a basic toilet. Open defecation presents a major, avoidable public health hazard. Women and girls living in communities that lack basic facilities live in fear of sexual assault, because they need to go outside to go to the toilet.

Women and girls are also affected in other ways by water access. Often tasked with finding water for their families, they act almost as beasts of burden, carrying water vast distances. Collectively, women and girls spend roughly 125m hours a day fetching water. The absence of basic menstrual sanitation also means millions of girls are absent from school for up to a quarter of the academic year.

Many people are uncomfortable even talking about these issues. We need to overcome this.

As the recent multilateral meeting of the global partnership on Sanitation and Water for All in Addis Ababa reminded us, the cost of building the infrastructure to deal with the problem can be prohibitive. The World Health Organisation calculates it is $11.3bn (£7.9bn) a year beyond current investments. But this presents an insuperable problem only if we see public finance – through national governments, international development banks and national development agencies – as the only source of capital.

There is also a critical role for domestic private finance and international private investment, although creating such financial partnerships can be difficult. Businesses require monetary returns on their investments; projects must be “bankable.”

Access to clean water and basic sanitation is a human right and a public good. But those declarations alone do not solve the financing problem. Water and sanitation services must therefore be paid for, with tariffs adjusted according to the ability of local communities and individuals to pay. For the poorest of poor communities, this will mean zero tariffs or simple public water provision until social and economic conditions improve.

A new generation of public-private partnerships (PPPs) is helping the response to these challenges.

Such partnerships are sometimes deeply flawed, failing to balance financing and social needs effectively, and this has given them a bad name. But the answer lies in the legal and financial design of each contract: from the smallest, village-level agreements to larger, nationwide projects.

Partnerships involving small-scale private operators are growing in developing countries, partly through donor-sponsored PPP projects for water and sanitation. As these projects are implemented and scaled up, they engage new local operators who take them forward as external support fades. Such partnerships are enjoying success from Latin America to Africa and beyond.

We must now begin to do this at scale. Suggestions on filling the global funding gap for water, sanitation and hygiene, not least in the critical area of faecal sludge management, should be welcomed.

The principle is clear: no money, no progress. Without finance, the sustainable development goals agreed by UN member states in September are just laudable normative statements of what the world should look like, lacking the means to make it that way.

The social, economic and business case for a quantum change in investment patterns in water, sanitation and hygiene is clear. The World Health Organisation calculates that every $1 invested in water and sanitation has a return of at least $4 in lower health costs, more productivity and fewer premature deaths. Yet the sector has arguably been the slowest to adapt to the harsh new financial world in which we live, where the constraints of domestic public finance and foreign aid are becoming sharper each year.

 

 

Indians Have the Worst Access to Safe Drinking Water in the World

by Vibhuti Agarwal, originally posted on March 22, 2016

 

India has the highest number of people in the world without access to safe water, a report released to mark World Water Day showed Tuesday.

The country has 75.8 million people, at least 5% of its 1.25 billion population, without access to clean water, the report by WaterAid, a water and sanitation nonprofit headquartered in London, says.

The majority of those people come from impoverished communities–living on around $4.31 a day–and are forced to collect dirty water from open ponds and rivers or spend most of what they earn buying water from tankers, the report  says.

“If they have the opportunity to buy water from a tanker it can cost 1 rupee ($0.015) per liter, sometimes double if supplies are scarce,” the report, “Water: At What Cost? The State of the World’s Water 2016,” says.

India’s water bill is low compared with Papua New Guinea, which has been ranked the most difficult and expensive place in the world to access clean water, forcing the poor to spend more than half their income on this essential resource. In Papua New Guinea’s capital Port Moresby, it costs a person $2.63, almost 54% of a day’s earning of $5.15, to buy the recommended minimum 50 liters of water from a delivery service, the report states. The report didn’t give an income percentage for India

In Madagascar’s capital Antananarivo, the cost of buying 50 liters of water from a truck is $0.72, nearly 45% of a person’s daily pay of $1.58, while in Ghana’s capital Accra, the cost of water is $0.64, which is 25% of daily income of $2.57.

The study blames worldwide “chronic underfunding” of vital water resources , “government’s inability to prioritize clean water” and “social exclusion” of the poorest people for lack of access to safe water.

In India, aquifers, or underground water, provide 85% of drinking water, but levels are falling in 56% of the country, the report says. “Hand pumps are exacerbating the crisis in many areas by depleting shallow aquifers.”

Consequently, millions of people get insufficient or poor-quality water. In India, about 140,000 children die from diarrheal diseases each year, after using dirty water, the report says.

After India, China holds the second spot for the number of people without access to clean water, with about 63 million. India’s other neighbors – Bangladesh and Pakistan – fare better – positioned 8th and 10th in the water rankings.

Among the nations which have made the greatest improvement in increasing access to safe water is Sri Lanka, ranked 19 out of 20, providing water to 95.6% of its population compared with 79.7% in 2000, while Afghanistan is ranked 7th, with 55.3% of its population, having safe drinking water, up from 30.3% in 2000, according to the report.