TEPIC, Mexico, July 16 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – S upplying clean water and toilets for all could take hundreds of years in countries like Eritrea and Namibia unless governments step up funding to tackle the problem and its harmful effects on health, an international development agency warned on Monday.
WaterAid – which says nearly 850 million people lack clean water – predicted the world will miss a global goal to provide drinking water and adequate sanitation for everyone by 2030.
Meeting it will cost $28 billion per year, the non-profit said.
“We’re really calling for governments to pull up their socks,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from the United Nations in New York.
From July 9-18, governments are reviewing progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, which were agreed at the United Nations in 2015, with a focus on six of the 17.
Last week, U.N. officials said barriers to achieving the 2030 water and sanitation targets range from conflict and water pollution to climate change, urging more efficient water use.
Drawing on U.N. data, the UK-based group calculated some countries will need hundreds of years to provide safe drinking water and toilets for all their people, meaning countries collectively are thousands of years off track.
At current rates, Namibians would have to wait until 2246 for everyone to have clean water, while all Eritreans would not get it until 2507 and Nicaraguans not until 2180, WaterAid said.
Governments should fund water and sanitation provision from their own budgets, and work with utilities and private companies to reach people in isolated areas, said Carvalho.
“There’s money around – it’s just not allocated in the right way,” he said, urging international donors to increase spending on water and sanitation.

WaterAid – which says nearly 850 million people lack clean water — predicted the world will miss a global goal to provide drinking water and adequate sanitation for everyone by 2030.
Meeting it will cost $28 billion per year, the nonprofit said.
"Water, sanitation and hygiene is a global crisis," said Savio Carvalho, WaterAid’s global advocacy director.
From July 9-18, governments are reviewing progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, which were agreed at the United Nations in 2015, with a focus on six of the 17.
Last week, U.N. officials said barriers to achieving the 2030 water and sanitation targets range from conflict and water pollution to climate change, urging more efficient water use.
Drawing on U.N. data, the UK-based group calculated some countries will need hundreds of years to provide safe drinking water and toilets for all their people, meaning countries collectively are thousands of years off track.
At current rates, Namibians would have to wait until 2246 for everyone to have clean water, while all Eritreans would not get it until 2507 and Nicaraguans not until 2180, WaterAid said.
It could be 500 years before every Romanian has access to a toilet, and 450 years for Ghanaians, it added.
Governments should fund water and sanitation provision from their own budgets, and work with utilities and private companies to reach people in isolated areas, said Carvalho.
"There’s money around – it’s just not allocated in the right way," he said, urging international donors to increase spending on water and sanitation.

The United Nations is seeking to raise $111 million to meet humanitarian needs in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), where millions of people face malnutrition, shortage medicine, and lack of access to safe drinking water.
One of things I will be doing when I return to New York in talking to the Member States of the UN is trying to draw people’s attention to the very real humanitarian challenges here, says Lowcock.
(Image Credit: Pixabay) The United Nations is seeking to raise USD 111 million to meet humanitarian needs in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), where millions of people face malnutrition, shortage medicine, and lack of access to safe drinking water, the Organization’s top relief official said on Wednesday.
“There is a humanitarian need, we can meet it and we can tell people a convincing and persuasive story about how their money is used if they provide us with more funds,” said Mark Lowcock, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, at a press conference held in the country’s capital, Pyongyang.
During the visit, he was able to see first-hand both progress that has been made on the humanitarian front and the persisting challenges.
“There are though large numbers of people who still need assistance; there is a significant problem of malnutrition with something like 20 percent of children stunted because of malnutrition which impairs their life chances,” he said.
Mr. Lowcock also said that about half of all children in rural areas of the country are not drinking safe water.
“Too much of the water is contaminated, which is a cause of disease and threatens the development of too many children,” he said.
He also noted that there is a shortage of drugs and medical supplies and equipment, making it very difficult for medical authorities to meet the needs of all the people “in a way that would pass basic humanitarian thresholds.” He said that North Korean authorities are “keen to work with humanitarian agencies and are open to additional humanitarian assistance, and are also keen to deal with humanitarian issues separately from political dynamics.” According to the Needs and Priorities Plan published by the UN a few months ago, $111 million is needed to meet humanitarian needs in the areas of health, water and sanitation, and food security for about 6 million people.
“One of things I will be doing when I return to New York in talking to the Member States of the UN is trying to draw people’s attention to the very real humanitarian challenges here, and to say to them that the UN has good programmes, which can save lives, and we have better access across the country for UN staff than we have had in the past,” he said.

TOKYO — About 20 percent of North Korean children are stunted because of malnutrition, and half the children in rural areas are drinking unsafe water, a senior U.N. official visiting the country said.
Much progress has been made compared to 20 years ago but “significant humanitarian challenges” remain, Mark Lowcock, the undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, said Wednesday at a news conference in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.
The U.N. issued a transcript of his remarks.
The United Nations is trying to raise $111 million to meet health, water and sanitation and food security needs for about 6 million people in North Korea.
Only 10 percent has been raised so far, Lowrock said, through donations from the Swedish, Swiss and Canadian governments.
The proportion of children affected by stunting, a failure to develop physically and cognitively, has fallen to 20 percent from 28 percent in 2011, but that “is still a high number,” he said.
“Too much of the water is contaminated, which is a cause of disease and threatens the development of too many children,” he said, according to the transcript.
Besides malnutrition and water, Lowrock also highlighted a shortage of drugs and medical supplies and equipment.
One hospital he visited this week had only enough drugs for 40 of its 140 tuberculosis patients, creating dilemmas for doctors who have to figure out what to do, he said.
Lowrock said that Kim Yong Nam, a senior official, briefed him on the government’s commitment to denuclearization and the new focus on economic development as a top priority.

Furthermore, one of nine people around the world lack access to safe drinking water; one of three people in developing economies lack access to a toilet.
In reality, agriculture is consuming a major chunk of water, and due to inefficiency in the methodology adopted, a lot of water is wasted.
Thus, besides all the challenges that Pakistan is currently facing, the water crisis is a major issue that requires immediate attention and meaningful regulations.
According to the World Resource Institute, Pakistan is ranked among the top five countries that are suffering from extreme water scarcity and very low access to safe drinking water and sanitation.
There are issues of water scarcity and its interlinked diseases in both urban and rural settings.
Indeed, beyond the construction of new dams if we have a look at the current dams they are not even properly managed.
The factors that have contributed to the water crisis include lack of proper management of existing dams, the old traditional system of canals and barrages, mismanagement of water resources, and policy flaws There is a long list of factors that have contributed to water crisis which include lack of proper management of existing dams, the old traditional system of canals and barrages, mismanagement of water resources and policy flaws.
Apart from this, the research conducted at Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources estimates that Pakistan may run dry if the current situation is not addressed.
The mounting water crisis has severely affected the agriculture sector of Pakistan, and according to a latest economic survey of Pakistan, agriculture is currently contributing 21 percent to total GDP of Pakistan.
Internationally, many economies are adopting the strategy of water-pricing.

KIGALI, Rwanda, Jul 10 2018 (IPS) – To many of us, ‘keep out of the reach of children’ is a phrase we see printed on labels for medicines and chemicals.
Three years later, the village is transformed now that its 6,000 people have access to clean water close to their homes.
Those two boreholes give a combined yield of 3.4 litres per second, which is enough for such a small village.
Mukakibibi could not be happier; instead of walking for an hour-and-a-half to get dirty water from the lake, she now needs only a few minutes to fetch clean water to cook, drink, or wash with.
The Nzangwa Health Centre in the village has also undergone a transformation; the head of the centre, Ndamyuwera Edison, told me he had not heard of any child who died of waterborne diseases over two years, since the villagers have access to clean water.
Ndamyuwera explained that before the health centre had a clean water supply, the janitors were so busy fetching water that none of the delivery rooms were cleaned in between births, at great risk of mothers and their babies.
Instead, he was constantly transporting water in jerry cans on his run-down bike.
World leaders have come together at the United Nations headquarters in New York for the High Level Political Forum (HLPF), 9 July-18 July, to review the progress that has been made on Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) – to provide clean water and sanitation to everyone, everywhere.
On current progress, Rwanda is on course to have universal access to clean water by 2082 and to give everyone access to a decent toilet by 2047.
To achieve the transformation that Mukakibibi’s village has gone through all around Rwanda, efforts on health and nutrition need to be integrated with action on water and sanitation.

LONDON, NNC – The United Nations (UN) through the Agriculture and Food Organization (FAO) reported that countries in North Africa and the Middle East should better prepare for drought disasters as water shortages are projected to worsen.
Over the last 40 years, droughts have lasted longer and are relatively frequent in the region, where clean water sources are among the lowest in the world.
"It looks like things will get worse due to climate change," said Rene Castro, deputy head of the FAO climate office, in a statement, Friday (6/15/2010).
"We need to look at and manage drought differently, and move from emergency response to proactive and long-term planning policies to reduce risks and build greater resilience," he said.
The report recommends planting plants that need little water, using more efficient irrigation systems of water, or lowering the number of livestock to prevent much grass consumption.
A number of villages in the southwestern part of Morocco near the Sahara desert have also used a water vapor collection project to process vapor into water to overcome water shortage.
Population and food demands, coupled with increasingly scarce water and land resources, could lead to food prices doubling and triggering civil unrest in some developing countries.
According to a UN World Water Development report in 2018 released by the United Nations, water scarcity has affected more than 40 percent of the world’s population.
"That number could rise as a result of global warming, with one in four people projected to face chronic shortages or shortcomings by 2050," he explained.

Efficient and better management of water resources is the key to provide a universal access to clean water and sanitation, according to professor Stefan Uhlenbrook, director of UNESCO Programme Office for Global Water Assessment.
The research carried out by the UN found that 2.1 billion people across the globe still lack access to safely managed drinking water while 4.5 billion people are still deprived of safely managed sanitation services.
The professor opined that the lack of access to safely managed drinking water and sanitation services presents a global challenge to the civil engineers.
In his lecture delivered at the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), Uhlenbrook presented findings from the evidence-based review to establish the global baseline status of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UN SDG) 6, which focuses on the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation.
Uhlenbrook revealed that all heads of UN member states have agreed that to achieve SDG6 it is necessary to implement integrated water resources management (IWRM), which would ensure that the water resources are shared effectively among many competing demands, including across country borders.
Currently, only 38% of countries across the globe have implemented medium-high IWRM in 2017/18.
Other countries have also suggested certain measures such as increasing water-use efficiency by reducing water losses by addressing leakages in municipal distribution networks, to achieve SDG 6.
ICE engineering knowledge director Nathan Baker said: “The ‘water goal’ is essential for progress on all other SDGs, with sustainable water management enabling social development, such as improving health and reducing poverty and promoting economic growth across many industries.
“Civil engineers are in a unique and privileged position to help achieve the UN SDGs and ICE is committed to doing all it can to help the engineering sector develop practical steps to tackle SDG 6.
“The time has come to turn words into action and ICE is facilitating the global debate on engineering solutions at a Global Engineering Congress in October this year.” Newsletter For all the latest pharmaceutical industry news, sign up for our regular updates.

by Jared Ferrie | @jaredferrie | Thomson Reuters Foundation Tuesday, 29 May 2018 13:57 GMT May 29 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Millions of Afghans face hunger after a drought decimated crops in the war-ravaged country, U.N. officials said on Tuesday, calling for an extra $115 million to help families buy food.
Some rivers and water points have totally dried up, and the last wheat harvest has been "completely lost", according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.
"Six months down the road, millions of people could be in a situation of untenable hunger without knowing where their next meal will come from," said Toby Lanzer, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan.
Already, the drought has forced 21,000 people to leave their homes and settle on the outskirts of the western city of Herat, said OCHA.
"People prefer cash, which allows them to buy what they need most," he said.
The U.N. is revising its humanitarian appeal for 2018 because of the drought, and says it needs an extra $115 million to help 1.4 million of the hardest-hit people.
The drought has also hurt nomadic herders known as Kuchis, as pasturelands have dried up in some areas, including the northeastern provinces of Badakhshan and Kunduz.
Prices for sheep have fallen by as much as 40 percent, but many Kuchis are selling them out of desperation, according to OCHA’s report.
"In Helmand, village elders reportedly need to obtain special approval from the armed groups controlling their districts to access markets in areas under government control," said the bulletin.
The cost of wheat shot up by 50 percent and produce prices quadrupled in Kandahar City when roads were temporarily closed in April due to fighting, it said.

California has an opportunity to be a clean drinking water leader, as it is a leader on the climate front, says Leo Heller, the United Nations special rapporteur, on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation.
Lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation impacts rural well-users, city residents, schoolchildren, mobile home communities and churches across the state.
When my predecessor, Catarina de Albuquerque, visited California, what she found shocked her.
Drinking water conditions were akin to those typically seen in a developing country: families without an acceptable level of safe drinking water or sanitation; exposed pipes running through irrigation ditches; crumbling or nonexistent infrastructure.
California is known around the world for its thriving technology sector and for its movement to fight climate change and protect the environment.
This is a different side of California, and it is deeply troubling.
The Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund is based on a simple premise that all must join hands together to ensure universal access to this fundamental right.
Revenues raised will provide sustainable funding for safe drinking water and sanitation to the communities that need help.
The California State Legislature should not miss the opportunity to be a champion of the human rights to water and sanitation when a proposal with an unprecedented array of support lies before them.
I support the swift passage of the proposed Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund.