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DEVELOPMENT: Water Flows Down the Political Path

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Apr 19 2004 (IPS) - Aid for water development is being sent down political channels, major environmental groups warned in a joint report published Monday.

The report calls on the 12th session of he Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-12) being held in New York “to review the inadequacies relating to the funding and delivery of integrated water resources management and water supply and sanitation services, correct these deficiencies, and initiate immediate plans for stronger funding and delivery commitments at CSD-13 in 2005.”

The group of 30 industrial nations that form the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) “tend to give aid on national interest grounds,” says the report. “For example, the United States gives most of its aid for water to Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian- administered areas and less than eight million dollars in aid for water to sub-Saharan Africa.”

The report says that only 38 percent of OECD bilateral aid for water goes to the 30 countries most in need. These include some of the poorest and are inhabited by most of the world’s 1.1 billion people without access to safe drinking water.

The report shows that the majority of the 22 OECD countries surveyed failed to increase the amount of aid they give to water and sanitation between 1998 and 2002.

The report has been produced jointly by the environmental group WWF, the British charity Care International, Green Cross International which works to prevent conflicts in water-stressed regions, and the charities WaterAid, Tearfund and Oxfam.

“There is not enough aid going into the water sector as a whole,” John Magrath from Oxfam told IPS. “The key thing is that it is declining, and that is the question above considerations where it is most appropriate for aid to be spent.”

The charity organisations are “very worried that neither developed nor developing countries are making water the priority it deserves to be,” Magrath said.

Such aid for water that exists is “managed in highly inefficient ways because the funds are not tied together,” he said. “The aid is not enough, and it is badly coordinated.”

World governments are reneging on their commitments to meet the UN development target of halving by 2015 the percentage of people without access to drinking water or to basic sanitation, the report says.

Countries such as the United States, Japan, and the European Union member states are far from delivering on their commitments to the UN water targets, it says. “In the United States for example, only 4 percent of its development aid is spent on water and only 8 percent of that goes to the 30 countries most in need.”

“If the world continues at this snail’s pace, billions of people will remain without access to safe water or basic sanitation, with little prospect of escaping poverty,” said Ravi Narayanan of WaterAid.

“Many will continue to spend hours hauling water and will fall sick from contaminated water supplies. Countries need to act fast if they are to reverse this trend. They must wake up to the fact that their inaction on water is undermining efforts to reduce poverty.”

The report says Tanzania and Uganda are among few countries making water a priority in their poverty reduction strategies. Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Indonesia and Guinea have not prioritised water at all, while Afghanistan, Pakistan and China are facing the prospect of acute water shortages by 2025.

“Dams and pipes alone will not solve the world water crisis,” said Jamie Pittock of WWF. “Sustainable provision of water for people and nature starts with a commitment to protect wetlands and rivers, precious sources of water, from the damaging impacts of development.”

The NGOs are calling on ministers at the meeting in New York as well as on the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and their member governments to make water and sanitation a high priority in poverty-reduction strategies. The NGOs are also urging donor countries not only to increase water aid but also to ensure that it gets to the people in countries most in need.