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WATER DAY: Key Development Goals Stagnating

Mithre J. Sandrasagra

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 2007 (IPS) - Halfway to 2015, the year when the globally agreed Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are supposed to be reached, the crisis in water and sanitation as well as in water resources management remains among the great human development and environmental challenges.

In the run-up to World Water Day on Thursday, the United Nations is stressing the importance of good governance and proper management of water resources at both the international and local levels. The focus of World Water Day 2007, “Coping with Water Scarcity,” will require addressing a range of issues, from protection of the environment and global warming to equitable distribution of water for irrigation, industry and household use.

“The state of the world’s waters remains fragile,” stressed U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “Available supplies are under great duress as a result of high population growth, unsustainable consumption patterns, poor management practices, pollution, inadequate investment in infrastructure, and low efficiency in water-use.”

There is enough water in the world for everyone, but only if it is properly managed, according to the U.N.

Slightly more than a billion people do not have access to adequate clean water to meet their basic daily needs, and 2.6 billion do not have proper sanitation, according to the World Health Organisation and the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says that by 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world’s population could be living under water stress conditions.

Those affected are already among the world’s poorest, over half of them living in China and India, according to U.N. estimates.

Agriculture is the number-one user of water worldwide, accounting for about 70 percent of all freshwater drawn from lakes, waterways and aquifers around the world. The figure is closer to 90 percent in several developing countries, where roughly three-quarters of the world’s irrigated farmlands are located.

Water shortages are most acute in the driest areas of the world, according to the FAO.

Most countries in the Near East and North Africa suffer from acute water scarcity, as do countries like Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa, and large parts of China and India.

“Water use has grown at more than twice the rate of population increase over the last century, making sustainable, efficient and equitable management of scarce water resources a key challenge for the future,” according to the FAO’s Pasquale Steduto, current chair of the U.N. coordination mechanism, UN-Water.

UN-Water is made up of 24 U.N. agencies that have a significant role in tackling global water concerns and includes major non-U.N. partners who cooperate with them in advancing progress towards the water-related goals of the Water for Life Decade (2005-2015) and MDGs.

“Sound water resource management at all levels can help countries adopt flexible approaches that allow more people to have the water they need while preserving the environment,” says Steduto, who also serves as chief of FAO’s Water, Development and Management Unit. “The global community has the know-how to cope with water scarcity, but we have to take action.”

Recognising the vital part freshwater plays in human security and development, the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, adopted by U.N. member states at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, called on countries to develop integrated water resources management and water efficiency plans by 2005.

Only about 12 percent of countries have done so to date, says a 2006 UN-Water report entitled “Water: A Shared Responsibility”.

Financial resources for water are also stagnating.

According to the report, total official development assistance to the water sector in recent years has averaged about three billion dollars a year. However, only a small proportion – 12 percent – of these funds reach those most in need, according to UN-Water, and only about 10 percent is used to support development of water policy, planning and programmes.

Added to the shortfall, private sector investment in water services is also declining.

During the 1990s, the private sector spent an estimated 25 billion dollars on water supply and sanitation in developing countries, mostly in Latin America and Asia.

However, according to UN-Water, many big multinational water companies have begun withdrawing from or downsizing their operations in the developing world because of the high political and financial risks.

“Water has a major impact on the capacity of people everywhere to improve their lives,” says Steduto.

The FAO points out that even people in areas with plenty of freshwater sometimes experience scarcity.

“Good governance is essential for managing our increasingly stretched supplies of freshwater and indispensable for tackling poverty,” noted Koichiro Matsuura, director-general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Although there are no accurate figures, UNESCO estimates that political corruption costs the water sector millions of dollars every year and undermines water services, especially to the poor.

“Water: A Crisis of Governance”, a report published by UN-Water in 2006, cites a survey in India, in which 41 percent of the respondents had made more than one “small bribe” in the past six months to falsify metre readings; 30 percent had made payments to “expedite repair work” and 12 percent had made payments to “expedite new water and sanitation connections.”

The report points to “mismanagement, corruption, lack of appropriate institutions, bureaucratic inertia and a shortage of new investments in building human capacity as well as physical infrastructure,” as the primary causes of water shortages.

Poor water quality is a key cause of poor livelihood and health.

Globally, diarrhoeral diseases and malaria killed about 3.1 million people in 2002, according to the World Health Organisation. Ninety percent of these deaths were children under the age of five.

The WHO estimates that 1.6 million lives could be saved annually by providing access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene.

If the present trends are allowed to continue unchecked, UN-Water warns that regions such as sub-Saharan Africa will not meet the MDG of halving, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

The MDG target of halving the proportion of people without basic sanitation will not be met either.