WANTED: THREE MILLION PEOPLE ALIVE

By Elisa Gahng and - - Reprint | | Print |

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NEW YORK, Mar 1 2003 (IPS) - World Water Day — celebrated each year on 22 March — provides us with an opportunity to recognise the centrality of water to our daily lives, to poverty reduction, to our environment, and to the sustainable development of nations, writes Sir Richard Jolly, chair of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC). In this article for IPS, Jolly writes that top-down, supply-driven approaches to provide water and sanitation services have not worked, while treating water as a free good to be delivered weakens good water management including cost recovery and water conservation. Present levels of international aid going to water, sanitation, and hygiene are estimated at about five billion dollars per year. Yet Third World governments are spending roughly the same again. The author calls for a doubling of this level of investment and raising the share of national and international resources going to services in slums and urban shanty-towns and in rural areas. Better water, sanitation, and hygiene were and are the basis of better health in the industrialised nations. Without them, no amount of drugs, doctors, or hospitals will lift public health onto an equivalent level in the developing world.

World Water Day — celebrated each year on 22 March — provides us with an opportunity to recognise the centrality and importance of water to our daily lives, to poverty reduction, to our environment, and to the sustainable development of nations.

It is timely and appropriate that during Water Year 2003 we reflect on the vital importance of water and sanitation to the billions of those who are still without access to these basic human rights and services to which everyone is entitled.

Six months after the Sustainable Development Summit in Johannesburg, which agreed to set the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for water and sanitation –to halve the proportion of people without access by 2015– the international community gathers in Kyoto to discuss ways of achieving these goals. How have we learned from past experiences and what are the lessons gleaned from the International Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (1981-90)?

In a new and provocative briefing called ”Kyoto — the agenda has changed”, the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council reminds us of some mistakes that led us to the dire situation faced by over three billion people in the developing world today:

– Top-down, supply-driven approaches to provide water and sanitation services have not worked.

– Promises and expectations of ” free water” have failed to deliver. In most cases, free service has meant no service. If water is treated as a free good to be delivered then good water management including cost recovery, water conservation and techniques is likely to be weakened

– Giving priority to water supply over sanitation and to sanitation over hygiene has not been effective. The neglect of hygiene –keeping faecal matter away from hands and food and from water itself when it is stored in the home –has been a major cause of infection and diseases, resulting in some 6,000 deaths per day, mostly children.

– Splitting water, sanitation, and hygiene into separate priorities and activities has been a fundamental mistake.

– Blaming under-achievement on such factors as water shortage, lack of funds, rapid population growth, and urbanisation has led to confusion. There is little or no correlation between any of these with the scale and severity of water, sanitation and hygiene problems.

– The tendency to assume that water and sanitation facilities shared by very large numbers of people will bring dramatic benefits.

Present levels of international aid going to water, sanitation, and hygiene are estimated at about five billion dollars per year. Yet Third World governments are spending roughly the same again. It is our opinion that to reach the ” WASH ” goals of halving the proportion of people without access to safe water and sanitation will require at least a doubling of this level of investment. Above all, we need to raise the share of national and international resources going to services in slums and urban shanty-towns and in rural areas.

But how can we raise the profile of hygiene, the neglected third element in the great public health triad, whose other components are water and sanitation? As part of its WASH campaign, WSSCC urges all individuals and communities to promote the ”Hygiene Code” as part of the information environment in which all communities live and children grow up.

The Code, backed by the UN family of agencies, presents a massive challenge that can be met through social mobilisation and communications. Schools and health facilities should become learning and demonstration centres — this is why UNICEF and the WSSCC are launching a new ”WASH in Schools” campaign to promote hygiene education and safe water and sanitation in primary schools, with separate toilets for girls and boys.

What we need are new and imaginative ways to alleviate poverty and improve the health and well-being of the less fortunate among us. The international community should respond to the following challenges:

– How can integrated water resources management (IWRM) incorporate the new sanitation imperative? Good water management is threatened almost everywhere by faecal pollution. But rapid progress towards a new sanitation goal will not be possible unless those responsible for water management make a major contribution. How can IWRM contribute to people-centred household technologies that can help meet their water and sanitation needs?

– How can IWRM serve the needs of low-income groups? How can the rights of the poor to an equitable share of water resources be guaranteed? How can IWRM also serve the needs of agriculture and industry while combating poverty, improving health and productivity, preventing further degradation of the environment?

– What must be done to accelerate progress to the MDGs for Water and Sanitation especially in sub-Saharan Africa and in other regions not yet on track to halving the proportions of people without access by 2015?

The WSSCC and its partners do not underestimate the difficulties that lie ahead. But what is at stake here is not just ‘one issue among many’ but a renewed attempt to achieve the greatest of all public health breakthroughs: better water, sanitation, and hygiene were and are the basis of better health in the industrialised nations. Without them, no amount of drugs, doctors, or hospitals will lift public health onto an equivalent level in the developing world. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)