Collecting water in Ethiopia. A new report, ‘Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post Crisis Era’ warns that many of the earth’s water resources have been pushed to a point of permanent failure. Credit: EU/ECHO/Anouk Delafortrie/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
UNITED NATIONS & SRINAGAR, India, Jan 20 2026 (IPS)

The world has entered what United Nations researchers now describe as an era of Global Water Bankruptcy, a condition where humanity has irreversibly overspent the planet’s water resources, leaving ecosystems, economies, and communities unable to recover to previous levels.

The new report, released by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, titled Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era. The report argues that decades of overextraction, pollution, land degradation, and climate stress have pushed large parts of the global water system into a permanent state of failure.

“The world has entered the era of Global Water Bankruptcy,” the report reads, adding that “in many regions, human water systems are already in a post-crisis state of failure.”

According to the report, the language of “water crisis” is no longer sufficient to explain what is happening. A crisis implies a shock followed by recovery. Water bankruptcy, by contrast, describes a condition where recovery is no longer realistically possible because natural water capital has been permanently damaged.

In an exclusive interview with Inter Press Service, former Deputy Head of Iran’s Department of Environment  Prof. Kaveh Madani, who currently is the Director at United Nations University, Institute for Water, Environment and Health, said that declaring that the planet has entered the era of water bankruptcy must not be interpreted as universal water bankruptcy, as not all basins, aquifers, and systems are water bankrupt.

Prof. Kaveh Madani, Director at the United Nations University, Institute for Water, Environment and Health, addresses the UN midday press briefing. Credit: IPS

“But we now have enough critical basins and aquifers in chronic decline and showing clear signs of irreversibility that the global risk landscape is already being reshaped. Scientifically, we know recovery is no longer realistic in many systems when we see persistent overshoot (using more than renewable supply) combined with clear markers of irreversibility—for example aquifer compaction and land subsidence that permanently reduce storage, wetland and lake loss, salinization and pollution that shrink usable water, and glacier retreat that removes a long-term seasonal buffer. When these signals persist over time, the old “bounce back” assumption stops being credible,” Madani said.

According to the report, over decades, societies have drawn down the renewable flow of rivers and rainfall besides long-term reserves stored in aquifers, glaciers, wetlands, and soils. At the same time, pollution and salinization have reduced the share of water that is safe or economically usable.

“Over decades, societies have withdrawn more water than climate and hydrology can reliably provide, drawing down not only the annual income of renewable flows but also the savings stored in aquifers, glaciers, soils, wetlands, and river ecosystems,” the report says.

The scale of the problem, as per the report, is global. Nearly three-quarters of the world’s population now lives in countries classified as water insecure or critically water insecure.

Around 2.2 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water, while 3.5 billion lack safely managed sanitation. About 4 billion people, as per the report findings, experience severe water scarcity for at least one month every year.

Madani said, adding that water bankruptcy is best assessed basin by basin and aquifer by aquifer, not by country.

“Please note that, based on the water security definition used by the UN system, water insecurity and water bankruptcy are not equivalent. Water bankruptcy can drive water insecurity, but water insecurity can also stem from limited financial and institutional capacity to build and operate infrastructure for safe water supply and sanitation, even where physical water is available,” he explained.

Madani added that the regions most consistently closest to irreversible decline cluster in the Middle East and North Africa, Central and South Asia, parts of northern China, the Mediterranean and southern Europe, the southwestern United States and northern Mexico (including the Colorado River system), parts of southern Africa, and parts of Australia.

The Aral Sea, which lies between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, shows dramatic water loss between 1989 and 2025. Credit: UNU-INWEH

Surface Water Systems Are Shrinking Rapidly

The report shows how more than half of the world’s large lakes have lost water since the early 1990s, affecting nearly one quarter of the global population that depends directly on them. Many major rivers now fail to reach the sea for parts of the year or fall below environmental flow needs.

Massive losses have occurred in wetlands, which serve as natural buffers against floods and droughts. Over the past five decades, the report claims that the world has lost roughly 410 million hectares of natural wetlands, almost the size of the European Union. The economic value of lost ecosystem services from these wetlands exceeds 5.1 trillion US dollars.

Groundwater depletion is one of the clearest signs of water bankruptcy. Groundwater, says the report, now supplies about 50 percent of global domestic water use and over 40 percent of irrigation water. Yet around 70 percent of the world’s major aquifers show long-term declining trends.

“Excessive groundwater extraction has already contributed to significant land subsidence over more than 6 million square kilometers,” the report says, warning that in some locations land is sinking by up to 25 centimeters per year, permanently reducing storage capacity and increasing flood risk.

In coastal areas, overpumping has allowed seawater to intrude into aquifers, rendering groundwater unusable for generations. In inland agricultural regions, falling water tables have triggered sinkholes, soil collapse, and the loss of fertile land.

These satellite images show a dramatic impact of the Aru glacier collapses in western Tibet. First image was taken in 2017 and the second in 2025. Credit: UNU-INWEH

The cryosphere, glaciers and snowpacks that act as natural water storage systems are also being rapidly liquidated. The world has already lost more than 30 percent of its glacier mass since 1970. Several low- and mid-latitude mountain ranges could lose functional glaciers within decades.

“The liquidation of this frozen savings account interacts with groundwater depletion and surface water over-allocation to lock many basins into a permanent worsening water deficit state,” says the report.

This loss, as per the report, threatens the long-term water security of hundreds of millions of people who depend on glacier- and snowmelt-fed rivers for drinking water, irrigation, and hydropower, particularly in Asia and the Andes.

Madani said the biggest failure was treating groundwater as an unlimited safety net instead of a strategic reserve.

He says that when surface water tightened, many systems defaulted to “drill deeper” without enforceable caps.

“Authorities often recognize the consequences when it is already late, and meaningful action then faces major political barriers. For example, reducing groundwater use in farming can trigger unemployment, food insecurity, and even instability unless farmers are supported through short-term compensation and a longer-term transition to alternative livelihoods,” he added.

According to Madani, that kind of transition cannot be implemented overnight.

“So, business as usual continues. The result is predictable: groundwater gets “liquidated” to postpone hard choices, and by the time the damage is obvious, recovery is no longer realistic,” he told IPS news.

Agriculture Lies at the Heart of the Crisis

According to the report, farming accounts for approximately 70 percent of global freshwater withdrawals. About 3 billion people and more than half of the world’s food production are located in regions where total water storage is already declining or unstable.

The report states that more than 170 million hectares of irrigated cropland are under high or very high water stress. Land and soil degradation are making matters worse by reducing the ability of soils to retain moisture. The degradation of more than half of the global agricultural land is now moderate or severe.

Drought, once considered a natural hazard, is increasingly driven by human activity. Overallocation, groundwater depletion, deforestation, land degradation, and climate change have turned drought into a chronic condition in many regions.

“Drought-related damages, intensified by land degradation, groundwater depletion and climate change rather than rainfall deficits alone, already amount to about 307 billion US dollars per year worldwide,” the report states.

Water quality degradation further shrinks the usable resource base. Pollution from untreated wastewater, agricultural runoff, industrial effluents, and salinization means that even where water volumes appear stable, much of that water is unsafe or too costly to treat.

The report adds that the planetary freshwater boundary has already been crossed. Both blue water, surface and groundwater, and green water, soil moisture, have been pushed beyond a safe operating space.

Current governance systems, the authors argue, are not fit for this reality. Many legal water rights and development promises far exceed degraded hydrological capacity. Existing global agendas, focused largely on drinking water access, sanitation, and incremental efficiency gains, are inadequate for managing irreversible loss.

“Water bankruptcy must be recognized as a distinct post-crisis state, where accumulated damage and overshoot have undermined the system’s capacity to recover,” the report says.

Water bankruptcy could result in a further increase in conflicts. Credit: UNU-INWEH

It warns that the implications of water bankruptcy are dire.

UN Under-Secretary-General Tshilidzi Marwala, Rector of UNU explains,  “Water bankruptcy is becoming a driver of fragility, displacement, and conflict. Managing it fairly—ensuring that vulnerable communities are protected and that unavoidable losses are shared equitably—is now central to maintaining peace, stability, and social cohesion.”

Policy Implications

Instead of crisis management aimed at restoring the past, the report actually pitches for bankruptcy management. That means acknowledging insolvency, accepting irreversibility, and restructuring water use, rights, and institutions to prevent further damage.

The authors lay stress on the fact that water bankruptcy is also a justice and security issue. The costs of overshoot fall disproportionately on small farmers, rural communities, women, Indigenous peoples, and downstream users, while benefits have often accrued to more powerful actors.

“How societies manage water bankruptcy will shape social cohesion, political stability, and peace,” the report warns.

Furthermore, it urges governments and international institutions to use upcoming UN Water Conferences in 2026 and 2028 as milestones to reset the global water agenda, calling for water to be treated as an upstream sector central to climate action, biodiversity protection, food security, and peace.

“This is about a crisis that might arrive in the future. The world is already living beyond its hydrological means,” reads the report.

When asked why the report frames water bankruptcy as a justice and security issue and how governments can implement painful demand reductions without triggering social unrest or conflict, Madani said the demand reduction becomes dangerous when it is treated as a technical exercise instead of a political economy reform. In many water-bankrupt regions, according to him, water is effectively a jobs policy: it keeps low-productivity farming and local economies afloat.

“If you cut water without an economic transition, you create unemployment, food insecurity, and unrest. So the practical pathway is to decouple livelihoods and growth from water consumption. In many economies, water and other natural resources are used to keep low-efficiency systems alive. In most places, it is possible to produce more strategic food with less water and less land, and with fewer farmers—provided that farmers are supported through a transition and offered alternative livelihoods.”

According to Madani, governments should protect basic needs but target the big reductions where most water is used, especially agriculture and besides that, pair caps with a just transition package for farmers—compensation, insurance, buy-down or retirement of water entitlements where relevant, and real income alternatives.

He further suggests that the governments should invest in diversification, including services, industry, value-added agri-processing, and urban jobs, so communities can earn a living without expanding water withdrawals.

“In short, you avoid conflict by making demand reduction part of a broader economic transition, not a standalone water policy.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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A heavy storm caused flooding in areas of San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, on August 16. These phenomena mostly occur during the rainy season, partly due to the environmental degradation of a water recharge area known as El Espino. Credit: Cruz Roja de El Salvador

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Aug 25 2025 (IPS)

Two construction projects pushed by the government of El Salvador, in a water recharge area adjacent to the country’s capital, on the slopes of the San Salvador volcano, threaten to make the area more vulnerable and increase the risk of flooding in the city’s poor neighborhoods downstream.

That is what environmentalists, and especially residents of communities who have lived for decades in this green area and witnessed the impact of urban expansion, told IPS.  Like a cancer, it is slowly eating away at the 800 hectares of what was, in the 19th century, one of the main coffee farms, El Espino, in what is now the western periphery of San Salvador.“I was born here, I am a native of this farm, and I have seen how everything has been deteriorating” –Héctor López.

“I was born here, I am a native of this farm, and I have seen how everything has been deteriorating,” 63-year-old Héctor López, a member of the El Espino Agricultural Production Cooperative, told IPS. The cooperative has 100 members who are mostly dedicated to coffee cultivation.

“It was all pure coffee plantations, owned by the Dueñas family, and over time El Espino has been affected by the constructions”, said López.

The two new government projects continue the pattern of deforestation that the property has been subjected to since the 1990s, a product of the unstoppable advance of the real estate sector.

These are the El Salvador National Stadium, which will hold 50,000 seats and whose construction began in September 2022 on an area of 55,000 square meters, and is expected to be ready in 2027.

Meanwhile, the new Center for Fairs and Conventions (Cifco) will begin construction in the coming months on an area of similar size. Both would cover about 10 hectares.

The cost of the stadium is around 100 million dollars, but the authorities have not revealed the figure for the Cifco.

Runoff coming down from the San Salvador volcano overflows a river, downstream, and floods areas populated by low-income families in the southern part of the city. The capacity to absorb rainwater will be affected by two large construction projects promoted by the Salvadoran government. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

The forest turned to cement

With each new construction, the soil absorbs less rainwater, and each storm turns the runoff into a river that reaches the poor neighborhoods of San Salvador, a city of 2.4 million inhabitants, including its metropolitan area, within a total country population of six million.

“When everything is paved, the water flows downward and causes flooding in neighborhoods like Santa Lucía,” Ricardo Navarro of the Center for Appropriate Technology (Cesta) told IPS, referring to a residential area of low-income families located in eastern San Salvador.

“When rainwater soaks into the forests, there isn’t much runoff, but without the forest, flooding increases,” adds Navarro, who founded Cesta 45 years ago, the local branch of Friends of the Earth.

The coffee plantation that still survives in El Espino is a forest populated with a rich diversity of tree species and wildlife.

Both the stadium and the convention center are funded by non-reimbursable funds from China, which also donated a US$54 million library, inaugurated in November 2023, as a sort of reward because El Salvador ended the relations it had maintained for decades with Taiwan in 2018.

China considers Taiwan part of its territory and rewards nations that break ties with Taiwan, which is currently recognized as an independent nation by only 12 countries.

Additionally, as part of this package of donations, China built a US$24 million tourist pier in the port city of La Libertad, south of San Salvador on the Pacific coast, and is constructing a water purification plant at Lake Ilopango, east of the capital, among other projects.

Elsa Méndez, together with Ever Martínez, from the El Espino Agricultural Production Cooperative, laments that urban development in the area affects them every rainy season, to the west of San Salvador. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Navarro lamented the lack of environmental awareness among the authorities, and more specifically, of the country’s president, Nayib Bukele, who has governed with a markedly authoritarian style since taking office in June 2019. In 2024, he won a second consecutive term, something previously prohibited by the Republic’s Constitution.

Lawmakers from his party, New Ideas, who control the unicameral Legislative Assembly, amended the constitution on July 31 to allow Bukele the option to run for the presidency as many times as he wishes.

Because of this authoritarian style, it is known that in El Salvador, nothing is done without the consent of the ruler.

“President Bukele: Not long ago there was a storm, which caused serious flooding in the lower parts of the city. President, the climate is changing, I can guarantee you, with absolute certainty, that the climate situation is going to get much worse due to climate change,” Navarro urged.

The environmentalist suggested that, in any case, if the construction is not stopped, the convention center should be built adjacent to the stadium, so that common spaces, such as the parking area, could be shared.

The El Espino farm belonged to the Dueñas family, one of the wealthiest in the country, in the 19th century, then linked to coffee production. Land reform seized the property in 1980 and handed it over to dozens of families who worked there as colonists, peasants who labored on the farm in semi-slavery conditions and received a portion of land to build their house.

However, a court ruling decided in 1986 that a part of the farm, around 250 hectares, was urbanizable land and should be returned to the Dueñas family.

Since then, that segment of the farm has been turning into an area of permanent construction of shopping malls and luxury residences, developed by Urbánica, the real estate arm of the Dueñas family.

“If we analyze the companies that are building there and if we pull the thread, we end up at Urbanística,” economist José Luis Magaña explained to IPS.

“There should be clarity about what the infrastructure needs are,” said the expert on the two government projects. “Instead of financing a school repair project with a loan from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, the government could have asked the Asian power to rebuild those educational centers”, he adds.

In 2022, several families from the El Espino cooperative participated in the “San Salvador sponge city” project, to increase rainwater filtration levels through the construction of trenches and absorption wells, to prevent runoff from causing floods downstream. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

The usual floods

On the night of August 15, a heavy storm caused flooding in several sectors of the Salvadoran capital, whose avenues seemed to turn into rivers and lagoons, with hundreds of cars stuck.

In some areas, trash clogged the city’s storm drains and the water rose and flooded into residential areas. Around 25 families were evacuated and sheltered in safe locations.

San Salvador was founded in 1545 at the foot of the San Salvador volcano, a massif rising 1893 meters above sea level, and this location has placed the city at risk of floods and landslides.

In September 1982, a mudflow came down from the volcano’s summit and buried part of a residential area called Montebello, killing about 500 people.

The southern zone of the capital is the most affected by flooding during the rainy season, from May to November. The rain and runoff coming down from the volcano feed small streams along the way, which in turn flow into the El Arenal stream and the populous Málaga neighborhood.

In July 2008, heavy rains caused that stream to overflow, and 32 people drowned when a bus was swept away by the current.

As a way to reduce the vulnerability of this southern zone, in 2020 the city was part of the “Sponge City” project, promoted by the United Nations Environment Programme.

Some 1,150 hectares of forests and coffee plantations were restored in the upper part of the San Salvador volcano, seeking to reactivate the capacity to absorb rainwater through the construction of catchment tanks and trenches amidst the coffee fields.

Urbánica is the real estate arm of the Dueñas family, which builds luxury residences in the capital of El Salvador, in the area of the former El Espino farm, like the one in the image, called Alcalá. Credit: Urbánica

Environmental hope remains

Members of the El Espino cooperative actively participated in that project, as the communities of former colonists of the Dueñas family continue to live on the segment of the farm the land reform granted them, which currently totals 314 hectares and are also hit by the constructions in the upper part, called El Boquerón, near the volcano’s crater.

Deforestation continues there to make way for more restaurants and luxury residences.

“We are worried that more and more construction keeps happening, and there are fewer trees, and more water runoff flowing downstream,” said cooperative member López, who took part in a meeting of the organization’s board members on August 19 when IPS visited the area.

Elsa Méndez, also a cooperative member, stated: “We try to infiltrate water with the trenches, but when the ground is already too saturated with water, we can’t do everything as a cooperative either. Everyone must raise awareness among all people, because the runoff from the volcano carries trash, bottles, plastic, etc.”

On Saturday, 16 families from the community went to reforest the upper area, and the task also served “to teach our children how to reforest,” said Méndez.

Social movement Todos Somos El Espino (We Are All El Espino) has called for a second rally to protest against the construction of the convention center on Saturday, August 23, as part of their plan to defend the increasingly threatened forest.

“At this march, we will be doing the first preliminary count of the signatures collected in physical form… so that Salvadorans can say, ‘I defend El Espino,'” Gabriela Capacho, who is part of that movement, told IPS.

A digital meeting by Brazil’s Ministry of Science and Technology to discuss the use of artificial intelligence in the public sector. Remote work and debates have also increased the demand for digital infrastructure by boosting long-distance communication. Credit: Rodrigo Cabral / Ascom MCTI

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 30 2025 (IPS)

Brazil hopes to soon reap benefits of its largely renewable energy matrix. Data centers, whose demand is growing with the strides made by artificial intelligence, are the new frontier for these still-uncertain investments."The most serious issue in the government's program is that it aims to subsidize data centers for big tech companies... they propose bringing in data centers for Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and others, with all the benefits." — Carlos Afonso.

This is even a matter of “digital sovereignty,” not just for Brazil, according to Dora Kaufman, a professor in the program on intelligent technologies and digital design at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo.

Nearly 60% of all Brazilian data processing currently takes place in the United States—and the figure continues to rise—posing a serious risk, as a natural disaster or government blockade could paralyze the country, she warned. “The probability of it happening is low, but the impact would be huge,” she told IPS by phone from São Paulo.

The National Data Center Policy is expected to change this scenario, according to the Brazilian government, which has promised to soon unveil the program. Its potential could attract two trillion reais (around US$350 billion) over the next 10 years, claims Finance Minister Fernando Haddad.

Exemptions from federal taxes and reduced import duties on equipment are among the incentives the government will offer investors. These measures anticipate policies already outlined in the recently approved tax reform, which will fully take effect by 2033.

The abundance of renewable energy, water, and land could also serve as a major draw in a world increasingly demanding sustainability in new projects.

Engineering and computer science students in Rio de Janeiro will form an essential workforce for the expanding digital economy, fueled by the government’s policy to encourage the proliferation of data centers in Brazil. Credit: Tomaz Silva / Agência Brasil

High Costs in Brazil 

Processing data in Brazil is 25% more expensive than abroad, primarily due to the tax burden, noted Kaufman. Removing this obstacle would pave the way for a surge in data centers, as “we have more than enough renewable energy and water,” she argued.

“Brazil has everything it takes to host many data centers, and the challenges are solvable. We need them not just to develop artificial intelligence but also for the growing digitalization of government and businesses,” she emphasized.

However, the voracious energy and water demands of digital infrastructure—especially for AI—are raising concerns among environmentalists and experts in energy and communications.

“Brazil first needs to implement a real energy transition. So far, we’ve only added renewable sources alongside fossil fuels. A just transition remains a huge challenge, requiring the electrification of transport—a priority due to the climate crisis,” said Alexandre Costa, a professor at the Federal University of Ceará in northeastern Brazil.

TikTok plans to set up a data center in Caucaia, a city of 355,000 residents in Ceará. Just 35 kilometers away, the Pecém port—which includes an industrial zone—has plans for a green hydrogen production hub, another major consumer of water and electricity.

Pecém already hosts a thermoelectric plant and a steel mill, both of which are highly water-intensive.

In the industrial zone of the Pecém port, in Ceará, wind turbine blades are manufactured. Nearby, there are plans to produce green hydrogen for export to Europe. The high consumption of electricity and water worries environmentalists in this and other regions of Brazil where large data centers are planned. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

 Fossil Fuels Still Dominate

The Northeast, Brazil’s poorest region, has become an attractive location for projects claiming to be sustainable, as it is already the country’s largest wind power producer and holds vast potential for solar energy.

However, the exploitation of strong, steady winds and abundant sunlight has already sparked criticism and protests from local communities. The expansion of these projects is encroaching on increasing amounts of land, creating conflicts with local populations and small-scale farming, noted Costa, a physicist specializing in meteorology and climate change.

Nationally, renewable sources accounted for 86.1% of electricity consumption in 2022, according to the government’s Energy Research Company. However, fossil fuels still made up 52.7% of Brazil’s total energy matrix, dominated by oil and natural gas, while coal held a small 4.4% share.

This means Brazil, where freight transport is still heavily reliant on diesel trucks, still has a long way to go in reducing fossil fuel consumption. This transition will require even more electricity.

Data centers will bring additional energy demand to an economy already anticipating a surge in consumption—driven by green hydrogen projects, artificial intelligence, and vehicle electrification, Costa warned IPS in a phone interview from Fortaleza, Ceará’s capital.

The same applies to water resources. “There’s no way to meet an infinite demand for these inputs,” he stressed. In his view, Brazil lacks an energy model that balances new demands, priorities, and the need for an increasingly clean energy matrix.

The electrification of vehicles is increasing electricity demand. Data centers create additional pressure on power generation from renewable sources to meet Brazil’s goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Credit: Marcelo Camargo / Agência Brasil

Dependence 

“The most serious issue in the government’s program is that it aims to subsidize data centers for Big Techs. We need them for our national networks, yet they’re proposing to bring in data centers for Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc., with all the benefits,” criticized Carlos Afonso, a communications technology expert and one of the pioneers of the internet in Brazil.

He pointed to the lack of such infrastructure for public entities like Serpro (Data Processing Service) and Dataprev (social security database), which are vital for government operations, as well as the National Research Network that connects universities and other scientific and innovation institutions.

“Will they have to rely on data centers from these Big Techs in Brazil?” he questioned in a conversation with IPS.

It appears that both the government’s program for this sector and its green hydrogen initiative are primarily designed to meet external demands, with the goal of creating exportable goods and services.

This is why Kaufman argues for imposing conditions on data centers established in Brazil, such as sustainability based on renewable energy and zero greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency, and  allocating at least 10% of installed capacity to the domestic market.

The expert believes that the large data centers to be installed in Brazil will primarily serve AI training, which minimizes latency, the milliseconds of delay in long-distance communication from origin to destination.

But the reality—both in Brazil and globally—in the digital economy is one of deep dependence on the United States, a situation exacerbated by the policies of President Donald Trump, who prioritized the interests of the United States above all else, even international treaties.

“Three Big Tech companies from the United States—AWS/Amazon, Microsoft, and Google—control 63% of global data processing, forming a true oligopoly,” emphasized Kaufman. That dominance is expected to grow to 80%, she added.

According to the global statistics portal Statista, as of March 2025, the United States had 5,426 data centers—more than 10 times the number in Germany (529), the UK (523), or China (449).

The imbalance is even starker in hyperscale data centers, those occupying more than 930 square meters and housing over 5,000 servers. By the end of 2024, the United States accounted for 54% of global processing capacity, compared to 16% for China and 15% for Europe, according to Synergy Research Group.

In 2024 alone, 137 new data centers were built—a 13.7% growth rate—in a trend expected to continue, driven largely by advancements in artificial intelligence, notes the analytics and consulting firm based in the United States.

The infrastructure powering the digital economy, already connecting two-thirds of humanity and expanding rapidly with innovations like cloud computing and AI, remains largely unseen.

While cables, including intercontinental submarine lines, satellites, and telecom networks are well-known, data centers—the “brains” that store, process, and distribute information—operate in relative obscurity. Yet, they have become massive and strategically critical as global data traffic surges exponentially.

Access to clean, affordable and safe drinking water is far from universal across Africa. Credit: Joyce Chimbi

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Mar 23 2022 (IPS)

Joan Waweru was among villagers on their regular trek to the river to fetch water when they discovered a neighbour’s dead body, believed to have committed suicide by drowning in river Kamiti.

She was thirteen years old and recalls how even after the traumatizing incident, the village, and many others along river Kamiti, which runs along coffee plantations in Kiambu County of Kenya’s Central region, continued to rely on the river as their primary source of water for all domestic purposes.

Ten years on, she tells IPS that the river is still the primary water source for her family and many other households in Kiaibabu village.

“My mother still walks about three kilometres to the river and back, one trip in the morning and another in the evening. So, in total, she walks six kilometres every day to fetch 60 litres of water. She carries a 20-litre container on her back and two 5-litre containers on each hand,” she says.

“River Maing’oroti is about a kilometre away from our house, but over the years, the river has become a small stream, and it takes a lot of time to fill up a 20-litre container.”

The UN estimates show that just like Waweru’s mother, the average woman in rural Africa walks six kilometres every day to fetch 40 litres of water. Kenya is classified as a water-scarce country as only approximately 56 percent of the population has access to clean water.

As the global community marks World Water Day on March 22 under the theme ‘Groundwater: making the invisible visible’, UN research predicts water scarcity in Africa could reach dangerously high levels by 2025.

With one in three people in Africa facing water scarcity, access to clean, affordable, and safe drinking water is far from universal across the continent.

On average, people in sub-Saharan Africa travel 30 minutes daily to access water. According to UN estimates, the sub-Saharan Africa region loses 40 billion hours per year collecting water.

In the absence of clean and easily accessible water, research shows families and communities, particularly in rural Africa and informal urban settlements, will remain locked in generational poverty.

In August 2021, UNICEF revealed that “nearly nine of 10 children in North Africa live in areas of high or extremely high-water stresses with serious consequences on their health, nutrition, cognitive development and future livelihoods.”

Against this backdrop, the World Health Organization says that there is an economic gain or return of between three to 34 US dollars for every dollar invested in water sanitation.

The capital cost required to secure safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene for all people in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI) estimates, is 35 billion US dollars per year.

Experts in natural resources such as Simon Peter Njuguna from Kenya’s Ministry of Water, Sanitation and Irrigation say securing safe drinking water for all requires exploring, protecting, and sustainably using groundwater.

Groundwater, he says, is critical to human survival and in adapting to climate change because it holds vast quantities of water and feeds springs, rivers, lakes, wetlands, and oceans.

Home to 677 lakes, Njuguna tells IPS that Africa has the largest volume of non-frozen water and that two-thirds of sub-Saharan Africa rely on surface water from lakes, rivers, wetlands and even oceans.

Despite large volumes of surface water, WRI research shows 400 million people in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to basic drinking water and that African countries face some of the highest water risks in the world.

Water scarcity in Africa, Njuguna tells IPS, is largely driven by a lack of investment in water infrastructure such as piping to bring water closer to the people.

In Kampala and Lagos, for instance, WRI estimates show only 15 percent of city residents have access to piped water.

“Water scarcity is also a consequence of changing weather patterns including unpredictable rainfall, low rainfall and rising temperatures,” he says.

Nairobi based food safety and security expert Evans Kori tells IPS that water drives Africa’s GDP and is central to food security.

WRI estimates show for 90 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s rural population, agriculture is the primary source of income. Water stresses due to changing weather patterns spell doom for the region because more than 95 percent of farming in sub-Saharan Africa relies on rainfall.

Kori says water is a major and critical factor of agricultural production and stresses that escalating water insecurity is as much a health and nutrition issue as it is a development issue.

“Serious investment in water-related infrastructure is urgently needed to ensure all people, and more so the most vulnerable households, have access to clean water. In Kenya, for instance, despite rivers increasingly becoming crime scenes where murdered people are dumped, for many rural households, the river is the only option,” he says.

He references river Yala which rises from the Rift Valley region and flows for approximately 219 kilometres into Lake Victoria in Kisumu County.

In January 2022, more than 20 bodies in various states of decomposition were retrieved from the river Yala after locals saw bodies floating on the surface.

“Yala is not an isolated incident. In June 2021, for example, more than 15 bodies were found in rivers within Murang’a County, and for many locals, these rivers are a primary source of water. Urgent intervention is needed because this is a health disaster,” Kori observes.

Even though surface water is considered unfit for human consumption unless first filtered and disinfected, safety is not a priority for millions of poor and vulnerable households across the African continent.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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A waste collection bin awaiting the city council's collection. Markets are one of the places the SADC hygiene strategy is targeting. The picture was taken around 5 am as people gathered for the market day. It is a stone’s throw away from the health centre featured in the story. ​Credit: Charles Mpaka​/IPS​​

By Charles Mpaka
Blantyre, Malawi, Jan 10 2022 (IPS)

The toilets in the maternity wing of Namatapa Health Centre in the populous Bangwe Township in Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial city, fell into disrepair a few years ago. So, pregnant women who come to deliver their babies and their guardians use two pit latrines.

The faulty facilities also serve as bathrooms.

Visiting the bathrooms and toilets is an act of courage, says Thokozani Paulo, who spent four days at the centre in November 2021, during the birth of her first child.

“When you want to bath or relieve yourself, the image is dreadful because half the time, there is a mess, and the stench is terrible,” she tells IPS.

At night, there is no light, and the rooms are swarming with mosquitoes.

In addition, there is not much dignity and privacy for users either. There are no doors, so women improvise using their wraps for privacy.

“So, you are bathing, and someone comes in looking to relieve themselves,” says the 23-year-old in an interview with IPS at her home. Her month-old baby girl is sleeping peacefully on her lap.

Workers at the facility clean the two toilets – but without detergent and only once every day in the morning. One day, the women in the ward and their guardians pleaded with the workers to clean the toilets at least twice a day.
“They shouted at us saying we were not the ones paying their salaries and that we should just focus on what we had gone to the health centre for,” Paulo says.

The only basin for handwashing in the ward was never supplied with soap in the four days she was at the health centre.

In November, this experience, and the experiences of many others like Paulo were top of the agenda at a meeting of health ministers from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe.
At that meeting, among other things, the ministers endorsed the SADC Hygiene Strategy (2021-2025).

According to the strategy developed by the SADC Secretariat, analysis of national blueprints in the region on health, water, sanitation, environmental health, and nutrition indicates there is “an enabling environment” for implementation of hygiene practices.

However, there are still considerable gaps in most of the 16 member states.

“There is still need to mainstream and integrate hygiene in most of the national policies in order to broaden the enabling environment base for effective and sustainable promotion of hygiene practices,” it reads.

The framework, therefore, challenges SADC governments to increase hygiene coverage and behaviour change across all settings. These settings include health care facilities, schools and day-care centres, workplaces and commercial buildings, prisons, markets and food establishments, transport centres and places of worship.

The key hygiene behaviours include handwashing with soap, safe drinking water management, faecal disposal, food hygiene, menstrual hygiene, and waste management.

In the case of health care centres, these need to have a safe and accessible water supply, clean and safe sanitation conveniences, hand hygiene amenities at points of care and toilets, appropriate waste disposal systems and environmental cleaning.

According to the strategy, infrastructure that supports hygiene and healthcare waste management practices helps prevent the spread of diseases within the health service facilities and in the surrounding community.
The strategy was developed with the support of UNICEF and WaterAid Southern Africa.

Maureen Nkandu, Regional Communications Manager for WaterAid Southern Africa, says the policy underlines the need for leadership, commitment, and accountability “to create a culture of hygienic behaviour and practices across all levels of society and to enable hygiene services, behaviour change and promote basic sanitation”.

“For these objectives to be effective, there will be a requirement for strong planning, financial resourcing, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation systems in each of the SADC countries,” Nkandu tells IPS.

She says WaterAid has rallied key partners, including WASH-oriented civil society and development agencies, to demand adequate resources to implement the strategy effectively.

Further, achieving sustainable hygiene behaviour across generations needs innovative behaviour change programmes of scale. This can be realised through adequate financing, coordination of relevant sectors and political leadership, Nkandu says.

For Malawi, the strategy presents an opportunity for the country to push harder towards attaining Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) targets related to hygiene, says Maziko Matemba, a community health ambassador appointed by the Ministry of Health.

Matemba corroborates Paulo’s experience, observing that many healthcare facilities in Malawi are a source of infection for patients, guardians, and visitors because of poor hygiene.

“Sanitation and hygiene in most of our public health facilities is a serious concern. People go to hospitals to get treated, but we have cases where patients and guardians have returned home with new health conditions contracted due to poor hygiene,” he says, citing washrooms as hotspots.

Matemba argues that healthcare facilities could promote good hygiene in Malawi and SADC.

“People gather in these facilities to seek services. That’s a huge advantage to drive home awareness messages and demonstrate by own standards how people can promote good hygiene in their homes,” says Matemba, who is also Executive Director for Health and Rights Education Programme (HREP), a local organisation.

But in all this, funding is a major factor, he observes.

“Hospital administrators tell us that if they have no money for a primary commodity like drugs, hence these perennial drug shortages we see, how can mops, handwashing materials and chemicals to clean toilets with become a priority?”

Matemba tells IPS that although civil society organisations have been campaigning for ages for the government to address the critical shortage of funding to hospitals, not much has changed.

“Development budget is always inadequate. Recurrent expenditures, already less than required, are further cut, and the little that remains hardly goes to the facilities in time. Treasury always says the resource envelope is limited,” says Matemba.

He says the strategy challenges Malawi as SADC Chair to lead the way for member states to improve the hygiene situation in the region by fixing their own.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, Adrian Chikumbe, tells IPS that the SADC strategy is an important approach in minimising transmission of infection in health facilities and communities.

According to Chikumbe, a recent assessment by the ministry reveals that almost a third of Malawi’s health care facilities lack running water and 80 percent of patient latrines had no associated hand washing facility.

The assessment also found that environmental cleanliness was generally below average, characterised by poor waste management practices.

He says most of the lower-level facilities in the country lack resources to maintain functional WASH infrastructure.

“The Government recognises that it cannot do everything alone. It, therefore, has plans to mobilise partner support led by district authorities to plan and prioritise water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure in all health facilities,” he says.

Erratic water supplies mean women in urban Zimbabwean cities, like Bulawayo, need to fetch water from water points. Studies have shown that while water, sanitation and hygiene are a women’s domain, they are not involved in water management. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
Bulawayo, ZIMBABWE , Oct 19 2021 (IPS)

Each morning, Langelihle Tshuma checks her taps to confirm the water supply before preparing for the day ahead.

Despite living in the city, the married housewife and mother of four has become accustomed to what in most cities would be considered an essential service.

“We are used to it now,” she said, referring to water cuts in Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo.

Water availability has become erratic in the city, with no clear schedule or fixed timetable to warn residents about when to expect dry faucets.

Tshuma joins scores of other residents to look for the nearest water point or the next house with a borehole in what is considered a middle-class suburb.

“It used to be kind of humiliating walking around the neighbourhood with buckets looking for water, but when you have young children, you learn humility to soldier on,” Tshuma told IPS.

While her experience is commonplace in this city of about 2 million people according to some estimates, it is but a microcosm of a global trend where women’s unpaid work includes fetching water, with women being left out in crucial decisions regarding water access, experts say.

There are concerns among researchers and experts that water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) issues have for years been regarded as a woman’s domain in developing countries, but that has not been reflected in the management of water resources.

A report launched last month by the Global Water Partnership (GWP) supported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) says women remain excluded from global water management despite women being primary water decision-makers at the household level.

According to the research findings in the report titled Advancing towards gender mainstreaming in water resources management, “when women are involved in the management of water resources, their communities achieve much better outcomes, improved water systems and economic and environmental benefits.”  The research canvassed 23 countries.

The GWP notes that while women’s role in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) was recognized three decades ago by the UN, there has been little progress as the sector remains male-dominated.

“Half of all countries reported limited or no achievement of gender objectives in their water management policies and plans,” said Darío Soto-Abril, Executive Secretary of Global Water Partnership (GWP).

“While some reasons for this low number might be a lack of robust data collection and monitoring tools, the number is still low enough for us to say: it’s past time for things to change,” Soto-Abril said.

As women such as Tshuma struggle to access and remain excluded from the decisions that bring water to their homes, experts note that gender mainstreaming is crucial to ensure commitment at the highest political levels for policy commitments is backed up by action.

“If there is good news, it is that there’s been a slight improvement compared to the baseline in 2017,” said Joakim Harlin, UNEP’s chief of Freshwater Ecosystems.

“The ability to integrate gender considerations in water policies is not related exclusively to levels of development – it’s also a question of having the political will to change cultural norms,” Harlin said.

Cultural norms have embedded the images of women and not men fetching water in urban municipalities of many developing countries.

“Women have been cast in roles as water carriers instead of water managers,” the GWP research notes.

“In many developing countries, women are the de facto water decision-makers in households. Research suggests that when women are involved in the management of water resources, their communities achieve better economic and environmental benefits. As the world’s population grows and climate change intensifies water scarcity, women are key to providing more sustainable access to this finite resource,” the report adds.

However, more still needs to be done along with increasing women’s participation in decision-making positions in line with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), says Liza Debevec, Senior Gender and Social Inclusion Specialist at the Global Water Partnership.

“It is not just about increasing women’s representation in councils and committees or coming up with a new general legal framework on gender protection, however important those actions are,” Debevec said.

“It is also about integrating gender issues in all policies in a cross-cutting manner, linking water to other relevant policy areas,” she said.

However, political will is seen as central to ensuring women are involved in policy-making decisions regarding water resources in line with the Integrated Water Resources Management Support Programme under Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6), which seeks clean water for all.

“Political will is urgent. At the top political level, we need a strong commitment to gender mainstreaming, or we’ll be swimming upstream,” Soto-Abril told IPS.

“Political will makes the practical actions successful. Some countries need more data, so they need to do a gender analysis. Others need to financially support the implementation of gender-sensitive practices and introduce accountability mechanisms,” she said.

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"Our wells and springs are drying up, and as a consequence of this depletion, our groundwater quality is also deteriorating" Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Rachita Vora and Smarinita Shetty
MUMBAI, India, Oct 29 2019 (IPS)

A majority of India’s water problems are those relating to groundwater—water that is found beneath the earth’s surface. This is because we are the largest user of groundwater in the world, and therefore highly dependent on it.

At just over 260 cubic km per year, our country uses 25 percent of all groundwater extracted globally, ahead of USA and China. And because 70 percent of the water supply in agriculture today is groundwater, it will remain the lifeline of India’s water supplies for years to come.

Despite this, we have an extremely poor understanding of groundwater, which impacts both policy and practice. In our conversation with Himanshu Kulkarni and Uma Aslekar of Advanced Centre for Water Resources and Development (ACWADAM), they walk us through some of the reasons why this is the case.

Why is it that we neither understand nor prioritise groundwater in our policies?

This is largely because of two reasons: Groundwater is invisible—it is literally not visible to the eye because it is well below the ground. What is out of sight, is usually out of mind! Groundwater is also a highly complex subject that is governed by many ‘conditionalities’. It is this ignorance, by both users and people in governance, that has contributed to the situation we find ourselves in today.

Moreover, groundwater education still focuses largely on ‘exploring’ new sources of groundwater that will lead to the ‘development’ of groundwater resources. The subject of groundwater in aquifers is often considered quite complex as compared to providing groundwater supplies from wells, even if these wells continue to become deeper and deeper as groundwater levels decline. In the gap between supply on one side, and demand on the other, we are losing out on components of groundwater management from many systems of education delivery.

We need a demystified but correct understanding of aquifers (underground rocks that are sources of groundwater), their properties and how they are used, so that we can make the critical mass of users and decision makers understand them and act on them appropriately.

We neither understand nor prioritise the groundwater issue because what is out of sight, is usually also out of mind. | Illustration – Priya Dali

What will that take?

We at ACWADAM conduct training programmes for various organisations and government agencies. If one is explaining the concept of aquifers, for instance, the semantics, pedagogy, and the delivery of training on the whole will need to be different for different stakeholders.

If one has to explain aquifers to a groundwater agency, hydrogeologists, or people with a technical background, one will need to use a different language than that when one is speaking to communities and end users.

Similarly, the lexicon on groundwater will need to be completely different if one is talking to decision makers and technocrats, who have no technical knowledge on the subject. The ability to clearly articulate and communicate the groundwater problem and the possible solutions, is therefore, the key to implementing processes of groundwater management.

If you were to state, simply, the primary issues when it comes to groundwater in India, what would they be?

There are basically three issues. The first is depletion. Our wells and springs are drying up, and as a consequence of this depletion, our groundwater quality is also deteriorating.

When there is less water in an aquifer, the concentration of ions increases. When aquifers get recharged sufficiently, contaminants are diluted. Whether it is groundwater use in agriculture or in domestic supply, serious issues of contamination like fluoride and arsenic, which are no longer isolated cases and are found across large regions of the country, must be addressed. This contamination is the second problem, and it is very often related to the first problem of depletion.

We need a demystified but correct understanding of aquifers (underground rocks that are sources of groundwater), their properties and how they are used, so that we can make the critical mass of users and decision makers understand them and act on them appropriately

The third, which is not readily perceived as a problem, is that of the increasing disconnect between groundwater and ecosystems, particularly due to the environmental impact of depletion and contamination. As a consequence of large-scale groundwater usage for human needs, the value of the service that aquifers provided to the environment—say to river flows—has significantly reduced. How does one then make the connection between the environment and groundwater, especially when that connection has been altered and severed?

Therefore, we need an integrated approach. Even if in one area, depletion seems to be the biggest problem, we need an approach that addresses contamination, and recognises the ecosystem role of groundwater in resolving the problem of depletion. Doing one and not the other will not help resolve any one problem in its entirety.

How then, do we solve the problem in its entirety, at scale?

Broad brush approaches implemented at scale will not work. Let us consider an example: you have a new idea to solve a groundwater problem, and it has five critical elements. The district you are working in has 20 talukas. You cannot implement all five components of your idea in those 20 talukas. So, what will you do? You will likely take the easiest option and leave the rest. This doesn’t work out since the complex natures of aquifers and human behaviours cannot be solved with a broad brush of a simple, big ticket solution. You need an appropriate (scientifically validated) and acceptable (communities must be able to agree and co-operate in implementation) solution to make impact.

Alternatively, you might choose to implement all five ideas in one village of each taluka, where they are possible to implement. But then scaling-out such solutions becomes challenging. There are thus no big-ticket solutions in groundwater. All the same, it is necessary to work at the micro level even though it is challenging to engage with policy makers who would rather have groundwater solutions that run across large swathes of the landscape; many of them would prefer solutions at scale that create a buzz in the short-term rather than an impact in the longer-term.

Given these inherent challenges, what is it that India needs to do?

If we are to address our water problems, there are a few things that the country needs:

Aggregate micro-level solutions to construct a larger picture that can inform policy

Groundwater in India is rather disaggregated in terms of its occurrence, usage, and problems. Hence, we need disaggregated approaches leading to customised solutions that are appropriate to locations and situations of groundwater problems. Further, it is important to pull together these smaller solution pieces to construct a larger picture. This is the reason why we need practitioners who have worked on the ground and attempted to solve the problems, to be actively involved in policy framing; else, things will not change and the divide between policies, and practices on groundwater management will only continue to widen further.

Stronger public institutions dedicated to groundwater management

Additionally, we have an institutional vacuum when it comes to dealing with groundwater. Let us consider an example from Maharashtra. More than 80 percent of Maharashtra’s rural drinking water supply comes from groundwater wells. Protecting and sustaining this source is a function of how groundwater is used in agriculture so that drinking water supply in the villages of the state remains secure.

The Ground Water Survey and Development Agency (GSDA) falls under the ambit of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation. It has little to do with water used for agriculture—which accounts for less than 5 percent of water used in rural Maharashtra—and hence cannot influence policy or usage with respect to that. Organisations like GSDA must be strengthened and encouraged to engage in partnership models of working with grassroots organisations that are working on community-level water management.

This is just one example of how a lack of institutional thinking impacts solutions. Many states don’t even have a GSDA equivalent. Strengthening agencies dealing with groundwater becomes quite important in this regard.

To demystify the science and involve people in solution-making

Some important questions we need to consider include: How does one get people to participate and cooperate in efforts dealing with groundwater management? How do communities convert competition and conflict to participation and cooperation? Our experience at ACWADAM is that when you undertake an effort in demystifying science, and involve communities and committed people in the development of that science, you can achieve improved decision making at any level. And once you achieve this, your outcomes automatically change even though they are often not ideal. However, even such imperfect outcomes significantly enhance water security in regions that depend on groundwater.

More attention and investment in promoting partnerships and collaborations

There is a grave need for infusing interdisciplinary science in the processes of groundwater management and governance. Only if and when such science is made to bear upon achieving decentralised water governance, will we be able to solve many problems on groundwater. It is important, therefore, to realise that no single agency holds the key to problem identification and resolution in the sector of groundwater. Hence, catalysing collaborations that integrate the many disciplines required to develop sustainable groundwater management solutions, is needed; such partnerships must form the backbone of public efforts to protect, restore, and manage groundwater resources.

Rachita Vora is Co-founder and Director at IDR. Before this, she led the Dasra Girl Alliance, a Rs. 250 crore multi-stakeholder platform that sought to improve maternal and child health outcomes, and empower adolescent girls in India. She has over a decade of experience, having led teams in the areas of financial inclusion, public health and CSR. She has also led functions across strategy, business development, communications and partnerships, and her writing has been featured in the Guardian, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Next Billion and Alliance Magazine. Rachita has an MBA from Judge Business School at Cambridge University and a BA in History from Yale University.

Smarinita Shetty is Co-founder and CEO at IDR. She has more than 20 years of experience leading functions across strategy, operations, sales and business development, largely in startup environments within corporates and social enterprises. Prior to IDR, Smarinita worked at Dasra, Monitor Inclusive Markets (now FSG), JP Morgan and The Economic Times. She also co-founded Netscribes–India’s first knowledge process outsourcing firm. Her work and opinion have been featured in The Economist, Times of India, Mint and The Economic Times. Smarinita has a BE in Computer Engineering and an MBA in Finance, both from Mumbai University.

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

At the perimetre of Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State. Credit: Jason E. Kaplan/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
NEW YORK, Dec 20 2016 (IPS)

Since the decision by the U.S. army to suspend the Dakota Access pipeline on 4 December, many are still unsure of the controversial pipeline’s future or its implications for other mega infrastructure projects affecting indigenous communities across North America.

After months of demonstrations by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and thousands of allies from across the world, the Army announced that it will not allow the 1,172-mile long pipeline to cross Lake Oahe in North Dakota.

The statement was met with celebrations and tears by those who have taken up residence in camps along the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers as part of the #NoDAPL movement.

“Everyone was very excited, very pleased at the camp,” said Sioux County native involved in #NoDAPL Cannupa Hanska Luger told IPS.

Among concerns over the pipeline is its risk of contaminating the Missouri River, the tribe’s main source of water.

However, the excitement over the Army’s decision did not last long, Luger said.

“Primarily this is an issue of Native people not being too comfortable and too steadfast with government decrees. All of our treaties have been broken…we were elated in the moment but then we also readied ourselves for any future statement or outcome,” Luger told IPS.

One such treaty is the 1851 treaty of Fort Laramie which defined Sioux territory as the land where DAPL is being constructed. Though it was later taken away under a 1868 treaty, the land remains disputed as some say they never ceded the territory.

Despite the recent decision and territorial disputes, Energy Transfer Partners, the oil company in charge of the  $3.8 billion project, has vowed to continue DAPL, stating: “[We] are fully committed to ensuring that this vital project is brought to completion and fully expect to complete construction of the pipeline without any additional rerouting in and around Lake Oahe. Nothing this Administration has done today changes that in any way.”

Many also fear that incoming President-elect Donald Trump will overturn the decision as he has vowed to divert billions of payments to UN climate programs towards building up domestic coal, oil and gas industries.

His cabinet nominations also suggest an increased focus on such industries including ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt – who has been battling President Obama’s climate change policies – as head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Rick Perry as Energy Secretary who, during his time as governor of Texas, expanded oil and gas development.

“This fight is not over, not even close. In fact, this fight is escalating,” said a coalition of grassroots organisations including Sacred Stone one of the Dakota Access resistance camps, pointing to the new administration as a source of uncertainty.

The struggle is far from over, not only for DAPL, which is just one of many extractive projects that threaten access to clean water for many indigenous communities on the continent.

One such case is the legacy of uranium mining in the Navajo Nation in the Southwestern United States.

During the Cold War, the U.S. government extracted uranium from the Navajo Reservation, which is home to the largest indigenous population in the country. According to the EPA, over 30 million tonnes of uranium ore was extracted from or adjacent to Navajo lands.

Executive Director of global water organisation DigDeep George McGraw remarked on the similarities between DAPL and uranium mining to IPS, calling it “if not sister problems, cousin problems.”

“The Sioux, like the Navajo, have struggled to maintain water access for the majority of their population in general…so to come in and threaten, in a really meaningful way, the resources that they do have like a river is an even more gross offense,” he said.

Decades of uranium mining have contributed to a water crisis leaving approximately 40 percent of Navajo households without clean running water.

McGraw noted that water contamination has only worsened because mines have not been cleaned up. There are over 500 abandoned mines with radioactivity levels as high as 25 times above what is considered to be safe.

Such exposure has led to alarmingly high rates of cancer in a population which the medical community previously thought had “cancer immunity.”

By treaty and law, the United States is responsible for protecting the health of the Navajo Nation. However, McGraw pointed to unfulfilled treaty obligations, similar to that of the Sioux Nation.

Despite a recent settlement between the Navajo Nation and the U.S. government to help clean up 16 abandoned uranium mines, access to clean water remains elusive as ongoing coal mining in the Navajo reservation poses a further threat to drinking water sources.

McGraw noted that such extractive processes tend to take place more often on Native American land.

“That’s symptomatic of our treatment of Native Americans when it comes to all these energy issues…most of the country ignores this place and they can get away with that, “ he told IPS.

Chair of the Center for World Indigenous Studies (CWIS) Rudolph Ryser echoed similar sentiments to IPS, stating: “The indigenous world is invisible to the rest of the world…so it’s easy for developers, corporations, governments to press economic development projects that advantage them at the expense of indigenous nations and it’s been going on for a long time.”

Ryser particularly pointed to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion in Canada which was recently approved by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The expansion will create a twinned pipeline which was increase oil transports from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels per day.

Some First Nations have strongly opposed the project, citing concerns of an increased risk of an oil spill. Oil company Kinder Morgan only garnered support for the pipeline from one-third of the 120 indigenous groups it consulted.

The Canadian province of Alberta also approved another three oil sands projects including Husky Energy’s Saleski project, the same company responsible for a July oil spill in the North Saskatchewan River from a different pipeline.

Approximately 250,000 litres of oil was leaked, impacting numerous cities including the James Smith Cree Nation territory. Five samples from the First Nation’s water revealed levels of toxins unfit for human consumption.

Though the DAPL movement was important in that it brought different tribes together, Ryser said that as long as these projects continue, the “struggle is not over.”

Similarly, Luger noted that stopping one pipeline does not mean the end.

“The solidarity that was created within Native communities at Standing Rock…set a precedent where we went and decided that we must help one another. And because most of these extractive resources are taking place on or near Native borders, we also know that we are readying ourselves to work towards the future and help one another within our communities nationally and internationally,” he concluded.

The pastoralists of Ethiopia’s Somali region are forced to move constantly in search of pasture and watering holes for their animals. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 28 2016 (IPS)

Ten presidents and prime ministers from around the world will work together to resolve the growing global water crisis amid warnings that the world may face a 40 percent shortfall in water availability by 2030.

The figures continue to be staggering:  despite improvements, at least 663 million still do not have access to safe drinking water.

And projecting into the future, the United Nations says an estimated 1.8 billion people – out of a total world population of over 7 billion – will live in countries or regions with water scarcities.

The crisis has been aggravated by several factors, including climate change (triggering droughts) and military conflicts (where water is being used as a weapon of war in several war zones, including Iraq, Yemen and Syria).

The High Level Panel on Water, announced jointly by the the United Nations and World Bank last week. is expected to mobilise financial resources and scale up investments for increased water supplies. It will be co-chaired by President Ameenah Gurib of Mauritius and President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico. The other eight world leaders on the panel include: Malcolm Turnbull, Prime Minister of Australia; Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh; János Áder, President of Hungary; Abdullah Ensour, Prime Minister of Jordan; Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of the Netherlands; Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa; Macky Sall, President of Senegal; and Emomali Rahmon, President of Tajikistan.

At a UN panel discussion last week, UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson of Sweden said water lies at the nexus between sustainable development and climate action.

Referring to the two extremes in weather patterns– droughts on the one hand and floods on the other – Eliasson said one of his colleagues who visited Pakistan after a huge flood, remarked: “Too much water and not a drop to drink.”

When world leaders held a summit meeting last September to adopt the UN’s post-2015 development agenda, they also approved 17 SDGs, including the elimination of extreme poverty and hunger and the provision of safe drinking water to every single individual in the world – by a targeted date of 2030.

But will this target be reached by the 15 year deadline?

Sanjay Wijesekera, Associate Director, Programmes, and Chief of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at the UN children’s agency UNICEF, told IPS: “As we enter the SDG era, there is no doubt that the goal to get ‘safely managed’ water to every single person on earth within the next 15 years is going to be a challenge. What we have learned from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is that water cannot be successfully tackled in isolation.”

He said water safety is compromised every day from poor sanitation, which is widespread in many countries around the world, particularly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Currently, nearly two billion people worldwide are estimated to be drinking water which may be faecally contaminated.

As a result, UNICEF and others working on access to safe water, will have to redouble their efforts on improving people’s access to and use of toilets, and especially to end open defecation.

“As we address water, sanitation and hygiene, we must also take into account climate change. Droughts, floods, and extreme weather conditions all have an effect on the availability and the safety of water,” said Wijesekera.

He also pointed out that some 160 million children under-5 live in areas at high risk of drought, while around half a billion live in flood zones.

Asked how best the water crisis can be resolved, Darcey O’Callaghan, International Policy Director at Food and Water Watch, told IPS the global water crisis must be addressed in two primary ways.

“First, we must provide clean, safe, sufficient water to all people because water is a human right. Affordability is a key component of meeting this need. Second, we must protect water sustainability by not overdrawing watersheds beyond their natural recharge rate.”

“If we allow water sources to run dry, then we lose the ability to protect people’s human rights. So clearly, we must address these two components in tandem,” she said.

To keep water affordable, she pointed out, it must be managed by a public entity, not a private, for-profit one. Allowing corporations to control access to water (described as “water privatization”) has failed communities around the globe, resulting in poor service, higher rates and degraded water quality.

Corporations like Veolia and Suez — and their subsidiaries around the world—are seeking to profit off of managing local water systems, she said, pointing out that financial institutions like the World Bank and regional development banks often place conditions on loans to developing countries that require these systems to be privatized.

“But this is a recipe for disaster. Profits should not be the priority when it comes to providing water and sanitation services to people”, said O’Callaghan.

Asked if the public should pay for water, she said there is no longer any question that water and sanitation are both human rights. What the public pays for is water infrastructure upkeep and the cost of running water through the networks that deliver this resource to our homes, schools, businesses and government institutions.

“The UN has established guidelines for water affordability –three percent of household income—and these guidelines protect the human right to water. If the water service fee is beyond a household’s ability to pay, it is a human rights violation.”

One approach that has shown promise are public-public partnerships (PPPs). In contrast to privatization, which puts public needs into the hands of profit-seeking corporations, PPPs bring together public officials, workers and communities to provide better service for all users more efficiently.

PUPs allow two or more public water utilities or non-governmental organizations to join forces and leverage their shared capacities. PPPs allow multiple public utilities to pool resources, buying power and technical expertise, she said.

The benefits of scale and shared resources can deliver higher public efficiencies and lower costs. These public partnerships, whether domestic or international, improve and promote public delivery of water through sharing best practices, said O’Callaghan.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

At least 18,802 people were killed in Iraq and another 36,245 were injured; this is the number of civilians killed in violence over the past two years and it is staggering.

The figures given are most likely an underestimate and are casualties incurred from January 1, 2014 through October 31, 2015, according to a report by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the United Nations Human Rights Agency (OHCHR). About half of the deaths reported took place in Baghdad alone.

Emirates News Agency carried a commentary from the Gulf Today looking at the new United Nations report on Iraq and the instability rocking the region.

“The reason is that the figures capture those who were killed or maimed by overt violence, but ignores the fact that countless others have died from lack of access to basic food, water or medical care,” said ‘The Gulf Today’ this week.

“Around 3.2 million people have been internally displaced in the country since the beginning of 2014 when the dreaded Daesh group took over large parts of the country. As is known now, the Daesh terrorists engaged in numerous inhuman activities including killings in gruesome public spectacles, beheading, bulldozing, burning alive and throwing people off the top of buildings.

“Child soldiers who tried to flee were mercilessly murdered by the terrorists, while continuing to subject women and children to sexual violence, particularly in the form of sexual slavery.

“As per the UN report, an estimated 3,500 people, mainly women and children, are believed to be held as slaves in Iraq by Daesh militants who impose a harsh rule marked by gruesome public executions.

“Such horrors were what led to Iraqi refugees attempting to escape to Europe and other regions. Ramadi has been touted as the first major success for Iraq’s US-backed army since it collapsed in the face of Daesh’s advance across the country’s north and west in mid-2014,” said the paper.

“But, as per indications, clearing the city of militants and explosives could take weeks. The discovery of more civilians than expected trapped among the ruins, after what the survivors say was a deliberate effort by fighters to use them as shields, suggests future battles against Daesh could be more complicated.

It said, “Ramadi, where nearly half a million people once lived, sadly has witnessed widespread destruction. The heartless terrorists continue to kill, maim and displace Iraqi civilians in the thousands and create endless suffering. Many of the actions by Daesh militants surely amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

“The perpetrators of such deeds should be made accountable and pay for the extreme cruelty they committed,” concluded the newspaper.

“The violence suffered by civilians in Iraq remains staggering,” said the UN report. “The so-called ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL) continues to commit systematic and widespread violence and abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law. These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide.”

The report compiled by UNAMI and OHCHR is based largely on testimony given by the victims. Some of these people were survivors and witnesses of human rights violations. Among those giving the accounts were internally displaced people.

“During the reporting period, ISIL killed and abducted scores of civilians, often in a targeted manner,” the report notes. “Victims include those perceived to be opposed to ISIL ideology and rule; persons affiliated with the government, such as former Iraqi security forces (ISF), police officers, former public officials and electoral workers; professionals, such as doctors and lawyers; journalists; and tribal and religious leaders.”

The report adds that “others have been abducted or killed on the pretext of aiding or providing information to Government security forces. Many have been subjected to adjudication by ISIL self-appointed courts which, in addition to ordering the murder of countless people, have imposed grim punishments such as stoning and amputations.”

“ISIL continued to subject women and children to sexual violence, particularly in the form of sexual slavery,” the report said.

The UN indicated that concerning reports have also been received of unlawful killings and abductions perpetrated by some elements associated with pro-Government forces.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein indicated that the civilian death toll may be actually much higher, and called for urgent action for those freely committing the violence to stop it.

“Even the obscene casualty figures fail to accurately reflect exactly how terribly civilians are suffering in Iraq,” he said. “The figures capture those who were killed or maimed by overt violence, but countless others have died from the lack of access to basic food, water or medical care.”

“This report lays bare the enduring suffering of civilians in Iraq and starkly illustrates what Iraqi refugees are attempting to escape when they flee to Europe and other regions. This is the horror they face in their homelands,” Said the Human Rights Commissioner.

Mr. Zeid also made an appeal to the government to undertake legislative amendments to grant Iraqi courts jurisdiction over international crimes and to become party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

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Water is at the core of Sustainable Development and it is crucial in Climate Change adaptation and mitigation strategies. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Francesco Farnè
ROME, Jan 1 2016 (IPS)

“Water is at the core of the Lima-Paris Action Agenda (LPAA), but it is true that for a long time water and oceans issues have been marginalized in climate conferences, considering that 90 per cent of natural catastrophes are linked to water and 40 per cent of global population will face water scarcity from now to 2050,” stated Marie-Ségolène Royal, French Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, during the press conference at the launch of the #ClimateIsWater initiative at COP21. “It is through water that it is possible to measure climate change impacts,” she said.

On 2 December, “Resilience Day,” the international water community gathered in Paris Le Bourget for the launch of the #ClimateIsWater initiative. A series of events and a press conference took place with the aim of increasing visibility and raising awareness on how water is key to addressing climate change. The initiative brought together several organizations representing civil society and stakeholders.

Sustainable water management is fundamental for addressing climate change. “Actors across all sectors should contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies integrating water into future climate architecture.” In order to meet this goal, financing is a crucial aspect, declared Torgny Holmgren, of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), during the press conference.

Water is at the base of all forms of life on earth, and its existence on the planet created the preconditions for the origin of life and the billion years of evolution. Through the history of humanity many civilizations flourished depending on a water source. Mesopotamia, (land between the rivers in ancient Greek), and known as the “cradle of civilization” depended on the Tigris and Euphrates. Ancient Egypt developed on the Nile, the Chinese empire prospered along the Yellow and Yangzi basins and developed a complex administrative machine based on water management for agricultural irrigation.

It is possible to say that human development is water-driven, and this crucial resource is vital to economic and social prosperity. Today in many countries water is a common good, underlining the importance of its universal access. On the other hand, especially in western countries, water is often taken for granted. But without being able to either control its abundance as in floods and bursting sea levels and extreme weather or its scarcity with drought and desertification, water can be catastrophic.

In 2015, the World Economic Forum ranked water as the highest risk affecting global society. According to World Water Council (WWC), one in eight people live without safe drinking water and two people in five do not have adequate sanitation globally. Moreover, nearly 3.5 million deaths from water related diseases are registered every year. Unfortunately, the most affected people live in the global south.

In addition to these shocking facts, directly linked to our so called “water crisis,” there are very strong connections between water and some of the core areas of sustainable development, such as agriculture and food security, demography and urbanization, as well as climate and the environment.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), agricultural irrigation accounts for 70 per cent of global water withdrawals, an impressive ratio considering demographers’ preoccupations for population growth projections. Indeed, food demand is expected to increase by 60 per cent and energy by 100 per cent by 2050.

Water is inextricably connected to energy. It is necessary not only for hydropower, but also for cooling power plants, for oil and gas hydraulic fracturing or fracking, and for biofuels. Some 1.3 billion people, mainly in Africa, have no access to electricity.

New urban development from 2010-30 is expected to equal what was built in all of human history. This will increase water withdrawals from municipalities, implying issues of access, infrastructure, sanitation and safety from extreme water hazards.

Surprisingly, in spite of all the above evidence, for a long time water has not been at the top of global agenda. It is not highlighted in climate issues, even though “the effects of climate change will be felt mainly in the water cycle, “ said Benedito Braga, President of WWC, during the press conference. Water management has a great potential for both Climate Change adaptation and mitigation, he said.

According to WWC estimates, there have already been 2.5 trillion dollar economic losses from disasters 70 per cent related to floods and droughts so far this century. And other key issues such as migration and infrastructure damage are connected to climate disasters related to water.

Even though water is not specifically mentioned in the final Paris Agreement, it is possible the international water community is gaining momentum. At the seventh World Water Council held in Daegu & Gyeongbuk last April, the Republic of Korea was a notable participant. This council also brought water into the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include a goal completely dedicated to water.

SDG 6 aims at ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. SDG 6 covers the entire water cycle, including the management of water, wastewater and ecosystem resources, and have strong linkages to all of the other SDGs. In fact, its realization would mean a huge step towards the achievement of the 2030 Agenda.

There is further evidence that civil society plays a crucial role in mainstreaming water in the Global Agenda. In fact, the LPAA that brought water at the centre of discussions in Paris, involves national governments, cities, regions and other sub national entities, international organizations, civil society, indigenous peoples, women, youth, academic institutions, as well as businesses. And over 300 organisations signed Paris pact on water and adaptation to climate change in river basins at COP21.

The Eighth Water Council will be held in Brasilia, Brazil in 2018. The fact that a developing country and one of the countries most affected by the water crisis will host the event puts once again the attention on the central role of emerging economies in addressing climate and water issues.

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The link between women in climate change is a cross-cutting issue that deserves greater recognition at climate negotiations. It is pervasive, touching everything; from health and agriculture to sanitation and education.

Women from developing countries witness the nexus between climate change and gender issues on a first-hand basis. They are oftentimes highly dependent on the land and water resources for survival and are left in insecure positions. Climate change is not just an environmental issue, but links to social justice, equity, and human rights, all of which have gender elements.

A female perspective is critical to the success of the 2015 Climate Conference (COP21), which strives to find a global agreement to tackle climate change. In order for it to be effective, it must integrate gender equality, particularly women’s empowerment and gender responsiveness to the vulnerability of rural women.

During the back-and-forth iterations of the climate agreement’s draft, of which several versions were published in the last two weeks, gender was treated as an accessory element that could be removed and bargained with, and all but a handful of parties ignored it. They are wrong.

Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa are three of the most climate vulnerable continents in the world and although they contribute the least to climate change, the women in their countries endure the brunt of its severe impact.

Millions of people in Asia are extremely vulnerable to climate change, especially women because of their traditional, gender-prescribed roles. In many rural areas the mobility of women is very limited, as women working outdoors is often frowned upon due to conservative social perceptions. So while men from climate change-affected areas often migrate to cities and less climate vulnerable regions in search of work, women are left to take care of the homes and children. This confinement to houses translates to economic dependence and lack of access to information such as early warning, which contributes to increasing women’s vulnerability.

Women in Asia usually have more climate sensitive tasks, such as fetching water and preparing food, which increases their vulnerability in the context of climate change. The UN Development Program (UNDP) field research has shown that fetching water involves women and girls commuting over long distances. With the increasing frequency and intensity of floods, women regularly have to navigate through waterlogged areas for fetching water and cooking, which exposes them to the risks of drowning, snakebites, and skin diseases.

Halfway around the globe, women face similar climate-related issues. Caribbean households are largely matriarchal and women find themselves at the frontline of the need for climate adaptation and mitigation.

Women have the prime responsibility of taking care of everyone in the home and are affected by food security and water scarcity. Rural women are particularly vulnerable, especially smallholder producers, marginalised farmers, and agricultural workers living in rural areas.

Whether the food or water shortages are due to the increased amount and intensity of hurricanes or drought, their chances of living decent lives are not high and aren’t getting better. Understanding this point of view is important for successful formulation and execution of climate adaptation strategies.

According to Mildred Crawford, President of the Jamaica Network of Rural Women Producers,” Agriculture needs more visibility in the negotiations. Women are actors in the food chain and need finance to assist small farmers to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Women groups are already organised; so incentives can be given to them to control carbon from waste in their community.”

The Caribbean is in its worst drought in the past five years. According to Mary Robinson, former Prime Minister of Ireland, and also former head of t UN’s High Commission on Human Rights, the climate draft needs to have a sharper gender focus in order to ensure that women have greater access to climate finance, renewable technologies and adaptation capacity. Indeed, climate campaigning should not be narrowed to emissions reductions, carbon trading and transfer of technology, but it should strive to go beyond.

Along with these, it should take note of the fact that most farmers in developing countries are women and therefore adaptation applies strongly to them. Gender applies across the board, it is not something to be used conveniently.
Women from developing countries need to be empowered to play major roles in the climate change fight as they stand to lose so much.

Kalyani Raj, member in charge of All India Women’s Conference, argues that it is crucial to give vulnerable women a voice and include them in policy planning.

“A lot of women have developed micro-level adaptation approaches, indigenous solutions and traditional knowledge that are not being replicated at the macro level,” she said. “So policies should be focused on upscaling these instead of proposing one-size-fits-all measures for climate change adaptation.”

In Africa, the climate change impact on gender issues is mainly linked to agriculture, food security and natural disasters. According to the 2011 Economic Brief of the African Development Bank (AFDB), out of Africa’s 53 countries, women represent 40 percent or more of the agricultural workforce in 46 of them. This sector is characterised as vulnerable because generally it does not comprise formal sector jobs with contracts and income security.

“The poor are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and the majority of the 1.5 billion people living on $1 a day or less are women,” pointed out UNFPA in the 2009 State of World Population report. Furthermore, in a sample of 141 countries over the period 1981–2002, it was found that gender differences in deaths from natural disasters are directly linked to women’s economic and social rights. In inequitable societies, more women than men die from disaster.

As young women from these three vulnerable continents, we are calling for proper representation of women in the climate agreement. The cry of the rural woman is a reality that we must all face. However, we must recognise that women are not just victims, we are powerful agents for change. Therefore, women need to be included in the decision-making processes and allowed to contribute their unique expertise and knowledge to adapt to climate change, because any climate change intervention that excludes women’s perspective and any policy that is gender blind, is destined to fail.

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Zimbabwe’s planned Batoka Gorge power project on the Zambezi River is expected to generate 2,400 megawatts (MW) of electricity, upward from an initial 1,600 MW, but the worsening power cuts that are being blamed on low water levels have renewed concerns about the effects of climate change on mega dams.

Batoka Gorge Hydro Electric Power plant. Credit: Construction Review Online

In the past two months, the country’s energy utility has increased power rationing, with rolling power blackouts being experienced for up to 20 hours across the country per day.

Zimbabwe has for years relied on hydroelectricity, and is one of a number of African countries that are banking on hydropower to spur economic growth, with multibillion dollar dams expected to generate thousands of megawatts.

While there is no timetable of when construction of the 3 billion dollar Batoka Gorge Dam will commence and whose eventual economic dividend will only be realised after a decade of construction, it will add much needed energy in Zimbabwe where power generation stands at around 1,600 MW against a national demand of 2,200 MW.

Officials say on completion of the Batoka hydropower plant, the country will be a power exporter.

However, the long running power crisis has stalled economic expansion and has in fact forced the closure of major companies, the latest being Sable Chemicals, which was this month switched off the national grid in what energy minister Samuel Udenge said was part of short-term strategy to avail energy to other sectors.

But the switch-off forced the country’s sole fertiliser plant to shut down operation and left more than 500 employees jobless, company officials say.

The company owes the power utility 150 million dollars.

According to Minister Undenge, 80 per cent of Zimbabwe does not have access to electricity, and the Batoka Gorge hydropower plant, a joint project with Zambia that will draw water from the Zambezi, a transboundary water body shared by eight countries, is expected to boost power production and bring electricity to remote rural areas.

Early this month, Minister Undenge told parliament that the Zambezi River catchment area was affected by rainfall the patterns of other countries.

“Water is still flowing into the Zambezi River from the north, but we are drawing more water than what is flowing in, hence the continued decline in the water level,” Undende said, explaining the reduced power production.

It is these concerns about low water levels that have experts worried, with questions being raised about whether mega dams are viable investments in the long term, citing climate uncertainty and concerns about reduced run-off that would affect dam water levels and ultimately reduce power generation.

In fact, the worsening power crisis in both Zimbabwe and Zambia is being blamed on low water levels at the Zambezi river.

Researchers at International Rivers, an organisation that looks at the state of the world’s rivers and how local communities can benefit from them, warn that the big dam projects could be rendered useless in the long term because of climate change and reduced run-off.

They favour smaller dams for localised power generation, but smaller dams also cost money which Zimbabwe does not have.

Last year, the climate ministry announced that the country will be constructing more dams to cushion the county against climate uncertainty, at the same time advising heavy industrial electricity consumers to construct their own power generating plants.

In the absence of these private power generators, the Batoka Gorge Dam is being touted as the ultimate solution to the longstanding energy deficit despite warnings that the project could present its own problems as it does not address climate-related future realities.

Peter Bosshard, Interim Executive Director of International Rivers, says the Zambezi river basin, the location of the Batoka Gorge Dam, has one of the most variable climates in the world which will increase the dam’s hydrological risks.

“The (UN’s) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that the river (Zambezi) may suffer the worst potential climate impact among eleven major African river basins,” Bosshard told IPS.

“Multiple studies have estimated that streamflow in the Zambezi will decrease by 26 to 40 per cent by 2050,” he said, adding that “in spite of these serious predictions, the proposed Batoka Gorge Dam has not been evaluated for the risks of climate change.”

But Hodson Makurira, a senior hydrologist at the University of Zimbabwe does not agree.

“That would be an oversimplification of a complicated and highly uncertain projection of future events,” he told IPS.

“The same climate change predictions are forecasting an increase in extreme events, droughts and floods. You would (then) want to capture as much flood water as possible through increased storage. That would cushion you against periods of low flows,” Makurira said.

“Nobody knows the exact magnitude of reduction in flows due to climate change so it may still make economic sense to build dams,” he told IPS.

Bosshard said the dam project’s feasibility study dates from 1993, “and climate change considerations have not been integrated.”

“The project is based on historical streamflow data, which do reflect future realities. Investors, financiers and tax payers should be aware that the studies for this multi-billion dollar project seriously over-estimate its economic viability,” Bosshard said.

But for Minister Undenge, who is increasingly under pressure to solve Zimbabwe’s energy crisis, neither financing nor climate change will stop this ambitious mega dam.

(End)

By H.R.H. Princess Sarah Zeid
AMMAN, Oct 30 2015 (IPS)

The 193 member states of the United Nations have adopted an ambitious 15-year sustainable development agenda, the 2030 Global Goals.

H.R.H. Princess Sarah Zeid

To enter through the school gates, I had to negotiate a fetid stream of sewage, broken glass and garbage. The condition of the school building itself was terrible, and even worse were the bathrooms. You could see their appalling state because they had no doors, and thus, zero privacy. All this in a place where the temperature can reach above 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius) – it was so hot I felt as if my cheeks were frying.

I look back at this now through the eyes of a mother, and my horror is all the greater. No girl could go to this school, because no girl could go to the bathroom. No child could safely attend this school, because no child could do so without being exposed to disease.

With daughters denied education, confined to home and sons locked in a cycle of exposure to ill health, how can we expect women to participate in commerce, politics, peace and sustainability? How do we think the next generation is going to be educated, skilled and healthy enough to make a positive contribution?

The solutions to women’s and children’s dignity, health and wellbeing lie well beyond the health sector alone, and demand instead an integrated approach, including solutions that deliver water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in health and in education.

No one’s needs divide neatly into our professional sectors, and sustainable wellbeing and prosperity will not come from fragmented interventions. A holistic approach spanning across all these domains is urgently needed.

The linkages between WASH, health, education and nutrition for that matter are stark. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, more than half the cases of measles in the country are caused by lack of clean water, and poor WASH conditions are a leading cause of malnutrition.

Illness and death in childbirth, and in maternal and child health, are not only the result of the lack of access to quality medical care, nursing or pharmaceuticals. They also happen because nearly 40 per cent of health facilities worldwide have no source of water.

In low-income countries – where preventable mortality is at its highest – an estimated 50 per cent of health care facilities lack access to the electricity they need to boil water and sterilize instruments.

WASH also helps promote gender equality. If water, sanitation and hygiene are designed so that the practical burdens women carry daily are reduced, they will be able to play broader and more creative roles in their community’s development, paving the way towards equitable development in countries and globally. Everyone benefits from these contributions.

There is recognition of the importance of joining up. Last autumn, 16 researchers from the World Health Organization, Unicef, WaterAid and others came together to call for action on joining water, sanitation and hygiene to efforts on maternal and newborn health. The World Health Organization has launched an action plan to address the need for water, sanitation and hygiene in healthcare facilities.

This new sustainable development agenda and, quite frankly, the state of the world today, demands of us another dimension of this integration, too: an integration of our development and humanitarian efforts.

The renewed Every Women Every Child Global Strategy for Women and Children’s Health is working to make this happen. Headed by the Office of the UN Secretary General and supported by a global movement of governments, philanthropic institutions, multi-lateral organizations, civil society organizations, the business community and academics, the renewed Strategy gives new priority to humanitarian and fragile settings and pledges the needed integration to save more lives as life is given.

After all, the right to live life in dignity, the rights to health and to water and sanitation are human rights, universal and indivisible. They are rights to be upheld even in the toughest of situations and at the hardest of times. However, without joined-up pipelines of delivery to enable that flow of human dignity for everyone, everywhere, the promise of the Global Goals will just drain away.

(End)

Excerpt:

By Geeta Rao Gupta
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 9 2015 (IPS)

The new Sustainable Development Goals, agreed upon recently by the member states of the United Nations, are all interconnected, as has been reiterated time and again. However, it is in the new Goal 6 – “Ensure access to water and sanitation for all”—for which this interconnectedness is most apparent.

Geeta Rao Gupta

Water flows throughout the 2030 Development Agenda. And sanitation and hygiene underpin any possible gains from access to water.

If we do not reach Goal 6, the other goals and targets will not be reached. Progress in the areas of education, health, inequality and extreme poverty all depends on how well we do on water and sanitation.

The United Nations some years ago declared that access to water and sanitation is a basic human right. However today, 663 million people are without access to adequate drinking water and 2.4 billion lack adequate toilets.

We at UNICEF are particularly concerned about the children, who are disproportionately affected by the lack of access to these basic needs.

It affects their health. Water and sanitation related diseases are one of the leading causes of death in children under five. Without access to sanitation hundreds of them fall ill and die every single day from preventable causes, particularly diarrhoea and other fecal-oral diseases.

It affects their education. In many communities, girls stay out of school because they need to fetch water; because they do not have a safe space to use when they menstruate; because they must help their mothers care for those who are sick – often from water-borne diseases.

It affects their nutritional status and their development. There is emerging evidence of direct linkages between lack of access to water and sanitation, and chronic malnutrition. Around 159 million children worldwide are stunted (short height for age), a condition which causes irreversible physical and cognitive damage. The repercussions of stunting can be felt beyond the individual child. It can significantly diminish the learning and future earning potential of entire generations, and thus negatively affect the local and national economy.

It affects equality and equity. One important aim in the new SDGs is the goal to reduce inequalities. New evidence from the World Bank shows that investing in water and sanitation for the poorest 20 per cent of a population yields greater economic returns than investing in the other quintiles and thus has the potential to reduce societal inequalities.

Our data from 45 developing countries show that in 7 out of 10 households, the burden of collecting water falls to women and girls, so access would also aid gender equity.

A side event in the margins of the UN General Assembly, hosted by the governments of the Netherlands, South Africa, Hungary and Bangladesh, concluded that targeting the poorest and the most marginalized will require an immense mind-shift for governments. But it must be done.

It cannot be done without strengthening institutions and improving the accountability of governments and service providers. And it will not be done without involving those who have the most at stake – the poor, women, and adolescents – in planning and in monitoring of services. Their influence has already been brought to bear in the drafting of Goal 6, the fastest agreed-upon goal.

It is no coincidence that impressive results are achieved by working closely with those directly affected. Partnership with them is not a ‘nice-to-have’ but a must-have.

In short, access to water and sanitation is not only a matter of dignity and human rights, but fundamental to our ability to attain any of the goals the governments of the world have just adopted.

We must start right away on working on Goal 6, and it can’t be business as usual: we need to start with the most disadvantaged, or we risk losing the gains we have so painstakingly made in the last 15 years, and we endanger the future. There is no time to waste.

(End)

Excerpt:

Shanty town near Cape Town, South Africa. Credit: Chell Hill(CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

By Busani Bafana
LUANDA, Sep 3 2015 (IPS)

Slums are a curse and blessing in fast urbanising Africa. They have challenged Africa’s progress towards better living and working spaces but they also provide shelter for the swelling populations seeking a life in cities.

Rural Africans are pouring into towns and cities in search of jobs and other opportunities, but African cities – 25 of which are among the 100 fastest growing cities in the world – are not delivering the much needed support services, including housing, at the same rate as people are demanding them.

The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) projects that nearly 1.3 billion people – more than the current population of China – will be living in cities in Africa in the next 15 years."We must encourage, identify ‎and celebrate the continent. Our schools need to train architects and city planners in no other way than to appreciate and promote African architectural culture" – Tokunbo Omisore, past president of the African Architects Association

Africa’s urbanisation rate of four percent a year is already over-stretching the capacity of its cities to provide adequate shelter, water, sanitation, energy and even food for its growing population.

Safe and resilient cities and human settlements is one of the aims of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be agreed on in New York next month. As the SDGs replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) launched in September 2000, UN-Habitat has largely succeeded in meeting the target of taking 100 million people out of slums by the time the MDGs expired in Asia, China and part of India … but not in Africa.

However, Tokunbo Omisore, past president of the African Architects Association, believes that Africa can solve its slums situation by planning and developing towns and cities that strike a balance in the provision of housing, water sanitation, energy and transport while luring investments to create jobs.

According to Omisore, the problem lies in the fact that so far settlements have been developed for people but not with people, and he asks if Africa wants the humane aspects of its cultural values and heritage reflected in its cities or has to replicate the cities of developed nations to become classified as developed.

“Slums and sprawls demand understanding the reasons and problems resulting in their existence and identifying the class of people living there,” says Omisore.

“African governments focus on the infrastructural development of developed nations without consideration for the human development of our different communities and ensuring creation of employment opportunities which is key to the sustainability of our cities. People make the cities, not the other way around.”

By redefining slums, policy-makers in Africa can work more on understanding the rural-urban links to arrive at African solutions for African problems, he argues, calling for a “campaign of marketing Africa and appreciating what is African.”

Aisa Kirabo Kacyira, Assistant Secretary General and Deputy Executive Director of UN-Habitat. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

“We must encourage, identify ‎and celebrate the continent. Our schools need to train architects and city planners in no other way than to appreciate and promote African architectural culture.”

At a time Africa is grappling with the issue of land tenure, particularly in agriculture, limited and often expensive land in urban settlements is posing the question of whether Africa should build up or build across, and there are those who argue that densification is the answer to Africa’s housing woes.

At the 2nd Africa Urban Infrastructure Investment Forum hosted by United Cities and Local Government-Africa (UCLG-A) and the government of Angola in Luanda in April,  Aisa Kirabo Kacyira, Assistant Secretary General and Deputy Executive Director of UN-Habitat argued that densification is an avenue for the transformation of Africa and its cities.

“If urbanisation should be possible and if we are going to build landed housing without going up, it simply means it will be expensive, but if we have to densify then we need to go up,” said Kacyira.

“Yes, let us stick to our identity and culture, but let us stick to principles that make economic sense. We are not going to have vibrant cities by running away from the problem and spreading and sprawling.”

Kacyira also argued that by planning, reducing desertification and recycling waste, African cities can help reduce their carbon footprint, a key issue on the post-MDG agenda.

Meanwhile, a Kenya housing project could represent a model for the future of

Housing in Africa. Muungano Wa Wanavijiji, a federation of slum dwellers, has partnered with Shack/Slum Dwellers International to provide decent shelter for people living in slums by creating a low cost three-level house called  ‘The Footprint’, which costs 1,000 dollars.

The project has built 300 houses in two settlements this year. Dwellers pay 20 percent towards the structure and are given support to access a microloan covering 80 percent of the cost.

The UCLG-A network which represents over 1,000 cities in Africa, estimates that Africa needs to mobilise investments of 80 billion dollars a year for upgrading urban infrastructure to meet the needs of urban residents.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Sipian Lesan, a semi-nomadic pastoralist from Lekuru village in Samburu County, Kenya, taking care of one of his edible fruit-producing plants. Credit: Robert Kibet/IPS

By Robert Kibet
SAMBURU, Kenya, Jul 30 2015 (IPS)

Sipian Lesan bends to attend to the Vangueria infausta or African medlar plant that he planted almost two years ago. He takes great care not to damage the soft, velvety, acorn-shaped buds of this hardy and drought-resistant plant. ”All over here it is dry,” says the 51-year-old Samburu semi-nomadic pastoralist.

“We hope that every manyatta [homestead] will have a small food forest and that these will grow in concentric circles until they meet and touch each other and expand, creating a continuous food forest" – Aviram Rozin, founder of Sadhana Forest
Sipian is from Lekuru, a remote village located in the lower ranges of the Samburu Hills, an area dotted by Samburu homesteads commonly known as ‘manyattas’, some 358 km north of Kenya’s capital Nairobi. Here, the small villages are hot and arid, dominated by thorny acacia and patches of bare red earth that signify overgrazed land.

Samburu County is one of the regions in Kenya ravaged by recurrent drought, with most of the population living below the poverty line.

Climate change has made pastoralism an increasingly unsustainable livelihood option, leaving many households in Samburu without access to a daily meal, let alone a balanced diet.

“Animals have and will continue to die due to severe drought,” said Joshua Leparashau, a Samburu community leader. “The community still wants to hold on to the concept that having many livestock is a source of pride. This must change. If we as a community do not become proactive in curbing the menace, then we must be prepared for nature to destroy us without any mercy.”

As he looks after his fruit-producing sapling, Sipian tells IPS that some decades ago, before people he calls “greedy” started felling trees to satisfy the growing demand for indigenous forest products, his community used to feed on their readily available wild fruits during extreme hunger.

Now, through a concept new to them – dubbed food or garden forest, and brought to Kenya by Israeli environmentalist Aviram Rozin, founder of Sadhana Forest, an organisation dedicated to ecological revival and sustainable living work – the locals here are adopting planting of trees and shrubs that are favourable to the harsh local weather in their manyattas.

Community tree-planting in semi-arid Samburu County, Kenya. Robert Kibet/IPS

On a voluntary mission to help alleviate the degraded land and food insecurity in this part of northern Kenya, Rozin said that his vision would be to see at least each manyatta owning a food forest.

“The rate at which the community is embracing the concept is positive,” he said. “We hope that every manyatta will have a small food forest and that these will grow in concentric circles until they meet and touch each other and expand, creating a continuous food forest.”

However, the work of Sadhana Forest is not limited to forestation, as 35-year-old Resinoi Ewapere, who has eight children, explained.

“I used to leave early in the morning in search of water and return after noon. My children frequently missed school owing to the shortage of water and food.” But this daily routine came to an end after Sadhana Forest drilled a borehole from which water is now pumped using green energy – a combined windmill and solar energy system.

“Apart from the training we receive on planting fruit-producing trees and practising low-cost permaculture farming, we currently receive water from this centre at no cost,” Ewapere told IPS.

According to Rozin, Sadhana Forest’s initiative to help the Samburu community plant the 18 species of indigenous fruit trees which are drought-resistant and rich in nutrients is also part of a major conservation effort in that the combination of “small-scale food security and conservation of indigenous trees. will also create a linkage between people and trees and they will protect them.”

“We produce the seedlings and then supply them to the locals at no charge for them to plant in their manyattas,” said Rozin. Then, with careful management of the land and water-harvesting structures (swales or ditches dug on contours), water is fed directly into the plants.

The quality of the soil on the swales is improved by planting nitrogen-fixing plants such as beans, while the soil is watered and covered with mulch to prevent evaporation, thus remaining fertile.

One of the tree species being planted to create the food forests is Afzelia africana or African oak, the fruits of which are said to be rich in proteins and iron.  Its seed flour is used for baking. Another species is Moringa stenopetala, known locally as ‘mother’s helper’ because its fruit helps increase milk in lactating mothers and reduces malnutrition among infants.

“Residents here understand that their semi-nomadic life has to be slightly adjusted for survival,” noted George Obondo, coordinator of the NGO Coordination Board, who played a role in ensuring that Sadhana received 50,000 dollars from the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) to jump start its Samburu project.

The money was used to set up a training centre with over 35 volunteers from various countries, including Haiti, to train locals and at the same time produce seedlings, and to build the green energy system for pumping water from the borehole it drilled.

“Things are changing,” said Obondo, “and Samburus know that their lifestyle needs to be altered and also tied to greater dependence on plant growing and not just livestock.” This is why the Sadhana Forest initiative is important, he added, because it is training people and giving them the knowledge and ability to create the resilience that they will need to avoid a harsh future.

Edited by Phil Harris

Carcases of dead sheep and goats stretch across the landscape following drought in Somaliland in 2011, one of the climate impacts that experts say should be actively tackled by African countries themselves without passively relying on international assistance. Photo credit: Oxfam East Africa/CC by 2.0

By Fabíola Ortiz
PARIS, Jul 23 2015 (IPS)

African countries would do well to take their own lead in finding ways to better adapt to and mitigate the changes that climate may impose on future  generations instead of relying only on foreign aid.

This was one of the messages that rang out during the international scientific conference on ‘Our Common Future under Climate Change’ held earlier this month in Paris, six months before the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21), also to be held in Paris, that is supposed to pave the way for a global agreement to keep the rise in the Earth’s temperature under 2°C.African countries would do well to take their own lead in finding ways to better adapt to and mitigate the changes that climate may impose on future generations instead of relying only on foreign aid

Africa is already feeling climate change effects on a daily basis, according to Penny Urquhart from South Africa, an independent specialist and one of the lead authors of the 5^th Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Projections suggest that temperature rise on the continent will likely exceed 2°C by 2100 with land temperatures rising faster than the global land average. Scientific assessments agree that Africa will also face more climate changes in the future, with extreme weather events increasing in terms of frequency, intensity and duration.

“Most sub-Saharan countries have high levels of climate vulnerability,” Urquhart told IPS. “Over the years, people became good at adapting to those changes but what we are seeing is increasing risks associated with climate change as this becomes more and more pressing.”

Although data monitoring systems are still poor and sparse over the region, “we do know there is an increase in temperature,” she added, warning that if the global average temperature increases by 2°C by the end of the century, this will be experienced as if it had increased by 4°C in Southern Africa, stated Urquhart.

According to the South African expert, vulnerability to climate variation is very context-specific and depends on people’s exposure to the impacts, so it is hard to estimate the number of people affected by global warming on the continent.

However, IPCC says that of the estimated 800 million people who live in Africa, more than 300 million survive in conditions of water scarcity, and the numbers of people at risk of increased water stress on the continent is projected to be 350-600 million by 2050.

In some areas, noted Urquhart, it is not easy to predict what is happening with the rainfall. “In the Horn of Africa region the observations seem to be showing decreasing rainfall but models are projecting increasing rainfall.”

There have been extreme weather events along the Western coast of the continent, while Mozambique has seen an increase in cyclones that lead to flooding. “Those are the sum of trends that we are seeing,” Urquhart, “drying mostly along the West and increase precipitations in the East of Africa”.

For Edith Ofwona, senior programme specialist of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), one of the sectors most vulnerable to climate variation in Africa is agriculture – the backbone of most African economies – and this could have direct negative impacts on food security.

“The biggest challenge,” she said, “is how to work with communities not only to cope with short-term impacts but actually to be able to adapt and be resilient over time. We should come up with practical solutions that are affordable and built on the knowledge that communities have.”

Experts agree that any measure to address climate change should be responsive to social needs, particularly where severe weather events risk uprooting communities from their homelands by leaving families with no option but to migrate in search of better opportunities.

This new phenomenon has created what it is starting to be called “climate migrants”, said Ofwona.

Climate change could also exacerbate social conflicts that are aggravated by other drivers such as competition over resources and land degradation. According to the IDRC expert, “you need to consider the multi-stress nature of poverty on people’s livelihoods … and while richer people may be able to adapt, poor people will struggle.”

Ofwona said that the key is to combine scientific evidence with what communities themselves know, and make it affordable and sustainable. “It is important to link science to society and make it practical to be able to change lives and deal with the challenges people face, especially in addressing food security requirements.”

Meanwhile, she added, consciousness in Africa of the impacts of climate change is “fairly high” – some countries have already defined their own climate policies and strategies, and others have green growth strategies with low carbon and sustainable development.

Stressing the critical role that African nations themselves play in terms of creating the right environmental policy, Ofwona said that they should be protagonists in dealing with climate impacts and not only passive in receiving international help.

African governments should provide some of the funding that will be needed to implement adaptation and mitigation projects and while “we can also source internationally, to some extent we need to contribute with our own money. While the consciousness is high, the extent of the commitment is not equally high.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

Slums in a Kenyan shanty town. Africa has more than 570 million slum-dwellers, according to UN-Habitat, with over half of the urban population (61.7 percent) living in slums. Photo credit: Colin Crowley/CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, May 22 2015 (IPS)

Nompumelelo Tshabalala, 41, emerges from her dwarf ‘shack’ made up of rusty metal sheets and falls short of bumping into this reporter as she bends down to avoid knocking her head against the top part of her makeshift door frame.

“This has been my home for the past 16 years and I have lived here with my husband until his death in 2008 and now with my four children still in this two-roomed shack,” she told IPS.

Tshabalala lives in Diepkloof township in Johannesburg, South Africa, in a densely populated informal settlement – a euphemism for slums, where an estimated 15 million of the country’s approximately 52 million people live, according to UN-Habitat, the U.N. agency for human settlements.

Neighbouring Zimbabwe has an estimated 835,000 people living in informal settlements, according to Homeless International, a British non-governmental organisation focusing on urban poverty issues. “Local authorities in African countries should strike a balance in developing both rural and urban areas, creating employment so that people stop flocking to cities in huge numbers in search of jobs” – Precious Shumba, Harare Residents Trust

“Slum-dwelling here in Africa has become normal, a trend to live with, which is difficult to combat owing to numerous factors ranging from political corruption to economic inequalities necessitated by the growing gap between the rich and the poor,” Gilbert Nyaningwe, an independent development expert from Zimbabwe, told IPS.

Overall, out of an estimated population of 1.1 billion people, Africa has more than 570 million slum-dwellers, reports UN-Habitat, with over half of the urban population (61.7 percent) living in slums. Worldwide, notes the U.N. agency, the number of slum-dwellers now stands at 863 million and is set to shoot up to 889 million by 2020.

Development agencies in Africa say slum-dwelling remains a continental trend despite the U.N. Millennium Development Goals targets compelling all countries globally to achieve a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.

According to the United Nations, that 100 million target “was met well in advance of the 2020 deadline”, and in African countries such as Egypt, Libya and Morocco the total number of urban slum dwellers has almost been halved, Tunisia has eradicated them completely, and Ghana, Senegal and Uganda have made steady progress, reducing their slum populations by up to 20 percent.

However, sub-Saharan Africa continues to have the highest rate of “slum incidence” of any major world region, with millions of people living in settlements characterised by some combination of overcrowding, tenuous dwelling structures, and poor or no access to adequate water and sanitation facilities.

Hector Mutharika, a retired economist in late Malawian President Kamuzu Banda’s government, blamed poor service delivery for the increase in slums in Africa.

“The increasing numbers of slum dwellers in Africa is due to poor service delivery here by local authorities which more often than not worry most about filling their pockets from local authorities’ coffers instead of channelling proper housing facilities to poor people, which then pushes homeless individuals into building slum settlements anywhere,” Mutharika told IPS.

For Rwandan civil society activist Otapiya Gundurama, the roots of the problem go far back in time. “Shanty homes in Africa are a result of the continent’s urban infrastructure set up during colonial rule at which time housing and economic diversification were limited, with everything related to urban governance centralised, while towns and cities were established to enhance the lifestyles and interests of a minority,” Gundurama told IPS.

Some opposition politicians in Africa, like Gilbert Dzikiti, president of Zimbabwe’s opposition Democratic Assembly for Restoration and Empowerment (DARE), see the trend of growing slums here as a result of government failure. “The perpetual rise of slum settlements in Africa testifies to persistent failure by governments here to invest in both rural and urban development,” Dzikiti told IPS.

African civil society leaders blame rising unemployment on the continent for the continuing rise in the number of slums. “Be it in cities or remote areas, slums in Africa are a result of huge numbers of jobless people who hardly have the means to upgrade their own dwellings,” Precious Shumba, director of the Harare Residents Trust in Zimbabwe, told IPS.

In order to reverse the trend of growing slums across the continent, Shumba said, “local authorities in African countries should strike a balance in developing both rural and urban areas, creating employment so that people stop flocking to cities in huge numbers in search of jobs.”

African slum-dwellers like South Africa’s Tshabalala accuse city authorities of ignoring the mushrooming of informal settlements for selfish reasons.

“Slums here are sources of cheap labour that keeps the wheels of industry turning, which is why local authorities are not concerned about our living standards because they [local authorities] are getting more and more revenue from firms thriving on our sweat,” Tshabalala told IPS.

Meanwhile, rising slum settlements in Africa are also having a knock-on effect for other development goals in the education and health sectors for example.

“The United Nations Millennium Development Goal of universal attainment of primary education for all by the end of this year is certainly set to be missed by a number of countries here in Africa, especially as many of these sprouting slum settlements have no schools to help the children growing in the communities get any education,” a senior official in Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education told IPS on the condition of anonymity for professional reasons.

At the same time, “there are often no toilets, no water and no clinics in most slum-dwelling areas here, exposing people to diseases, consequently derailing the MDG of halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and other diseases in informal settlements,” Owen Dliwayo of the Youth Dialogue Action Network, a lobby group in Zimbabwe, told IPS.

Edited by Phil Harris   

CLEAN-India is an environmental assessment, awareness, action, and advocacy programme that promotes behavioural change among young city dwellers in India. As part of the programme, a group of female students learns about the importance of clean water. Credit: Development Alternatives

By Prerna Sodhi
NEW DELHI, May 16 2015 (IPS)

“Swachh Bharat”, or Clean India, is a slogan that most Indians today associate with the country’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his first nation-wide campaign launched soon after taking office in 2014.

The call has definitely awakened popular consciousness on cleanliness but whether citizens follow it or not is another matter. In fact, it is commonplace to find people calling out “Swachh Bharat” as they toss garbage onto the street.

However, while the campaign may not have brought about the change it was aimed to usher in, a dialogue has started and it is a watershed moment for all those working in this area to capitalise on its momentum.The call for “Swachh Bharat”, or Clean India, has definitely awakened popular consciousness on cleanliness but whether citizens follow it or not is another matter

The idea of cleaning India up is not new, and neither is the term “Swachh Bharat” which has been used by many in the past and has now been “patented” by Modi. For decades, there has been concern with instilling an awareness of the need for cleanliness among citizens, many of whom even defecate in the open.

The current initiative by the government may address the issue of cleanliness at citizens’ level, but activists in the field of sustainable development argue that it should also cover issues related to water, energy and sewage disposal cleanliness.

Access to clean water is one of the main problems that the country faces. According to a report by UNICEF (the U.N. Children’s Agency) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), every year around 37.7 million Indians are affected by waterborne diseases, 1.5 million children die of diarrhoea alone and 73 million working days are lost due to waterborne diseases.

The problem does not appear to lie in the lack of availability of water treatment methods, but rather in the unwillingness of people to adopt these methods.

“From the field, we observed that the lack of adoption of water purification techniques is not due to low awareness levels and it was not even illiteracy, as is often assumed,” said Kavneet Kaur, field manager for Development Alternatives (DA), a social enterprise set up in 1982 to tackle the serious impact of climate change on society and the environment.

“There was an evident lack of effort and prioritisation of safety among people to undertake one or more options consistently that made drinking water safe,” she added.

Most slum dwellers, for example, “opted for methods that did not cost their pocket a penny. Those who did have access to cheaper methods of treatment, like chlorination and solar water disinfection (SODIS), avoided adopting these methods because they were time consuming.”

For the last 30 years, DA, which works primarily in Bundelkhand in central India, has been addressing the behaviour change necessary for people to adopt water treatment methods.

According to Dr K. Vijaya Lakshmi, DA Vice President, out of the three interrelated components of water, sanitation and hygiene, “hygiene behaviour has been shown to have the biggest impact on community health.”

However, she notes, “despite its merit as the most cost effective public health intervention, ironically there was no global target to improve hygiene during the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) era. It has become evident that the MDG framework has fallen short of addressing quality, sustainability and equity issues.”

To date, DA has reached out to 50,000 households and 26 schools through intensive advocacy campaigns in urban villages, offering training on how to adopt safe water treatment methods such as SODIS, boiling, chlorination and sieving, despite meeting strong resistance from the local population.

For example, storing water in a PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottle exposed to sunlight can kill up to 99 percent of the bacteria in the water, an “innovation” that uses nothing but natural ultraviolet (UV) light to provide safe drinking water for consumption. Water can also be purified by sieving boiled water.

Apart from advocating the adoption of these simple water purification methods, DA has also come up with innovations like the Jal-TARA Water Filter, which removes arsenic, pathogenic bacteria and excess iron from contaminated water, TARA Aqua+ (a sodium hypochlorite solution for purifying water), and TARA Aquacheck Vial, a device that tests for the presence of pathogenic bacteria.

Nevertheless, these innovations are not destined to go very far unless there is a major change in the mindset of the Indian people, and this extends to the “Swachh Bharat” campaign, not just in terms of clean water but also of a cleaner environment.

This idea has also been the driving force behind a youth-led social media campaign known as CLEAN-India ‘The City I Want’, launched by SA and now covering ten Indian cities – Mirzapur, Mohali, Vadodara, Alwar, Ambala, Bharatpur, Indore, Nashik, Mussoorie and Rishikesh.

CLEAN-India (where CLEAN stands for Community Led Environment Action Network) is an environmental assessment, awareness, action and advocacy programme that promotes behavioural change among young city dwellers. It has so far mobilised 28 NGOs, 300 schools, 800 teachers and over one million students.

The campaign is flanked by a number of other citizens’ groups such as resident welfare associations, parent forums, local business associations and clubs, which are actively participating in activities for environmental improvement.

“Going forward, it is crucial that civil society organisation practitioners interface with academic institutions in evidence gathering and inform policy-makers and investors in order to create enabling conditions where scalable innovation can flourish,” says Lakshmi.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Excerpt:

By Suleiman Al-Herbish
VIENNA, May 14 2015 (IPS)

When, in 2003, Professor Richard Smalley, winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, listed the top 10 problems facing humanity for the next 50 years in order of priority, energy was at the top of his list, followed by water, then food.

Suleiman Al-Herbish, Director-General of the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID)

Years later, this energy-water-food nexus is central to the work of the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) and a core element of our corporate plan.

It is hard to imagine a better life when you are in darkness and the ‘heart of darkness’ is the widespread lack of access to reliable and affordable sources of modern energy. This darkness continues to impede socio-economic development worldwide.

Nothing is worse than seeing such darkness in the 21^st century first hand. In Armenia, I visited the home of Ms Anahid, one of OFID’s many beneficiaries, whose house had recently been connected to a gas grid.

In her home, I saw a picture of her young son who had been tragically killed by a falling tree while collecting firewood. His young widowed wife sat in the corner and I had overwhelming mixed feelings: immense sadness for a life lost, yet relief that it would never happen again in that region.

It is a brutal moment when one realises the terrible human loss caused by energy poverty, and recognises how easily such tragedies can be avoided.

When one works in development, a single aim is in mind: putting people first. When we put people first, the facts are painful and implausible to ignore. The numbers are absolutely staggering: 18 percent of the world’s population still lives without electricity and 38 percent without clean cooking facilities.

If all of us think of these facts each time we switch on a light, use our phone or eat a meal, the darkness that 1.3 billion people live in becomes painful to imagine and hard to ignore.“It is hard to imagine a better life when you are in darkness and the ‘heart of darkness’ is the widespread lack of access to reliable and affordable sources of modern energy. This darkness continues to impede socio-economic development worldwide”

Despite the work of so many valuable institutions, organisations and pledges, people are often forgotten, and the political will never materialises. Yet, when the will is there, things do actually happen, and believe me, for the past ten years, I have personally seen them transpire.

In 2007, through the Riyadh Declaration, at the third summit of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), member countries charged OFID with spearheading the fight against the greatest constraint to development – energy poverty – and long before it became a mainstream topic, OFID pioneered its fight against it.

OFID recognised that universal access to energy was a vital element to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and dubbed it the “Missing 9^th MDG”.

So, in September 2011, when U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated: “Energy is the golden thread that connects economic growth, social equity and environmental stability”, OFID roared.

And when Kandeh Yumkella, U.N. Under-Secretary-General and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All, said that “the fact that so many lives continue to be blighted by the absence of electricity or other clean fuels for cooking and heating is without a doubt a shameful indictment of modern society,” OFID found an ally.

We knew that they represented many like-minded individuals who had the will to make our shared fight against energy poverty recognisable to the world.

We were exultant when, in 2012, with the launch of the U.N. Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) initiative, energy access was finally established as a global priority. Energy poverty had finally reached the global agenda and our work throughout the years has been instrumental in attaining energy access.

OFID has been a leading partner in SE4ALL since its inception and instrumental in shaping the proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with the eradication of energy poverty as SDG7.

Our commitment to this mission has been practical as well as communicative. Our strategy for poverty eradication has been action-based with a revolving endowment of one billion dollars pledged by our supreme body, the Ministerial Council, in our 2012 Declaration on Energy Poverty.

Over the past few years, OFID has transformed its commitments into actions in the field. This has led the share of energy projects in OFID’s total operations to reach 27 percent in the past three years, compared with around 20 percent since inception. These resources have been distributed among 85 countries for projects ranging from infrastructure and equipment provision to research and capacity building.

As the United Nations marks its 70^th anniversary, we reflect on the historical development of humanity and our unity as an international community to achieve a better world. It is an important time for us to recognize all the efforts in building improved lives and providing dignity to all.

As idealistic as I would like to be, I know there is much more to be done, and the fight is far from over.

What drives our motivation is OFID’s incredible will to continue. Where there’s a will, there is always a way.

I always said, and will continue to say: the day an institution like OFID closes its doors because of the lack of need from its partner countries to alleviate humanity’s countless problems is a day for us all to celebrate.

In the meantime, we will continue our efforts to power lives … one by one, until no single soul living on this planet is in darkness and no mother loses her son as Ms Anahid did.

Edited by Phil Harris

Excerpt:

By Karine Jacquemart and Anuradha Mittal
PARIS/OAKLAND, California, May 11 2015 (IPS)

In our work at Greenpeace and the Oakland Institute around access and control over natural resources, we face constant accusations of being anti-development or “Northern NGOs who care more for the trees”, despite working with communities around the world, from Cameroon, to China, to the Czech Republic.

Karine Jacquemart

This name calling, aimed at discrediting struggles for land, water, and other natural resources in the Third World countries, hides an ugly truth.  The land rush unleashed around the world to own and exploit Earth’s natural bounty is not only fierce and unfair, but increasingly fatal.

Recent reports, including a Global Witness report titled ‘How many more?’ released in April 2015, document the increase in the assassinations of land and environmental activists globally – a shocking average of over two a week in 2014.

As individuals and groups in the frontline of struggles face intimidation, arrests, disappearances, and even death, it is an ethical imperative to support the struggles of the grassroots land defenders against corporations and governments. This is what unites organisations like Greenpeace and the Oakland Institute.

Over the last decade, an estimated 200 million hectares – an area five times bigger than California – has been leased or purchased throughout the world, through completely opaque deals in most cases.

Natural resources in Africa are some of the most sought after, hence the fact that Africa experiences more than 70 percent of the reported land deals.

Anuradha Mittal

Multinational companies with assistance from powerful partners – the World Bank Group and G8 “donor” countries – are moving in, chanting their “development” formula: facilitate foreign investment through large-scale land acquisitions and mega-projects to ensure economic growth which will trickle down to translate into development for all.

Our work reveals a very different and worrying reality on the ground. Local communities and indigenous peoples report lack of consultation; their lands, homes and forests bulldozed and cleared for foreign investors; their livelihoods shattered.

As one villager in the Democratic Republic of the Congo said, “I want to remain a farmer on my land, not a daily worker depending on a foreign company”, or in the words of a Bodi chief in Ethiopia, “I don’t want to leave my land. If they try and force us, there will be war. So I will be here in my village either alive on the land or dead below it.”

They, and countless more, are victims of the theft of natural resources, made invisible and voiceless by those who define what development looks like.“As individuals and groups in the frontline of struggles face intimidation, arrests, disappearances, and even death, it is an ethical imperative to support the struggles of the grassroots land defenders against corporations and governments”

As if destruction of lives and livelihoods were not enough, those who resist are harassed, even face violence, by governments and private companies.

A planned palm oil plantation by the U.S.-based Herakles Farms in Cameroon threatens to evict thousands of people off their land and destroy part of the world’s second largest rain forest.

The company’s former CEO, responding to criticism of the project, said in an open letter: “My goal is to present HF for what it is – a modestly-sized commercial  oil  palm  project  designed  to  provide employment and  social  development and improve  the  level  of  food  security, while incorporating industry best practices.”

What he failed to mention is how a Cameroonian activist, Nasako Besingi, who heads a local NGO, The Struggle to Economize the Future Environment (SEFE), learnt first-hand the consequences of opposing the project. Arrested in 2012 for planning a peaceful demonstration in Mundemba, Nasako and two of his colleagues languished in a jail for several days.

Soon after his release, while touring the area with a French television crew, he was ambushed and assaulted by men he recognised as employees of Herakles Farms. Instead of protection from this violence, Nasako and SEFE face legal battles, including one of the favorite corporate tactics – a defamation lawsuit, intended to intimidate him and the others who oppose.

Privatisation of land and theft of natural resources will be irreversible and will put people, forest, ecosystems and the climate at risk, if it goes unchecked. The time is now to choose a development path that prioritises people and the planet over profits for the rich. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Whether they like it or not, many Africans faced with the possibility of having to access water through prepaid meters have resorted to unprotected and often unclean sources of water because they cannot afford to pay. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, May 8 2015 (IPS)

While many countries appear to have met the U.N. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, rights activists say that African countries which have taken to installing prepaid water meters have rendered a blow to many poor people, making it hard for them to access water.

“The goal to ensure that everyone has access to clean water here in Africa faces a drawback as a number of African countries have resorted to using prepaid water meters, which certainly bar the poor from accessing the precious liquid,” Claris Madhuku, director of the Platform for Youth Development, a Zimbabwean democracy lobby group, told IPS.

Prepaid water meters work in such a way that if a person cannot pay in advance, he or she will be unable to access water.Despite U.N. recognition that water is a human right, international financial institutions such as the World Bank argue that water should be allocated through market mechanisms to allow for full cost recovery from users

As a result, African rights activists like award-winning Terry Mutsvanga from Zimbabwe and other civil society organisations are against the idea of prepaid water meters.

“If one has to pay upfront before accessing water, then it would mean those in most need would be denied access,” Mutsvanga told IPS, adding that water is a global human right.

Mutsvanga was echoing the United Nations General Assembly which, in July 2010, emerged with a binding resolution on the human right to water and sanitation – but for Africa, the human right to water may be far from reality.

Laden with a population of approximately 1.1 billion, Africa’s 300 million people have no access to safe drinking water, according to the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

Many rights activists on the continent attribute Africa’s mounting water challenges partly to the advent of prepaid water meters.

“We already have hundreds of millions of people without access to clean water, and imagine the severity of the water challenge if water prepaid meters would reach everyone on the continent,” Mutsvanga said.

Over the years, prepaid water meters have been widely used in African countries like Namibia, Nigeria, Swaziland and Tanzania, as well as South Africa, where the meters which were rolled out in 1999 are currently in low-income areas.

Zimbabwe is currently conducting a pilot project aimed at installing the prepaid water meters, in towns and cities to begin with. And the country’s impoverished urban dwellers like 51-year old Tinago Chikasha are in panic mode, fearing the worst may be coming their way.

“Local authorities are pressing ahead with the idea of prepaid water meters, but jobless people like me have no money to make prepayments for water while we already have unpaid water bills running into thousands of dollars, which local authorities say they will deduct through all future water prepayments, meaning we run into the danger of having dry water taps for as long as we owe local authorities,” Chikasha told IPS.

In non-African countries like the United Kingdom, prepaid water meters are no longer being used after they were declared illegal in 1998 for public health reasons.

They were also abandoned in South Africa at one stage following a massive cholera outbreak, but were reintroduced and have replaced previously free communal standpipes in rural townships.

Despite U.N. recognition that water is a human right, international financial institutions such as the World Bank argue that water should be allocated through market mechanisms to allow for full cost recovery from users, and civil society activists like Melusi Khumalo in South Africa blame capitalist tendencies for necessitating the advent of prepaid water meters.

“Prepaid water meters are a result of such negative policies by institutions like the World Bank and they [prepaid water meters] deny water access to those in most need,” Khumalo, who is affiliated to Parktown North Residents’ Association in Johannesburg, told IPS.

In Zimbabwe, Mfundo Mlilo, chief executive officer of Combined Harare Residents’ Association (CHRA), told IPS: “We are vehemently against the prepaid meter project because it will not solve the problems of water delivery, and these prepaid water meters will not lead to residents receiving adequate safe and clean water, while the same prepaid water meters will also not lead to increase in revenue flows as the City [of Harare] claims.”

Last month, Harare’s Town Clerk Tendai Mahachi was reported by Zimbabwe’s Weekend Post as saying: “With these meters we expect roughly to save about 20-30 percent of the current costs we are incurring.”

According to Mahachi, at least 300 000 households in the Zimbabwean capital are scheduled to have prepaid water meters installed, while all new housing projects will be obliged to install meters.

Meanwhile, with prepaid water meters set to rake in big money for some of Africa’s local authorities, there are those like Nathan Jamela, an urban dweller in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city, who fear the health consequences.

“We experienced the worst cholera outbreak in 2008, and we fear that if prepaid water meters are installed in every household here we will slide back to the crisis, with many people unable to afford to pay for water,” Jamela told IPS.

Edited by Phil Harris