Lack of access to safe drinking water is still not a possibility for millions and this has only been further complicated by the coronavirus pandemic. Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 22 2021 (IPS)

Prioritising water governance and ensuring data collection and investment in groundwater use around the world are some of the key issues that need to be addressed with regards to achieving development goals.

“If we do not make water governance a priority, we do feel and state that we would probably not reach the Sustainable Development Goals,” Sareen Malik, the executive secretary of the African Civil Society Network on Water and Sanitation (ANEW), said during a high level meeting on water-related goals at the United Nations on Thursday.

Malik spoke alongside heads of state and civil society leaders at the “Implementation of the Water-related Goals and Targets of the 2030 Agenda”.

Lack of access to safe drinking water is still not a possibility for millions and this has only been further complicated by the coronavirus pandemic, according to speakers.

“Today, 2.2 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water, 4.2 billion people lack access to safely managed sanitation, and 3 billion lack basic hand washing facilities,” Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte said during the talk.

“Water affects every aspect of life, we can see that in our present fight against COVID-19,” Rutte said. “Hand washing with soap and water is a key first line of defence against human-to-human transmission of viruses.”

Henrietta Fore, executive director of the UN International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), pointed out that there was a large discrepancy between data on management of groundwater and that of surface water.

With groundwater providing water for 50 percent of the global population, this lack of data can prove problematic, said Dr. David Kramer, a hydrology professor in the Department of Geoscience at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He detailed the various negative effects of lack of data investments in the studying of groundwater.

“Groundwater is a hidden vulnerable resource and not physically visible, which can make it difficult for the general population and decision makers to connect up with this challenging resource,” he said.

“The need for having sustainable groundwater is a key element – in global resilience to climate change, [as a] shield against ecosystem loss and a defence against human deprivation and poverty,” he said. 

He added that approximately 2.5 billion people around the world depend solely on groundwater for their basic water needs, and the “lack of systemic communication on data information on ground water is one of the most significant impediments to its sound management and governance”.

“There are 153 countries with transboundary groundwater systems and this lack of groundwater progress does not support future international stability,” he added.

He also pointed out the many ways surface water is affected by groundwater.

“Many decision makers don’t know that in drylands, slight changes in ground water level due to over-pumping or climate change can diminish or eradicate springs and wells that have been dependent on for millennia by both people and groundwater dependent ecosystems,” he said.

This lack of knowledge about groundwater, especially of poor quality groundwater, could translate to serious effects on the health of those using it.

“I cannot tell you the recurring sad scene I see in economically developing countries where a woman with a water container trudges past a broken well she thought was going to provide hope, only to walk many kilometres to collect the water from a distance source,” he said poignantly.

Malik of ANEW said her organisation represents African women and girls who spent 200 million hours collecting water.

“Their daughters and daughters’ daughters will be locked in life of ill health and poverty if we don’t address the water crisis,” Malik said, adding that it affects women in different ways, such as posing challenges in their menstrual hygiene management.

Political prioritisation and commitment “from the top”, is key to solving this issue, she said, alongside putting people at the core of the solutions.

“Governance-based solutions? Yes, but also putting people-based solutions,” Malik said. “The right water and sanitation in governance is about challenging the power dynamics, putting people at the centre, and ensuring that the policies and practices stem from there.”

She highlighted the importance of including women and the youth in these solutions.

Meanwhile Rutte said that the global acceleration framework on the Sustainable Development Goals 6: Water and Sanitation is an important step in the right direction. “We need to develop and strengthen capacity. We need to optimise and scale our finances, to improve mainstream data and to foster and replicate innovation,” he said.

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Credit: UN Water

By Catarina de Albuquerque
LISBON, Mar 21 2021 (IPS)

This World Water Day, we celebrate the value of water, which at first might be a given: after all, water is the basis of all life. Without water we have no health, wealth, equality, or education.

But, do governments adequately prioritize and invest in clean water? The answer, in far too many parts of the world, is a resounding no. As an international community, we are too often blind to the huge cost of failing to serve so many people with the most basic but crucial of services.

Globally, there are still 2.2 billion people without access to safe drinking water and 4.2 billion who don’t have a safe place to go the toilet. Reaching all these people needs three times the current levels of investment, according to the World Bank — to meet the scale of the challenge. However, this is not a plea for charity, this is a wake-up call.

The current global water and sanitation crisis is a story of colossal, rapidly increasing, unmet demand leading to colossal, rapidly increasing costs. Meeting Sustainable Development Goal 6 – water and sanitation for all by 2030 – is not a burden but a massive opportunity.

To find concrete solutions to the financing gap, the partnership Sanitation and Water for All – a global platform for achieving the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH)-related targets — is working with Finance Ministers across the globe to focus on the opportunity for economic growth and sustainable development, through the expansion of water and sanitation services.

With the right level of investment, benefits could include an estimated 1.5% growth in gross domestic product, and a $4.30 return for every dollar invested. This is due to the likely reduced health care costs and potential for increased productivity. That’s a rate of return that any investor would wish for.

The benefits of investing are clear and examples abound. In 1961, only 17% of South Korea had access to basic drinking water but by 2012, water coverage stood at 98% – a remarkable turnaround. High-level political leadership was key, as part of a wider push towards nation-building, common well-being and modernity.

Bolivian Girls Washing Hands. Credit: UNICEF

The cost of not investing

Affordable, reliable, easily accessible water and sanitation services prevent thousands of children from preventable diseases, such as diarrhea and cholera. Healthier children absorb nutrients properly, develop stronger brains and bodies, get better school results, and end up making a fuller contribution to society. And we have seen how quickly a pandemic like COVID-19 can spread when people are not able to wash their hands with water and soap.

Without further investment, girls and women are forced to continue the time-consuming, back-breaking work of fetching water, and are left exposed to the indignity and dangers of going to the toilet in fields and streets. Water and sanitation services in schools and workplaces have the power to ensure girls and women can manage their personal hygiene while not missing out on obtaining an education or earning an income.

Adequate investment would reduce disease burden and epidemic risks, and slow down fast-moving killers such as cholera. Improved hygiene — through water and soap — is critical in the fight against COVID-19, for example. Yet one in four — 24% — of health care facilities lack basic water services, one in ten — 10% — have no sanitation service, and one in three — 32% — lack hand hygiene facilities at points of care. Data has shown that even where there is adequate WASH facilities, frontline health care workers can be 12-times more likely to test positive for COVID-19 compared with individuals in the general community.

Unless further investments are made, the level of workforce productivity will be capped. An estimated three out of four jobs that make up the global workforce are either heavily or moderately dependent on water. But, access to water and sanitation can also free up time that would otherwise be spent collecting water. UN-Water estimates that improved sanitation gives every household an additional 1,000 hours a year to work, study, care for children, and so on. Women’s productivity is particularly affected, as they are the main caretakers and manager and users of water.

The bottom line is that economic growth rests on improving educational achievement and public health — two things that are impossible without access to water.

The role of finance decision-makers

None of this is news. Since the early days of the industrial revolution, we have known the transformative economic and social benefits of access to water, and the horrific consequences of inaction.

If governments fail to help prioritize water and sanitation, the consequences could affect societies for generations. Financial decision-makers must create an enabling environment by investing in institutions and people, and mobilizing new sources of finance, such as taxes, tariffs, transfers, or repayable finance.

In the end, well-resourced, well-run water systems are catalysts for progress in every sector from gender, food, and education, to health, industry, and the environment.

Governments must use evidence to make smart decisions that will help their countries flourish. In the case of water and sanitation, the evidence is clear: continuing to neglect these services will only continue to stunt the growth of our economies, populations, and societies.

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In northern Ghana some 50% of people lack access to safe drinking water. Credit: UNDP Ghana

By Lyla Mehta and Alan Nicol*
EAST SUSSEX, UK, Mar 20 2021 (IPS)

In the midst of a global pandemic, when the presence of water in our lives has never seemed more important, its future availability has also never been more uncertain.

Water scarcity is now such a threat that it is even possible to trade in ‘water futures’ – joining commodities like gold and oil on Wall Street, with traders hedging against future water availability.

So, while farmers and pastoralists struggle to know when the next rainfall will come, and women and children walk for hours to collect water from distant water points, further commodification and financialization of water has arrived, with huge implications for basic rights to water.

Our future water safety and security will only be guaranteed if we work to reflect water’s multiple values in coming years – including social and cultural as well as economic and financial.

Globally, we seem almost inured to the fact that across the world women and girls spend up to 200 million hours every day walking an average of six km to collect water. These depressing facts flash up in our news feeds across the same screens that now make it possible to trade in ‘water futures’ on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Between these ‘two screens’ lies an almost perverse linkage between global policy seeking to achieve the SDG targets under Goal 6 and a global financial world seeking investment gains under new financial instruments.

Today of all days is a good time to pause and take stock.

Every 22 March since 1993 the international community has marked ‘World Water Day’ and this year’s theme is valuing water. Our own personal valuing of the resource has been starkly demonstrated during the Covid-19 pandemic. Those of us with taps have diligently increased our handwashing with soap and water, while 2.5 billion people globally continue to struggle even to access a basic daily quantity.

Eleven years ago, the UN recognised access to safe drinking-water and sanitation as a human right, and yet for many poor households their basic rights – and their health – remain jeopardised during this pandemic.

And it’s not just about domestic use. Multiplicities of values attached to water converge around farming households in, for instance, rural Africa. To a young female farmer staring up at the clouds in Eastern Tanzania unpredictable rainfall under an uncertain climate directly affects her family’s food security as well as her cash income for school fees derived from the sale of sorghum to the local brewing industry.

The value of rainfall is therefore multiple and multi-scale – to her crops and income, to the groundwater recharge for domestic supplies, and, more widely, to an agricultural value chain supporting an important part of the economy.

Domestic and international investors, encouraged by national policies focussing on foreign direct investment, often seek to ‘grab’ this land, having implications for both this farmer’s land and water rights as well as environmental sustainability.

Despite general recognition that the value of water is much more than its nominal price in different contexts, since the landmark Dublin conference of 1992 economic and financial values have tended to prevail over values embedded in culture and society.

These have led to policies embracing privatization, full cost recovery and “efficient” uses of water, often leadings to prepaid meters and controversial cut-offs especially in poor urban localities. Moreover, we live in an age when engineering and economic principles can override environmentalists’ concerns as well as local and affected people’s values attached to land, river and forests.

The controversies of large dams on India’s Narmada River, for example, illustrate the huge environmental, human and social costs that have been ignored by dam-builders and the State in the name of ‘development’ despite research disputing these claims.

At the heart of all such contestations is a politics of value determination in which, very often, the least powerful and most marginalised lose out. This essentially governance problem remains a global challenge – and not just in the Global South.

The concerns and complaints around water contamination of poor black residents in Flint, for example, were routinely ignored, leading to a major water crisis in the city, linked to systemic biases around race and class. And in parts of the UK water companies continue to allow raw sewage to flood our rivers – affecting their ecological and amenity values.

For the future, therefore, we need to recognize how a hierarchy of water values needs a process of deliberative governance with which to encapsulate all our human wellbeing, dignity and ecological sustainability priorities.

It also needs to avoid over-objectifying the resource in remote financial and other instruments and recognise how consumption patterns and values of the rich and powerful can undermine poor people’s values and basic rights to water.

So, on World Water Day 2021, when we next wash our hands for another 20 seconds, let’s champion the often hidden and overlooked values of water security worldwide.

*Lyla Mehta is with the Institute of Development Studies and Alan Nicol at the International Water Management Institute

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COVID precautions at Safe Water Network iJal Station in India. Credit: Safe Water Network

By Gillian Winkler
NEW YORK, Mar 20 2021 (IPS)

The global community is celebrating World Water Day 2021. In the COVID-19 pandemic era, the importance and value of water for all people has never been clearer. Access to safe water is essential for public health and thriving communities.

Before COVID, we knew that 4 billion people, or about two-thirds of the world’s population, face severe water scarcity at least one month every year. One of the most important defenses against the coronavirus, washing hands with soap and water, is out of reach for 2 out of 5 people worldwide simply because they do not have access to basic handwashing facilities.

As we reflect on World Water Day 2021’s theme of “valuing water,” we know that water is an essential part of human life and is experienced and valued in different ways across different cultures and communities.

One of the easiest ways to think about the value of water is by simply looking at the prices people are willing to pay for access and consumption. This market determination can be an effective reference point for understanding the value of any natural resource in a quantifiable metric.

Governments, national and local, place a related market value on water often by committing to various levels of subsidization to ensure their constituents have affordable access. Socially-conscious water organizations, like Safe Water Network, invest in optimization and ways to increase efficiency to drive down costs to keep water accessible at prices that enable communities to thrive.

Recent moves by governments to mandate free access to water during the COVID crisis have challenged the sustainability of the water sector.

New household connection customer in Nobewam, Ghana. Credit: Safe Water Network

Consumer demand is critical to the financial viability and longevity of a water system. Sustainable safe water has a price, and investing in markets within local communities to manage and distribute water drives a strong sense of ownership and encourages self-sufficiency over the long term.

Safe Water Network’s oldest running small water enterprise in India, the Nizampally iJal Station, recently celebrated 10 years of operation. Over the last decade, it has served as a template for the hundreds of additional iJal Stations that have been launched in the state of Telangana since. Its longevity is a testament to Nizampally’s desire and capability for community management.

Small business owners, restaurateurs, and beverage producers place their own value on water when they are able to build trust with their customers by using clean water in the food and drinks they produce.

When these business owners are able to locate their operations near a reliable source of safe water, they are also able to cut costs when they can avoid hiring people to fetch water from a distance. For example, restaurant operator Martha Kumi of Asikuma, Ghana, used to hire individual water vendors to fetch up to 2000 liters of water a day from a hand dug well 3 kilometers away for food preparation and cleaning—a major business expense.

With safe water available 24/7 at her place of business, she is able to hold onto more revenue and increase her profits.

Water is valuable to a community in a myriad of other ways beyond market prices and business practices. Equitable access to safe water ensures that people are able to expend energy on other priorities in their lives beyond meeting this essential human need.

Clean water is crucial in the areas of health service and public health. Doctors and other health professionals are able to deliver better and more efficient health service to their communities.

During the COVID crisis, soap and water have been a core pillar of effective disease prevention practices and essential for essential health workers to maintain sanitary working conditions and their personal protection routines.

When a healthcare facility has a reliable source of safe water, patients can trust that proper cleaning practices are in place and are able to receive care without bringing their own water. This trust is particularly important for major medical procedures when access to clean water is vital for cleanliness and better health outcomes, including for pregnant women who would otherwise need to transport their own water to delivery.

Martha Kumi, restaurant owner. Credit: Safe Water Network

Access to clean water is valuable for all communities, but in the COVID-19 pandemic era, direct connections and automated water ATMs allow for convenient and safe use of water while maintaining necessary social distancing. In one community in Ghana’s Ashanti region, 500 households have been connected by Safe Water Network since the start of the pandemic, with many families willing to pay small upfront connection fee if it meant they could reduce their risk to COVID-19 exposure outside of the house.

Household connections to safe water also provide value for education, when both teachers and students are able to access water conveniently at home or at school, saving time otherwise spent fetching water from a distant source, enabling more regular attendance of classes and effective engagement in teaching and learning.

An August 2020 joint report by UNICEF and the WHO revealed that 1 in 3 schools around the world had either limited drinking water service or none at all before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

During COVID-19, the value of water has become strikingly obvious for public health. But water is valuable to all of us for many reasons and sustainable access to safe water is necessary for communities to thrive. Safe Water Network is working to bring a proven model of small water enterprises to millions of people in India and Ghana.

On this World Water Day 2021, let’s recommit to meeting the vision of Sustainable Development Goal 6 of ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030. We have a long way to go before achieving this ambitious goal, but we must prioritize and invest in sustainable water models.

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Credit: UNDP

By Volkan Bozkir *
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 2021 (IPS)

Water is integral to sustainable development, but we are well behind on the goals and targets that we have set ourselves.

By current estimates:
– Some 2.2 billion people – almost a third of the global population – continue to lack access to safely managed drinking water;
– 4.2 billion people – more than half of the planet’s population – live without safely managed sanitation;
– 2 billion people don’t have a decent toilet of their own;
– and 3 billion lack basic handwashing facilities – even in the midst of a global pandemic.

If I may be candid: it is a moral failure that we live in a world with such high levels of technical innovation and success, but we continue to allow billions of people to exist without clean drinking water or the basic tools to wash their hands. And make no mistake, this is a global failure that has far-reaching implications for all of us.

We must remember:
– Water is life. We simply cannot live on this planet – and certainly not in any healthy capacity – if we are deprived of this most basic human need. Our entire agricultural system – all of the food we consume – is dependent upon water supplies. The same extends to all other life on this planet. Every ecosystem, every species, depends upon water.
– Water is sustainability. Safe drinking water systems and adequate sanitation is essential to ensure cities and towns grow sustainably. Without these core services and needs met, our ability to provide education, healthcare, and jobs and livelihoods will suffer.
– And Water is empowerment.

While we have recognized women’s central role in the provision, management, and safeguarding of water, the implementation of this core principle remains far from adequate.

For women and girls across the globe, the daily trek to collect water can be an impediment to accessing education, healthcare, or work. We cannot empower people, we cannot raise them up, when they are held back.

Delivering on Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6) and guaranteeing water and sanitation for all is a win across the board. Water is both an economic good and an SDG accelerator, facilitating progress on each of the other SDGs.

For this reason, we must see the recovery from COVID-19 as an inflection point in the International Decade for Action, “Water for Sustainable Development”, and re-focus our efforts on sustainable and integrated water management.

I could point to dozens of examples where the lack of water or sanitation is impacting people around the world, but the most obvious and most topical is the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The fact that billions of people have had to face this pandemic without basic handwashing facilities and that health providers in some of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) do not have running water is impossible to reconcile, especially when we live in a world of such abundance and of such profound innovation.

This stark example of global inequality can and must spur us to action.

While we cannot go back and change what has happened, we must acknowledge our failings and use this opportunity to root out the systemic gaps that have allowed the crisis to flourish. When the next global pandemic or crisis strikes, and we know that it will, we will have no excuse for having not acted now.

Delivering on SDG6 and guaranteeing water and sanitation for all is a win across the board. Water is both an economic good and an SDG accelerator, facilitating progress on each of the other SDGs.

For this reason, we must see the recovery from COVID-19 as an inflection point in the International Decade for Action, “Water for Sustainable Development”, and re-focus our efforts on sustainable and integrated water management.

In light of all that I have outlined, our discussions and statements today must focus on tangible, concrete actions that deliver for the people of the world.

Among the many areas where I hope to see progress is support for the SDG6 Global Accelerator Framework, which promises to deliver fast results at scale, with an emphasis on COVID response and recovery.

The Framework, and other efforts like it, offer a clear path to ramp up progress at the country level, yet they remain vastly underfunded. As it is, the OECD notes that there is a critical need for investments in water infrastructure to the tune of $500 billion dollars by 2030.

For this reason, I call on the international community to provide greater financial and capacity-building support to water and sanitation related activities, particularly through their support to COVID-19 recovery.

In doing so, I ask that you consider and prioritize countries in special situations, notably LDCs, LLDCs and SIDS, and that you make every effort to support those who have borne the brunt of the water-deficit, particularly women and girls.

Finally, I ask that we, as an international community, work closely with civil society groups and with young people to strengthen water-related goals and activities.

Young people and local groups, with their ear to the ground and their nimble ability to act, are often the first to usher in new technologies or approaches; we must take advantage of this tool and empower all people in this process.

Governments alone cannot achieve the 2030 Agenda and strong engagement of stakeholders is essential for the achievement of all SDGs. It is therefore important that we enable stakeholders from different sectors, ranging from civil society and academia, to the private sector, to fully participate in discussions in related events.

For this purpose, I have designated a special part of the panel discussion, dubbed “CSO Spotlight”, to give as many stakeholders as we can accommodate an opportunity to voice their concerns, visions, plans, successes and lessons, and calls for action.

In closing, allow me to emphasize that our discussion today is not just about liquid in a bottle…It’s presence or absence means so, so much more.

It is about dignity.
It is about opportunity.
It is about our health and our ability to survive.
And it is about equality.

*Volkan Bozkir, President of the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly, in his address to the High-level Meeting on the Implementation of the Water-related Goals and Targets of the 2030 Agenda on March 18.

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A woman in Madagascar walks for up to 14km a day to find clean water. Credit: UNICEF/Safidy Andrianantenain

By Jonathan Farr
LONDON, Mar 19 2021 (IPS)

For many, the last year will be remembered as the time our day-to-day lives screeched to a halt. As Covid-19 spread mercilessly across the world, wreaking havoc on health and livelihoods, world leaders, health experts and scientists grappled with how to protect populations and stem the tide of the virus.

It is right that attention has been focused on the immediate threat posed by the pandemic; the global death toll has surpassed 2.6 million people and we have suffered the worst decline in the global economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

But while coronavirus has consumed every aspect of our monotonous daily existence for the past year, as we build back, we have a moral responsibility to ensure nobody is left behind as we tackle an even bigger global crisis – climate change.

With our world warming at an alarming rate, it is becoming harder for the world’s poorest people to get clean water. WaterAid’s latest report: “Turn the tide: The state of the world’s water 2021” highlights how people are losing access to clean water and why it is a matter of utmost urgency that we take steps to protect people living in the most climate vulnerable countries of the world.

The 2.2 billion people who do not have a reliable and safe supply of water are without the most fundamental protection against climate change. Extreme weather such as prolonged droughts dry up water sources like springs and wells, while rising sea levels and flooding pollute poorly protected water supplies, threatening to put progress on bringing clean water to all back decades.

With no clean water to drink, cook or wash with, communities falter and people get sick – putting their lives and livelihoods at risk.

By 2040, the situation is predicted to be even worse, with climate change exacerbating the water crisis and helping to make water perilously scarce for 600 million children – that’s 1 in 4, and an increase of 20 per cent since 2010.

To highlight the impact climate change has on people’s access to water, WaterAid created a giant sand portrait on Whitby Beach in the UK ahead of World Water Day on 22 March. It showed an image of 12-year-old Ansha from Ethiopia carrying water on dry, cracked ground, reflecting the impact of drought, while the incoming tide that swept the fleeting art away shows how rising sea levels and excess rainfall can contaminate water.

It is a stark reminder that climate change is happening now and those who have done least to cause it are living with its consequences. Having a reliable source of water is a frontline defence; it means being able to drink clean water every day, whatever the weather.

Less than 1% of total global climate investment goes to basic water infrastructure and services. And whilst there have been endless promises of billions of dollars ($100 billion per year was pledged as part of the UN Climate process in 2009, which has not been delivered) too much is being spent in wealthier countries, rather than providing basic services in poorer communities to help protect against climate change and other threats.

Very few low-income countries are among the top recipients of public climate finance for water, despite being the most vulnerable to climate change. Of the 20 countries receiving the most climate funding for water programmes,19 are middle-income countries.

WaterAid is calling for change. On 31 March, the UK Government will host a virtual Climate and Development event to build momentum towards this year’s UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26). WaterAid is urging high income nations to significantly increase their climate finance for adaptation.

This includes fulfilling their previous commitments to give half of the total of climate adaptation finance to vulnerable communities to help them cope with the harsh reality of living with climate change.

The good news is that this is an entirely solvable problem. There is, in most cases, with the right infrastructure, resource management and investment, water available to meet everyone’s domestic needs.

The Covid crisis has shown what we can achieve to protect people in an emergency. We need to draw on that same strength to ensure the next generations never need worry about something as fundamental as having clean water close to home.

For more information: www.wateraid.org

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