Reaching the targets on water and
sanitation – difficult, but doable!
Mark Twain, the American author and wit, once
remarked:“ Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does
anything about it”.
Many might say the same about water or more
precisely society’s efforts to deliver the Millennium Development
Goals of halving, by 2015, the number of people without access to
healthy quantities of this most precious resource
Gloomy figures abound. More than one billion
people lack access to safe drinking water. At least 2.4 billion
lack access to basic sanitation. Millions of women and girls spend
long hours every day fetching water from distant sources.
If nothing is done, two thirds
of the world’s population is expected to live in areas of water
scarcity by 2025 making it even tougher to reach other key goals
relating to poverty, hunger and the environmental sustainability or
future of the planet.
Small wonder that many imagine
that the water and sanitation Goals, alongside the targets and
timetables drawn up at the World Summit on Sustainable Development
(WSSD) two years ago, stand little chance of success. That
Governments are simply paying lip service to unreasonable
aspirations.
This, however, is not the view
held by the Government of Norway and the United Nations Environment
Programme.
Human beings thrive on
challenges. The water and sanitation targets are tough, but they
are doable.
Events, such as the Millennium
Assembly where in 2000 the Goals were announced, and the WSSD do
not come in isolation.
Other stops on this railway line
to a better and more sustainable world have been the March 2002
Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development. Here countries
pledged to significantly increase overseas aid, reversing years of
decline.
Just before WSSD, Governments
also agreed to a $3 billion replenishment of the Global Environment
Facility (GEF). Many of this fund’s projects involve water and
water related projects in the developing world including rainwater
harvesting schemes on continents like Africa.
Th 12
th> Session of the United Nations Commission on
Sustainable Development (CSD), taking place in New York in
mid-April, aims to keep up the political pressure. We will use the
meeting to identify obstacles and constraints as well as success
stories to pave the way for effective implementation of the water
and sanitation targets.
Some weeks before, environment
ministers will meet in Jeju, Korea, for UNEP’s Global Ministerial
Environment Forum.
Here concrete studies, detailing
where water supplies and sanitation have been improved for
communities such as the Massai in Kenya and cities like Singapore
will be discussed for replicating elsewhere. The outcome will bring
the environment pillar to CSD, so it can be combined with the other
two pillars of sustainable development, namely social and economic
issues.
Countries have been far from
idle over the past 12 months. African ministers recently met in
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Political will and the good governance
needed to tackle the water crisis on this most vulnerable of
Continents has been lacking for many years. But this, we believe,
is no longer the case.
Ministers committed themselves
to establishing National Task Forces aimed at not only meeting the
Goals, but delivering safe and sufficient drinking water and
sanitation for all 300 million Africans in need by 2025.
A new Regional Water Facility,
established last year in Tunis, Tunisia, with a plan to raise $650
million for low cost loans and grants, will play an important
role.
Meanwhile the European
Commission announced 50 million Euros to help Chad carry out its
new Water and Drainage Strategy that will help provide reliable
drinking water for over 2,200 villages.
There are many more examples,
including assessment of water sector reforms in 16 African
countries including Uganda, following moves in South Africa.
So there are real signs of hope
and real examples of progress both nationally and internationally.
But we need to keep the pressure up if we are to reach the winning
tape.
A key reason why so many people
lack access to clean water and basic sanitation is the lack of an
integrated approach to water resources management (IWRM).
In other words the needs of
different sectors such as agriculture, industry and consumers are
often treated in isolation. So to are river systems, lakes and
underground aquifers and springs.
At WSSD countries committed to
prepare IWRM plans by 2005. How are we doing in terms of meeting
this goal?
A preliminary survey by the
Global Water Partnership (GWP) of 108 developing countries
indicates that around 10 percent have made good progress towards
more integrated approaches, 50 percent have taken initial steps in
this direction but strongly need to increase their efforts, while
the remaining 40 percent remain locked in fragmented decision
making.
The report clearly shows that
water resources management and development in most countries
remains fragmented, and few countries have made substantial
progress towards developing and managing their water in an
integrated way. This reinforces the need for all countries to
reinvigorate their efforts in this direction, starting with the
preparation of IWRM plans as agreed in Johannesburg.
Our concern is that if we miss
the 2005 target this might defuse the gains being made and take the
wind out of our collective sails to meet the 2015 targets on water
and sanitation.
Managing water supplies and
boosting sanitation is inextricably linked with fighting poverty
and delivering sustainable economic growth.
Indeed the water crisis is very
much a governance crisis rather than a scarcity crisis. A UNEP
study has shown that it is not water scarcity per se that defines
whether a country and its citizens are short of water. Rather it is
closely linked to wealth, with the average share of the population
with access to improved water supplies increasing with a nation’s
Gross Domestic Product per capita income.
Safe and sufficient water
supplies can also be at the root of a modern peace policy. Indeed
water, it emerges, can be a source of co-operation and resolution
to difficulties rather than a source of conflict as was once widely
thought.
UNEP’s recently published Atlas
of Freshwater Agreements shows that the world's 262 international
river basins account for nearly one-half of the earth's land
surface, generate roughly about 60% of global freshwater flow and
are home to about 45% of the world's population.
Over 3,000 treaties have been
signed between nations since 2,500 BC. Importantly, since 1948,
only 37 incidents of acute conflicts, such as those involving
violence, have occurred over water.
However, the past is not
necessarily a guide to the future especially in a world of six
billion and counting.
Around 150 river basins, upon which
millions of people depend for drinking water, irrigation and in
some cases energy, have no treaties or agreements and could be the
flashpoints for future disputes.
Many are in Asia, Latin America and
Africa where tensions over water for drinking supplies, irrigation,
fisheries and hydropower may be aggravated by rising populations
and existing political, social and environmental upheavals.
Water and sanitation are complex and
controversial issues that need creative thinking and cooperation
among all sectors of society including those directly suffering the
shortages.
We need to improve the management of water
utilities to generate secure revenue for their improvement. And we
need to reform how water is valued and priced, especially in
agriculture.
We need to deploy technologies, both high and
low, we need the financing, both macro and micro, and we need the
political will at the international, regional, national and local
government level.
Releasing our fellow human beings from the
misery of inadequate supplies of water and sanitation is an
exciting challenge. It is doable.
Like the water, upon which all life depends,
let’s not waste it.