Experts Warn of Impending Global Water Crisis

Warning that a global water and sanitation crisis was looming, development experts and Government and civil society representatives called for accelerated action on water-management issues in general, and sanitation in particular, as the Commission on Sustainable Development devoted a second full day to reviewing water and sanitation decisions taken at its thirteenth session.

During two half-day interactive panels, many speakers underscored the need for more integrated and better funded water-management policies to extend basic water services and meet the Millennium Development Goals on safe drinking water, which seemed within reach, and sanitation, which did not. In their estimation, current efforts to improve sanitation were in the toilet. One expert said there seemed to be a “blind spot” about the integral role of sanitation in reducing poverty and achieving all the other Millennium Goals. While major immunization programs had led to significant success in meeting the Millennium targets on child mortality, an immunized child could still die from diarrhea due to poor sanitation conditions and unsafe hygiene practices.

Indeed, the costs of failing to deliver basic water services were high, with more than 5,000 children dying each day from diarrhea around the world, she said, adding that 50 per cent of the hospital beds in Africa were filled with patients suffering from diarrheal illness. But, despite such a bleak backdrop, the target for sanitation was still attainable, an issue that should be flagged for the Commission’s high-level segment, opening tomorrow morning.

Picking up that thread, a World Bank expert said that, in terms of water policy, sanitation could no longer be forgotten. In funding basic water availability and sanitation, the challenge was not only to find more sources of money, but also to identify funding mechanisms that would foster sustainable water policies. For example, simply building more toilets was not effective, because they often went unused. Funding had to be extended, therefore, to sanitation awareness programs, of which improving household awareness was a critical part.

Other speakers said that, while water was on the front line of both the food crisis and climate change, its significance in local and national development strategies was under emphasized and most climate change discussions did not stress water concerns with the urgency they deserved. One speaker, who described his work with local communities in Lesotho, Egypt, Botswana and Nepal, among other places, said that, given the pressures of the current food crisis, it was time to start investing heavily in food-production sectors, including irrigation. As populations exploded in many parts of the world, the need to increase food production would put similar pressures on freshwater supplies. On top of all that, the true impact of global warming on food and water supplies was only just becoming clear. Without a focus on water and agriculture, there was no hope of meeting many of the Millennium Development Goals, including those on poverty alleviation and gender equality.

One expert, noting that the initial target date set at the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development had not been met, stressed that water management should not be seen as a simple target, but as a complex process of changing habits and meeting a series of goals. To meet those goals, water-management planning had to include real priorities. For example, water management was not inherently helpful to women and the poor, unless very real steps were taken to protect their interests through policies designed for that purpose. Likewise, capacity-building was difficult to do outside real-world situations, and efforts to create water-management plans had to incorporate realities on the ground.

Another expert stressed the need for “truth” about water to be recognized and incorporated into policy, particularly the truth about how much water was available and who needed it. Given that information on water use was sometimes decades old, there were huge gaps in information, and the quality of such data affected planning for the future. Resources should be shifted from report-writing to data-gathering, so as to harmonize plans with current needs and deliver better policy frameworks.

Source: U.N. Economic and Social Council

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