The Poorest on Drip on World Water Day
Saturday, March 22, World Water Day 2008, will be celebrated all over the world, as envisioned by the UN as an initiative that grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro.
To celebrate or not; there is nothing so peculiar on World Water Day 2008, other than another statistical entry for talking shop on water issues, at least. To many of the world’s poorest, particularly in Africa, Asia and Latin America, water is costlier than oil, more precious than oil and yet less available than clean air.
For it does not make sense that most wars and regional conflicts in the developing world today are fought on the ever illusive dream of Water for All, an Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for world’s governments by 2015.
At the 2000 UN Summit, nearly all the world’s Heads of States and Governments solemnly committed themselves to the attainment of the Goal of halving, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. It is, however, increasingly evident that, among the regions of the world, Africa, and in particular sub-Saharan Africa, is falling further behind in meeting this MDG.
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A 2005 report of the United Nations Millennium Project, led by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, and a another status report by UNICEF and the WHO confirm this disturbing state of affairs. The urgency of the matter is made clear when we note that at the beginning of the 21st Century some 300 million Africans – or over a third of the population – still do not have access to safe drinking water supplies, and 400 million – or nearly half of all Africans – lack access to basic sanitation.
This unsatisfactory state of affairs has serious ramifications on the overall pace of economic and social progress of nations of the developing world and contrast even more with the fact that in 2008 - rich with double tags of World Water Day and the International Year of Sanitation - we cannot ensure the MDG target for environmental sustainability.
For as you read this piece, one million Ethiopians are facing a serious water shortage. People trek for tens of miles in search of this precious commodity. In Bangladesh, water is scarce and hard to find; it is the same replicated story in the slums of Calcutta and Lima and Nairobi.
Children are dying of sanitation related diseases and face malnutrition and fatality because there is not enough safe water to drink. Most of these children have parents who are the poorest of the world’s poor. People who need just a dollar a day to feed up to ten mouths in the family.
Literally, the world’s poor are on drip as we mark yet another World Water Day in 2008, only seven years to the 2015 countdown.
Resources: UNICEF MDG Progress Report, UN WWD ‘08, WaterPartners International
Photo credit: angela7dreams at Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
