Water News from Around the World
African leaders and experts meet in Ethiopia to draft plan to better manage water in Africa
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia -- More than 300 million Africans suffer from a shortage of clean water, resulting in 6,000 deaths a year and growing violence over access to water, experts told an international summit.
The scarcity of clean water has increased the danger or social and political conflict in Africa's urban areas, which continue to grow at an unprecedented rate, senior United Nations officials warned. African Cabinet ministers representing more than 40 countries attended a five-day summit in 2003 that opened in Ethiopia's capital along with 1,000 delegates to discuss the water crisis on the world's poorest continent.
The Addis Ababa summit is the first of its kind to draw political leaders and experts from across the continent to establish an action plan to deal with the myriad of problems surrounding Africa's water use. While experts said there was plenty of water available in Africa, much of it is wasted or poorly managed, resulting in shortages across Africa. African ministers appealed for $16 billion a year from major financial institutions, like the World Bank, to help address problems.
Egypt's water minister, Dr. Mahmoud Abu-Zeid, accused rich nations of "turning their backs on the poor" by failing to provide financial support for water projects. He said without enormous financial backing from donors and political commitment from African leaders, impoverished nations will never "escape the vicious cycle of poverty." Abu-Zeid also called upon African countries to ensure peace by working together to avoid disputes sparked by water shortages.
Kinglsey Amoako, head of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, estimated that $20 billion a year is needed to help get water to 300 million Africans. But just $4 billion is spent per year on water supply and sanitation, he said. As a result, millions live in appalling conditions and needlessly die, Amoako said. He challenged African government's to "put their money where their mouth is" and commit 5 percent of their national budgets to funding water projects.
Some African countries spend as little as 1 percent of their budgets on water supply, relying on foreign aid to make up the difference. Amoako told delegates that desertification of the continent as well as years of poor management and widespread environmental degradation must be reversed. "We owe it to our children and grandchildren to address all these concerns with haste," Amoako said. "If we fail to do so, history will not judge us kindly."
Under plans being drawn up, African governments are looking to work together to manage rivers to avoid the threat of so-called "water wars." More than two-thirds of Africa's 60 river basins are shared by more than one country, creating the potential for clashes over who and how they should be used. Anna Tibaijuka, head of the U.N. agency on housing, said failing to utilize water effectively would undermine important economic and political strides already made.
"This economic recovery could be in peril if Africa fails to manage its water resources efficiently and equitably," Tibaijuka said. She also said impoverished Africans living in slums on the continent are being forced to pay five times as much per liter or clean water as people living in rich nations. Tibaijuka also warned that within the next 20 years, 500 million people will be living in slum conditions in the continent's burgeoning cities, most without clean water. "Water scarcity is fast becoming a potential source of social and political conflict," she noted. "Poor service provision is extremely detrimental to the health and economy of the African continent."
World said slipping in goal of fresh water to poor
OSLO, Norway -- The world is slipping behind a U.N. goal of supplying fresh water by 2015 to more than half a billion people in developing nations who currently lack it, the head of a U.N. Commission said.
Governments agreed at a 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, to work out by next year national plans for halving the proportion of people with no access to fresh water by 2015, now 1.2 billion people or one in five of the world population. "These plans will not be in place in all countries by 2005," said Boerge Brende, chairman of the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development which follows up the Johannesburg goals. "It's clear that some countries haven't thought about it so far ... and it's often the countries that are worst off in water," he told a news conference. "We must have plans in place or we don't have a chance of reaching the 2015 goals."
Brende, who is also Norway's environment minister, said about 100 environment ministers would meet in New York this year to review the water targets, and a related goal of improving sanitation for an estimated 2.4 billion people. He said the water targets were "still doable ... but it will be a big challenge." Sub-Saharan Africa faces the biggest problems while India and China seem better prepared despite their huge populations. Fresh water would have spin-off benefits in curbing poverty, improving health or even in defusing potential conflicts in areas with shared rivers, Brende said. The Middle East or central Asia could be flash points in future with no proper management of scant water resources. "And 70 percent of those who are sick in India are ill because of water-related illnesses," Brende said.
"In Africa one of the main reasons why girls do not go to school is that they spend half their day fetching water and the other half looking for firewood. So there's no time for education," he said. Brende said that the water goal meant that 300,000 people needed to gain access to fresh supplies every day. "In the 1980s, the so-called water decade, we managed 250,000 people a day over 10 years," he said. "But it wasn't properly planned."
He said that many water pumps set up in Africa in the 1980s were not in use because of a lack of spare parts. Elsewhere, water supplies have been polluted by sewage. In Nairobi, Brende said, slum dwellers had to use bottled water, costing more than gasoline, while less impoverished people with piped supplies got water cheap because of subsidies. And in some nations irrigation systems had siphoned off fresh water to crops. The Aral Sea in central Asia has shrunk to a quarter of its original size due to water use by cotton farmers.
Reprinted with permission of U.S. Water News, http://www.uswaternews.com