UN experts call for sanitation for all by 2025

UN experts urge the world community to set a new target, beyond the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of a 50 percent improvement in access to adequate sanitation by 2015, to the achievement of 100 percent coverage by 2025.

The experts have published a new report that offers 9-point prescription for achieving the Sanitation MDG by 2015.

Far more people in India have access to a cell phone than to a toilet and improved sanitation.

Recent UN research in India, the world’s second most populous country, shows roughly 366 million people (31 percent of the population) had access to improved sanitation in 2008.

Other data, meanwhile, shows 545 million cell phones are now connected to service in India’s emerging economy. The number of cell phones per 100 people has exploded from 0.35 in year 2000-01 to about 45 today.

Worldwide some 1.1 billion people defecate in the open. And data show progress in creating access to toilets and sanitation lags far behind world MDG targets, even as mobile phone connections continue to a predicted 1 billion in India by 2015.

Says Zafar Adeel, Director of United Nations University’s Canada-based think-tank for water, the Institute for Water, Environment and Health: “It is a tragic irony to think that in India, a country now wealthy enough that roughly half of the people own phones, about half cannot afford the basic necessity and dignity of a toilet.”

“Popular education about the health dangers of poor sanitation is also needed. But this simple measure could do more to save lives, especially those of young people, improve health and help pull India and other countries in similar circumstances out of poverty than any alternative investment. It can also serve as a very significant boost to the local economy.”

The new UNU report cites a rough cost of $300 to build a toilet, including labour, materials and advice. Worldwide, an estimated $358 billion is needed between now and 2015 to reach the MDG for sanitation – some of this funding is already mobilized at national and international levels.

“The world can expect, however, a return of between $3 and $34 for every dollar spent on sanitation, realized through reduced poverty and health costs and higher productivity – - an economic and humanitarian opportunity of historic proportions,” adds Dr. Adeel, who also serves as chair of UN-Water, a coordinating body for water-related work at 27 UN agencies and their many global partners.

[I]f current global trends continue [there will be] a 1 billion person shortfall from the MDG sanitation goal in 2015 — in all, 2.7 billion will lack access. So, while the world will miss the MDG target, the absolute number of those without access to sanitation will actually go up.

The problem is a major contributor to water-borne diseases that, in the past three years alone, killed an estimated 4.5 million children under the age of five — a death toll roughly equal to the population of Ireland or Costa Rica.

“This report [1] notes cultural taboos surround this issue in some countries, preventing progress,” says Zafar Adeel, Director of UNU-INWEH. “Anyone who shirks the topic as repugnant, minimizes it as undignified, or considers unworthy those in need should let others take over for the sake of 1.5 million children and countless others killed each year by contaminated water and unhealthy sanitation.”

The UNU-INWEH report synthesizes information from a wide range of UN and sources:

• Of the estimated $358 billion cost to meet the MDG target, $142 billion is needed to expand coverage (mostly to rural areas) and $216 billion to maintain existing services (mostly in urban areas)
• For all of Africa to meet the water and sanitation MDGs, the number of people served must double from the 350 million served in 2006. At current rates of progress in Sub-Saharan Africa, the sanitation MDG might not be met until 2076
• An estimated 443 million school days are lost each year due to water-related diseases
• Once girls reach puberty, lack of access to sanitation becomes a central cultural and human health issue, contributing to female illiteracy and low levels of education, in turn contributing to a cycle of poor health for pregnant women and their children

The report offers nine recommendations:

• Address sanitation in the context of global poverty and in concert with the other MDGs as part of an overall strategy to increase global equity;
• Make sanitation a primary focus within the broader context of water management and access to safe water;Integrate sanitation into community life – holistic, community-based and communitydriven.
• Empower local communities (not just households) to identify needs, change behaviour, create demand for ownership and overcome obstacles such as land tenure;
• Make coordinated, long-term sanitation investments focused on both “software” (usage) and “hardware” (facilities). To make monitoring more valuable, integrate failures and successes associated with sanitation delivery in community-based evaluations;
• Redefine “acceptable” sanitation access within the context of gender, economic realities and environmental constraints;
• Adjust the MDG target from a 50 percent improvement in access to adequate sanitation by 2015 to 100 percent coverage by 2025;
• Co-ordinate the responses of national NGOs to the sanitation crisis and enhance communication, especially regarding lessons learned, to form an effective and vocal sanitation advocacy group;
• Design new business models to develop markets at the bottom of the pyramid and deal with the apexes of the water-sanitation-hygiene triangle concurrently;
• Recommit to official development assistance equal to 0.7 percent of GDP and, within this framework, commit 0.002 percent of GDP to international investments in sanitation.

Says Dr. Adeel: “As president of the G8 in 2010, Canada has announced it will champion ‘a major initiative to improve the health of women and children in the world’s poorest regions,’ making this the top priority of the leaders’ meetings in June. Better nutrition and immunization are foremost among the remedies cited.”

“We would urge, however, that providing decent sanitation be emphasized among the simple, inexpensive solutions available, as it would do more to save the lives than any other possible measure.”

Says report co-author Corinne Shuster-Wallace of UNU-INWEH: “Sanitation for all is not only achievable, but necessary. There is a moral, civil, political and economic need to bring adequate sanitation to the global population.”

[1] UNU-INWEH (2010). Sanitation as a key to global health : voices from the field. Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health. Read the full report

Source: UNU-INWEH, Apr 2010

Water at core of climate change impacts-UN experts

The main impact of climate change will be on water supplies and the world needs to learn from past cooperation such as over the Indus or Mekong Rivers to help avert future conflicts, experts said on 7 February 2010.

Desertification, flash floods, melting glaciers, heatwaves, cyclones or water-borne diseases such as cholera are among the impacts of global warming inextricably tied to water. And competition for supplies might cause conflicts.

“The main manifestations of rising temperatures…are about water,” said Zafar Adeel, chair of UN-Water which coordinates work on water among 26 U.N. agencies.

“It has an impact on all parts of our life as a society, on natural systems, habitats,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview. Disruptions may threaten farming or fresh water supplies from Africa to the Middle East.

“Therein lies the potential for conflicts,” he said. Shortage of water, such as in Darfur in Sudan, has been a contributing factor to conflict.

But Adeel said that water had often proven a route for cooperation. India and Pakistan have worked to manage the Indus River despite border conflicts and Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia have cooperated in the Mekong River Commission.

“Water is a very good medium (for cooperation). It’s typically an apolitical issue that can be dealt with,” said Adeel, who is also director of the U.N. University’s Canada-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-IWEH)

A Meeting of UN-Water Senior Programme Managers was held from 2-4 February 2010 at UNU-IWEH in Hamilton, Canada.

250 Million

Regions likely to become drier because of climate change include Central Asia and northern Africa. Up to 250 million people in Africa could suffer extra stress on water supplies by 2020, according to the U.N. panel of climate experts.

“There are many more examples of successful transboundary cooperation than conflict over water,” said Nikhil Chandavarkar, of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs and Secretary of UN-Water.

“We are trying to take the examples of good cooperation — the Mekong, the Indus are examples. Even where there were hostilities in the surrounding countries the agreements did function,” he told Reuters.

Adeel said that water should have a more central role in debates on food security, peace, climate change and recovery from the financial crisis. “Water is central to each of these debates but typically isn’t seen as such,” he said.

And efforts to combat global warming will themselves put more strains on water because of rival economic demands — such as for irrigation, biofuels or hydropower. Adeel noted efforts to manage water supplies by counting how much water goes into products — from beef to coffee.

One study showed that it took 15,000 litres to produce a pair of blue jeans, he said. Making industries aware of water use could help shift to conservation. He said the world might reach a “millennium goal” of halving the proportion of people without access to safe water by 2015 but was failing in a related target of improving sanitation. About 2.8 billion people lack access to basic sanitation.

Source: Alister Doyle, Reuters, 07 Feb 2010

Water experts of 26 UN agencies to meet in Canada, plan coordinated response to looming crisis

UNU-INWEH Director assumes Chair of UN-Water: ‘The greatest impacts of climate change are all about water’

More than two dozen leading United Nations water experts will convene in Hamilton, Canada on 2-4 Feb. 2010 to plan fresh strategy for a coordinated approach to the global water crisis that increasingly threatens both human health and international security.

At its first-ever meeting in Canada, the group known as UN-Water will also formalize international ceremonies to mark the World Water Day 2010 (March 22) and help set both direction and UN agency contributions for the next triennial World Water Development Report in 2012.

Dr. Zafar Adeel

The meeting is being convened by UN-Water’s new Chair, Zafar Adeel, Director of the United Nations University’s Hamilton-based Institute for Water, Environment & Health.

Elected at a UN-Water meeting last August in Stockholm, Dr. Adeel formally assumed the two-year post in 2010, taking over from Pasquale Steduto of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.

UN-Water was created in 2003 to coordinate global water-related work of 26 relevant UN agencies, and to interact with 17 major partners such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the World Conservation Union (IUCN). (See full list of members).

“This meeting of UN agencies comes at a crucial time, just two months after the UN’s historic Copenhagen conference on climate change and four months before leaders of the G8 and G20 nations meet in Ontario,” says Dr. Adeel.

“The global importance of water issues cannot be overstated,” he adds. “Virtually all climate change impacts are expressed through water in one form or another, including more severe storms and extreme floods, and rapidly disappearing glaciers, often called ‘Earth’s water towers’.”

“Meanwhile, nearly 3.5 million people die each year due to water-related diseases like cholera and diarrhea. Likewise, water scarcity and drought in many parts of the world is directly linked to poverty and high public health costs. And the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts worsening impacts in immediate decades to come.”

“My goal as the UN-Water Chair is to demonstrate the significance of water issues in global policy debates, including the ongoing financial crisis as well as food security, climate change, international peace and stability. Water is central to each of those debates but typically isn’t seen as such.”

“UN-Water members and partners help assure better, more cohesive delivery of water services in several countries. It does this though guidance to world policy makers and the collection of case studies of best practices for mitigating water problems that can be prevented and adaptation to those that can’t. UN-Water also helps establish strategic priorities and eliminate overlap and duplication in order to make fullest possible use of scarce international resources.”

Dr. Adeel notes that, while science can predict the average impact of climate change with relative confidence, its implications are far less clear at the level of countries or even world regions, especially with respect to future precipitation patterns.

He predicts that helping policy makers navigate questions surrounding local and regional water-related impacts of climate change will assume growing importance for UN-Water members and partners in years to come.

Source: Eurekalert, 03 Jan 2010

Providing toilets, safe water is top route to reducing world poverty: UN University

Mapping vulnerable communities essential to global health and poverty

Simply installing toilets where needed throughout the world and ensuring safe water supplies would do more to end crippling poverty and improve world health than any other possible measure, according to an analysis released [on 19 Oct 2008] by the United Nations University – International Network on Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH).

The analysis says better water and sanitation reduces poverty in three ways.

• New service business opportunities are created for local entrepreneurs;
• Significant savings are achieved in the public health sector; and
• Individual productivity is greater in contributing to local and national economies.

UNU-INWEH also calls on the world’s research community to help fill major knowledge gaps that impede progress in addressing the twin global scourges of unsafe water and poor sanitation.

Information gaps include such seemingly obvious measures as common definitions and worldwide maps to identify communities most vulnerable to health-related problems as a result of poor access to sanitation and safe water. UNU-INWEH also calls for creation of a “tool-box” to help policy-makers choose between available options in local circumstances.

[...]

In the analysis, prepared for global policy makers and released Oct. 20 at the start of a two-day UNU-INWEH-hosted international meeting [Sanitation: Innovations for Policy and Finance] in Hamilton, Canada, experts offer a prescription for policy reform.

[...]

The UNU-INWEH analysis identifies population growth, poverty, climate change, globalization and inappropriate policies on investment, urbanization, and intensification of agriculture as the five global trends most likely to exacerbate water supply and sanitation problems in years to come.

[...]

“As the International Year of Sanitation winds down, UNU invites and welcomes the help of all scientists who agree we can and must do more,” says Prof. Susan Elliott, a Senior Research Fellow at UNU-INWEH and a professor at McMaster University.

[...]

The “toolbox” idea would involve “a virtual library and database of educational materials, technologies, governance, models, etc. would facilitate information exchange of both established and innovative tools.”

As well, “validated models need to be developed that will predict the impact of climate change on water and wastewater infrastructure, water availability, water quality and waterborne / water-associated diseases.”

UNU-INWEH was created in 1996 to strengthen water management capacity, particularly of developing countries, and to provide on-the-ground project support. With core funding provided by the Government of Canada, it is hosted by McMaster University, Canada.

Source: UNU / EurekAlert, 19 Oct 2008 – see also Fiona Harvey, Financial Times, 20 Oct 2008 and Reuters, 19 Oct 2008