More than 1.1 billion people lack access to safe water, and 2.6 billion lack accesses to basic sanitation. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) include a target to halve the fraction of the world’s population without access to water and sanitation by 2015. The world is roughly on course to reach the target for water supply, but will fall short by half a billion people in sanitation. Source: The World Bank
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'This paper explores two propositions regarding international river basins: 1) cooperative development of international rivers offers unique economic advantages over unilateral development; and 2) benefit sharing is a necessary condition for facilitating this cooperation. Despite the intuitive appeal of benefit sharing, clear benchmarks and good practices in structuring agreeable benefit sharing arrangements are lacking. Lessons from past experience are critical for guiding emerging regional ins more...
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'The right to water and sanitation has been taken up at the national level in many countries such as in the South Africa constitution.This led into the presentation of Hameda Deedat, a Gender, Trade and Water Activist with from South Africa with Umzabalaso We Jubilee. She acknowledged that World Bank policy has been shifting on the privatization of water systems, which is welcome by civil society. However, she asserted that World Bank should take this a step further to acknowledge water beyond i more...
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'A pilot project to improve water services and sanitation infrastructure in Swaziland's rural schools has been so successful that the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Swazi government and other health sector organisations are considering expanding it nationally.The project was launched last year in Shiselweni region in the south and Lubombo in the east, as a way of improving water delivery to schoolchildren.'
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'Jordan is a chronically water-scarce country, and less than five per cent of the land is arable. For farmers, little or no rainfall means severely reduced cultivation and production – and increased hunger and poverty. Those who find other ways to supplement their incomes generally earn very little. To address these challenges, an IFAD-supported project provided farmers with technical and financial assistance to promote soil and water conservation and boost agricultural production. It also hel more...
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The three water crises – dwindling freshwater supplies, inequitable access to water and the corporate control of water – pose the greatest threat of our time to the planet and to our survival. Together with impending climate change from fossil fuel emissions, the water crises impose some life-or-death decisions on us all.
Unless we collectively change our behavior, we are heading toward a world of deepening conflict and potential wars over the dwindling supplies of freshwater – between more...
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“Our demand for water has turned us into vampires, draining the world of its lifeblood. What can we do to prevent mass global drought and starvation?” asked Fred Pearce, the New Scientist’s environmental expert and author of ‘When the Rivers Run Dry”, published in February 2006.
There is some mordant irony that in the last 18 months parts of the world have witnessed colossal damage and lost of life due to the excess of water, at a time when the diminishing stock of freshwater conti more...
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