Untouched water By Saul Garlick and Elizabeth Arkell
United States presidential candidates Democratic Senator Barack Obama and
Republican Senator John McCain are missing a monumental opportunity to save
millions of lives and radically change the course of world history.
Global warming, the oil crisis and HIV/AIDS are finally receiving serious
attention, and yet we continue to avoid an issue that perennially threatens the
lives of children. The issue could not be more basic, more important, or more
ignored: the issue is water.
More than 1 billion people, almost 20% of the global population, lack access to
clean drinking water. Two billion more lack access to basic sanitation. Nearly
2 million children around the world will die this year from water-related
illnesses, and with populations in the poorest regions growing faster than in
industrialized areas we
can expect this number to increase. Meanwhile, the United States has little to
say on global or domestic water policy.
Fortune magazine reports that the global water crisis will be as serious in the
21st century as oil crises were in the 20th, potentially leading to warfare. So
it should come as a shock that water is not on the lips of the presidential
candidates.
Obama denounced the rising oceans associated with climate change in the speech
where he claimed his status as the presumptive Democratic nominee, but he did
not mention the lack of taps for people in the developing world to access a
decent glass of water. Similarly, while McCain has moved away from the
Republican Party's traditional aversion to the issue of global warming, he
mostly discusses the environmental component and not the human effects.
The water crisis is not on the presidential agenda because there is no easy
solution. Water is not free. The United Nations Development Program Human
Development Report estimates that an additional US$4 billion will have to be
spent on clean water and sanitation projects each year for the next seven years
to reach the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people
without access to safe water by 2015.
This is a conservative estimate. The British Department for International
Development predicts that an additional $9.5 billion needs to be invested each
year until 2015, while the World Health Organization believes an additional
$11.3 billion needs to be spent on water projects each year for the next seven
years.
It is not only green activists and liberals who have taken an interest in the
global water crisis. Goldman Sachs recently held a conference on the world's
"top five risks" at which it deemed the water shortage to be as lethal in this
century as terrorism and the relentless exhaustion of energy reserves. Goldman
Sachs also points out that the water industry is worth $425 billion.
Depending on the region of the world, the economic benefits from water
investments can range from $3 to $34 for each dollar invested. There would be a
total payback to the aggregate economy of $84 billion from the $11.3 billion
per year that World Health Organization estimates is needed. So, it is well
worth it for governments to jump on board.
Water does occasionally make it onto the agenda in the US Senate. In 2007, the
United States Agency for International Development spent $250 million on water
and sanitation projects; $100 million of it was spent in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Only $70 million was offered to "non-emergency" countries and, of that, $10
million was offered to sub-Saharan Africa, the most impoverished region. In
2005, the Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act was passed and signed into law,
with $300 million designated in 2008 to improve access to clean water. The
government has promised to allocate $125 million of that sum specifically to
sub-Saharan Africa.
Nearly 4,900 children around the world will die today from a water-related
illness, and the tragedy seems to be largely ignored in Washington. This is
both catastrophic for those who cannot access sanitary drinking water and
symptomatic of the constant policy and market failures that undermine
livelihoods everywhere. The food crisis alone has pushed more than 400 million
people back toward the extreme poverty line. Water solutions could help
everyone grow crops and avert a colossal, silent massacre.
It is in the United States' self-interest to work toward a more stable global
community, one in which people don't have to scrape by to access drinking
water, dragging a dry jerrycan behind.
But the candidates have not yet tackled this issue, and it is not likely that
they will. For the voiceless children of today this is a crisis of massive
proportions. With oil prices above $130 per barrel, Americans are finally
feeling the squeeze of a natural resource disaster. It behooves all of us to be
more prescient this time, and float water to the top of the agenda.
Saul Garlick is the founder and executive director of the Student
Movement for Real Change (SMRC), an international non-profit organization that
empowers young people to improve health and education in neglected regions of
the world. He is a contributor to Carnegie Council's online magazine Policy
Innovations. Elizabeth Arkell is events coordinator and policy
researcher at Student Movement for Real Change.
(Published with permission of the
Global Policy Innovations program at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in
International Affairs.)
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