Water Progresses, Sanitation Regresses
18 Aug 2008
The world's poorest nations are making halting progress in water, but little or no tangible improvement in sanitation -- two of the basic necessities of life
As far as the global state of sanitation is concerned, says Anders Berntell, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), "It's one of the world's greatest scandals."
Addressing the 18th international water conference in the Swedish capital Monday, Berntell said that 2.5 billion people still lack access to adequate sanitation, resulting in some 1.4 million preventable child deaths due to diarrhoeal diseases each year.
As a follow-up to the U.N.'s International Year of Sanitation (IYS) 2008, this year's 'World Water Week' hosted by SIWI will primarily focus on problems of sanitation worldwide.
The conference, comprising over 40 workshops through Friday, is being attended by a record 2,400 participants, including government officials, donors, academics, engineers, scientists and representatives of the private sector and international organisations.
The U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which seek to reduce extreme poverty and hunger by 50 percent by 2015, has also set a target of halving the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation.
But this goal may never be reached, says SIWI, unless at least 10 billion dollars are invested every year, through 2015, to improve sanitation worldwide.
Meanwhile, according to a joint study early this year by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), there is marked improvement on the water front. The number of people living without a supply of improved drinking water has declined to well below one billion, down from about 1.4 billion last year.
Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, chair of the U.N. Secretary General's Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB), told delegates that more than half the global population now has water piped to their homes and the number of people using unimproved water supplies continues to decline.
Read More...
Source: IPS News
Addressing the 18th international water conference in the Swedish capital Monday, Berntell said that 2.5 billion people still lack access to adequate sanitation, resulting in some 1.4 million preventable child deaths due to diarrhoeal diseases each year.
As a follow-up to the U.N.'s International Year of Sanitation (IYS) 2008, this year's 'World Water Week' hosted by SIWI will primarily focus on problems of sanitation worldwide.
The conference, comprising over 40 workshops through Friday, is being attended by a record 2,400 participants, including government officials, donors, academics, engineers, scientists and representatives of the private sector and international organisations.
The U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which seek to reduce extreme poverty and hunger by 50 percent by 2015, has also set a target of halving the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation.
But this goal may never be reached, says SIWI, unless at least 10 billion dollars are invested every year, through 2015, to improve sanitation worldwide.
Meanwhile, according to a joint study early this year by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), there is marked improvement on the water front. The number of people living without a supply of improved drinking water has declined to well below one billion, down from about 1.4 billion last year.
Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, chair of the U.N. Secretary General's Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB), told delegates that more than half the global population now has water piped to their homes and the number of people using unimproved water supplies continues to decline.
Read More...
Source: IPS News
