Speech
28 October 2008
Launch of DFID's policy paper on water and sanitation - Speech by Secretary of State Douglas Alexander at Coin Street Development Centre, London, 28 October 2008
Thank you Steve (Jones, facilitator) for that kind introduction – I’d also like
to echo his thanks for all of you for attending, particularly Margaret (Batty,
of WaterAid) and Simon (Maxwell, of ODI) up here on the stage, as well as Mike
Foster and Malcolm Bruce of the IDC.
Before I go any further I just want to say a personal word of congratulations to
both Margaret and WaterAid. I have a huge amount of respect and admiration for
your work – from your effective campaigning to the help you have given us in
putting together this policy document. I have found you to be quite simply one
of the most impressive organisations I’ve worked with since becoming
International Development Secretary last year.
And it is great – as ever - to share a platform with Simon. This morning, a
member of my office said that if we do any more events together, people will
start to think we are a double-act. I’m worried people will think I’m the
warm-up act on your ODI farewell tour. But, as I say, it’s good to be here with
you.
And I’d also just like to take a moment to introduce and acknowledge the role of
Mike Foster – whom some of you will have already had the chance to meet. Mike
joined DFID last month as one of my ministerial colleagues, and will be working
with me on the issues of water and sanitation, so I’m delighted he could be here
with us today, and I’m sure that you’ll be seeing much more of him in the weeks
and months to come.
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1858
It is great to be here in the coin street neighbourhood centre, in such an
enviable facility. And it is appropriate that we are here in a location so close
to the Thames today to launch DFID’s new policy paper on supporting water and
sanitation in the developing world.
For it is 150 years since the long hot summer of 1858 gave rise to the “Great
Stink”. At that time, 149 million tonnes of sewage were being flushed into the
Thames each year, and thousands of Londoners were struck down by typhoid and
cholera.
In the heat of that summer in 1858, the stench from the Thames became so bad
apparently, that Members of Parliament fled their river-side offices. Benjamin
Disraeli hastily introduced a Bill to construct the sewer network we are still
using in the capital today.
In the following decades, spending on sanitation doubled and doubled again. The
result, of course, was a far healthier city and a far healthier population. Once
completed, the sewer system had contributed to one of the sharpest falls in
infant mortality in history, and rid London of the spectre of cholera.
I think that helps explain why, when readers of the British Medical Journal were
asked what they thought was the greatest medical advancement in the UK over the
last 150 years, their answer was not antibiotics, or even vaccines, but
‘sanitation’.
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2008
150 years after the Great Stink – in this global year of sanitation - the
situation is happily very different in London, and indeed, in my office in the
Palace of Westminster.
Yet wherever my role as International Development Secretary has taken me, I have
seen that there is an urgent need for both for sanitation and for water in
today’s world.
Just last week I visited a village in the Somali region of Ethiopia, where women
are forced to walk for 5 hours to reach the nearest source of water – shared by
people and animals alike. And when I was there, the rains had come for the first
time for months, forming huge, dirty puddles on the ground. Puddles which I knew
those villagers would be forced, through desperation, to drink from.
So while of course we have seen progress in recent years in providing water and
sanitation to people around the world, we have a great distance to travel.
Since 1990, over 1.5 billion people have gained access to safe drinking water,
and more than a billion people have gained access to basic sanitation.
But if we continue as we have done in recent years, Sub-Saharan Africa will not
meet the Millennium Development Goal for water until 2035, or for sanitation
until 2108 - nearly a century too late.
And we know that the challenge of scarce water will only become greater in the
emerging evidence of climate change. One and a half billion people rely on
rivers fed by the Himalayan Glaciers to provide their drinking water and so they
can grow food. Those same glaciers could disappear in twenty-five years time.
And we know that when people cannot get access to clean water and basic
sanitation, it is much, much tougher to reach the other Millennium Development
Goals.
At any one time, half of all hospital beds in developing countries are filled
with people suffering from water-related diseases.
And women in rural Africa spend, on average, a quarter of their day fetching
water. A quarter of their productive day gone, to meet the most basic need. That
is a huge waste of human potential.
In Kenya last year, I met mothers who told me that without the toilets the UK
Government had helped to provide in their local school, their daughters would
not have received the education to which they were entitled.
That is why, in New York last month for the High Level Event on the Millennium
Goals, I told heads of Government from around the world that if we want to make
progress on health and education, we must also make faster progress on the basic
building blocks of life: clean water and basic sanitation.
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UK commitment
And that is why the United Kingdom remains committed to leading global efforts to get clean water and sanitation to people right around the world. Today, the new policy paper that we are launching sets out how we will:
- extend access to water and sanitation in Africa
- provide basic sanitation for people in South Asia
- and help improve water management in both Africa and Asia.
Africa
In my department’s last white paper – White Paper Three as it is known - we
pledged to double and double again our investment in water and sanitation in
Africa, and to invest £200 million a year by 2010.
I can announce to you today that we will continue that level of investment for
five years, providing £200 million a year, to help up to 25 million more people
across Africa gain access to safe water and basic sanitation.
To give just a couple of examples of what this investment will achieve…
In Sierra Leone, we will help to provide an additional 1.5 million people with
access to safe water and improved sanitation, saving the lives of some 3,000
young children each and every year, and putting that country on track to meet
their Millennium Development Goal for water and sanitation.
And in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where less than a third of the rural
population have access to clean water or sanitation, I have just agreed a
programme of work with UNICEF to provide water points and latrines in schools
and villages - to improve the health of 3.7 million people.
Our new commitments today will put the United Kingdom among the three largest
bilateral donors in supporting water and sanitation in Africa. Indeed if all
other donors, partners and national governments undertook to double their
investment, and double it again – as we have – Africa could reach the water and
sanitation targets. Not by the middle of this century. Not by the beginning of
the next century. But by 2015.
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Asia
Our new strategy also sets out our planned support for improving sanitation
across South Asia, where today 775 million people - half the population of that
region - do not have access to any kind of sanitation.
So I can announce to you today that over the next five years, the UK Government,
through my department, will work with partners – including UNICEF and WaterAid –
to help 30 million people across South Asia to gain access to basic sanitation.
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Water resources
We know that all countries need the ability to store and distribute water to
give the greatest economic and social benefits. Poor countries have an even
greater need than most – because they have less predictable rainfall – yet
because of their poverty, those same countries lack the necessary
infrastructure.
In Africa today less than one fifth of suitable land is irrigated, making
countries more vulnerable to the effects of both drought and flood. Kenya
suffered a 16% drop in GDP as a result of drought between 1998 and 2000,
and an 11% drop in GDP because of flooding in 1997 and 1998.
And evidence suggests that climate change is going to make managing scarce water
resources even harder in the future than it is today. By 2025, 3 billion people
could be living in water-stressed countries.
So to help countries across both Asia and Africa to manage their water resources
and adapt to climate change, I can announce to you today that my department will
provide a further £30 million over the next five years.
Our investment will support countries to manage water resources in changing
climates. We will support regional and cross-border water initiatives to promote
cooperation over shared resources. And we will invest in research to improve
understanding of the impact that climate change will have for poor countries –
and to help identify suitable measures to allow adaptation to take place.
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Global
Of course extending water and sanitation to people around the world is not a
problem that can be solved by the United Kingdom alone – or indeed by
investment alone. That is why, alongside the support I have already described,
DFID is working to build political will - both globally and locally - to improve
access to water and sanitation.
Last month, at the High Level Meeting in New York, the first pilot Global Annual
Water and Sanitation Report - produced by the World Health Organisation and
funded by my department - was presented to the United Nations Secretary General.
And on the strength of that pilot, we secured agreement for a full report to
show not just progress towards the MDG targets country by country, but to
demonstrate where the needs remain greatest and identify exactly what needs to
be done.
In New York we also secured agreement to hold one annual high-level meeting, the
first to be hosted by UNICEF next year, to consider the findings of the annual
report, review progress against commitments, highlight gaps that need to be
filled, and – most importantly – make real, binding decisions about the action
that will be required for the future.
And finally, we also agreed to have one global taskforce to monitor commitments.
The membership of that taskforce will be finalised in the next few months. In my
view, it should be hosted by the UN, include experts from donor countries,
developing countries and civil society, and have the independence to highlight
where commitments have not been met.
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Local
Of course the greatest opportunity, and the greatest responsibility, for
improving access to water and sanitation in developing countries lies with the
governments and citizens of those countries.
And the countries lagging furthest behind the MDG targets on water and
sanitation are those where the Government is less transparent, less accountable
and less responsive to its citizens. In my experience, every poor community puts
access to clean water at or near the top of its list of priorities. Their
Governments – regrettably - do not always do the same.
That can be because those same poor people, often living in rural areas, are
those without influence in the politics of their countries. So we are supporting
not only direct services, but also civil society organisations in developing
countries to come together and make the change that their societies need –
including water and sanitation.
In Kenya, we are working with the Water and Sanitation Programme to provide
report cards for poor communities, so they can give their assessments of water
services back to those who provide them. In response to feedback, service
providers in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu have agreed to address the concerns of
the community; a first and important step towards – we hope - better services.
And we are working with WaterAid to support citizens and communities improve
their sanitation themselves. In Bangladesh WaterAid has provided both education
on the health and hygiene benefits of good sanitation, as well as practical help
to design and build low-cost toilets. As many as 250 villages were able to
declare ‘100% sanitation’ across their community – bringing down the incidence
of diarrhoea by 99%, and halving work and school days lost through
illness.
And I can announce today, that in addition to the investment I have already
outlined, my Department will provide up to £1 million of direct support to help
southern NGOs build their networking and advocacy capacity on specific issues of
water and sanitation - and help to build the grassroots pressure that is needed
to bring about real change. And I see that very much as an initial investment,
and we stand ready to increase this, based on its success.
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Closing remarks
Because real change, as our own history shows us, can only come when there is
political will to make it happen.
In 1858, Benjamin Disraeli said, and I quote directly: "a moral responsibility
lies upon us to do all in our power to prevent a public disaster".
I believe that today, a moral responsibility lies upon us all – Governments,
NGOs, international agencies, faith leaders, businesses and concerned citizens –
to help create a route out of what is today an ongoing and recurring disaster.
For what else can we call the needless waste of human potential that results
when mothers are forced to spend five hours a day simply to fetch the water that
their family needs? When workers fall sick because they live next to an open
sewer? Or where diarrhoea is the second greatest cause of infant death in the
world today?
The United Kingdom has shown by the power of our example what is possible when
resources – and just as importantly, political will – are applied to the
provision of clean water and sanitation here in London.
I believe that now – working together - we can provide an equally powerful
example on the world stage. Thank you.
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