Better water, better life
For
most people in the UK, water hardship is about using a bucket to clean the car
rather than a hose, 20 litres is two flushes of the toilet and a long journey to
fetch water is the walk from bedroom to kitchen.
But in developing countries, at any given moment, half the population are sick from unsafe water and sanitation, and over 5,000 children die each day from diarrhoea as a result. The challenge for rich countries is to expand the supply of water to a city the size of Birmingham every week, every month, every year for the next decade.
That was the message at the heart of DFID Minister Gareth Thomas' speech at
the
Better Water for a Better Life
event on 7 March, 2007, at London’s Portcullis House. Organised by the Foreign
Policy Centre and co-hosted by drinks manufacturer Diageo Africa, the forum
focussed on water scarcity, the theme of UN
World Water Week 2007 on 22 March.
Averting global water crisis
Gareth Thomas highlighted the scale of the problem ahead – a global water crisis, which still leaves over a billion people without a safe and reliable water supply and half the population of developing countries without proper sanitation.
He summarised DFID’s response, which includes the commitment to double
funding to water and sanitation to £95million a year by 2008 and double it again
to £200million by 2011. Gareth focussed on the need for better water management
as a driver of sustainable growth and poverty reduction, as well as being
central to cope with the effects of climate change.
He also outlined DFID’s recently-published
global call to action on
water and sanitation, which calls on the international community to work
together to invest more money in water and sanitation, ensure money is spent
effectively and fairly and to put the right structures in place to make real
progress.
