GLOBAL BURDEN and FUNDAMENTAL NECESSITY — CLEAN WATER

Polluted water combined with inadequate sanitation kill 2 children every minute worldwide. Contributing factors include global warming, groundwater depleting, and pollution. It is of the utmost importance to recycle and reuse accessible fresh water.

Despite global efforts during the water and sanitation decade, improvements in water and sanitation infrastructure have barely kept pace with population increases and migrations in the developing world.

According to the World Health Organization Safe water supplies, hygienic sanitation and good water management are fundamental to global health. Almost one tenth of the global disease burden could be prevented by:

• increasing access to safe drinking water;
• improving sanitation and hygiene; and
• improving water management to reduce risks of water-borne infectious diseases, and accidental drowning during recreation.
  

Annually, safer water could prevent:

• 1.4 million child deaths from diarrhea;
• 500 000 deaths from malaria; and
• 860 000 child deaths from malnutrition.
  

For every $1 invested in water projects, the World Bank has concluded, you can expect returns of between $2 and $52 when all of the health, economic and social benefits are taken in to account.

Many countries are facing a double challenge of water scarcity and stress as well as limited political rights and civic liberties (most visible in the Middle East and North Africa). Therefore reform of the water sector must go hand-in-hand with overall governance reform.

Corruption siphons off meager monetary resources and diminishes a country's prospects for providing water and sanitation, costing the water sector millions of dollars annually.

“Sustainable management of water resources and sanitation provides great benefits to a society and the economy as a whole...access to safe drinking water is essential for achieving gender equality, sustainable development and poverty alleviation.” 

“The human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses”
General Comment No. 15 (2002): The Right to Water

“Healthy freshwater ecosystems are essential for the maintenance of biodiversity and human well-being.”

One in eight people in the world do not have access to safe water.

98 % of water-related deaths occur in the developing world.

The emerging water culture is focused on “Water sharing: Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM)” looks for more effective and equitable management of water through increased cooperation.


CONTAMINATION

95% of cities dump raw sewage into the water supplies making them unsafe for human consumption.

For more information, visit:
http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarming/a/waterinvesting.htm
http://ag.arizona.edu/AZWATER/awr/dec99/Feature2.htm
http://environment.about.com/od/waterpollution/a/canadasewage.htm

According to the 2nd UN World Water Development Report , more than a billion people—almost one-fifth of the world’s population—lack access to safe drinking water.

Abandoned and uncontrolled hazardous waste sites in the U.S. are thought to be over 20,000 and the numbers grow every year. Landfills are another major source of contamination. The widespread use of road salts and chemicals is another source of potential groundwater contamination.

Water systems fail at a rate of 50% or higher. For more information, also visit: http://www.who.int/docstore/water_sanitation_health/wss/sustoptim.html

According to an Associated Press investigation  reported in early 2008, “A vast array of pharmaceuticals —- including antibiotics, anticonvulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones —- have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans.”

A large number of potentially toxic chemicals may occur in drinking-water.

According to reports, several countries are dealing with health problems associated with arsenic in drinking water.  Long-term exposure to arsenic via drinking-water causes cancer of the skin, lungs, urinary bladder, and kidney.

Chemical pollution of surface waters, mainly by industry and agricultural runoff, also pose major health hazards in developing countries. In Bangladesh the exposure of millions of inhabitants to water from (shallow) tubewells contaminated with high geogenic loads of arsenic is a major concern.

Toxins from cyanobacteria in our water supplies has increased world-wide during the past 30 years and poses many threats. A number of countries, including USA, Australia, Brazil, China, England, and South Africa have reported health problems attributed to the presence of such toxins in drinking water.


OCEAN CONTAMINATION

Land-based sources are responsible for nearly 80% of marine debris, the majority coming from urban runoff through storm drains. The main sources of plastic and other types of human-made debris in urban runoff include: litter (mostly bags, packaging and single-use disposable products), industrial discharges, garbage transportation, landfills, construction debris, and debris from commercial establishments and public venues.

Scientists have correlated the increase of Pacific red tides and other harmful algae blooms with increased nutrients in coastal waters from sewage and fertilizers as well as a rise in ocean temperature of approximately one degree Celsius. 

GROUNDWATER CONTAMINATION

Rain water or water from surface water bodies, like lakes or streams, that soaks into the soil and bedrock and store underground in the tiny spaces between rocks and particles of soil is called Groundwater. When hazardous substances come into contact and dissolve in the water that has soaked into the soil the groundwater becomes polluted.  

Liquid man-made hazardous substances pool within the soil or bedrock and act as long-term sources of groundwater contamination.

Animals, plants, or humans can be hurt by contaminated groundwater if it is pumped out of the ground and used as a source of water. Groundwater also surfaces through natural pathways such as springs.

Increased financial investment is needed to increase understanding of groundwater resources and aquifer systems. More comprehensive water level and quality monitoring programs are needed in regions that depend on groundwater.


WATER-RELATED DISEASE

More than 5 million people die from water-related disease each year. 
For more information, visit:
http://www.chiefengineer.org/content/content_display.cfm/seqnumber_content/3516.htm
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/03/22/tech/main504423.shtml
http://whyfiles.org/131fresh_water/2.html

Nearly 6,000 people die DAILY from water-related disease, and the vast majority are children.

Every 15 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease.  For more information, view http://water.org/FileUploads/H2OCrisisFactSheet08.pdf and Number estimated from statistics in the 2006 United Nations Human Development Report.

At any given time, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from a water-related disease.

There are over 20 water-related diseases and most of them affect children. Common diseases related to poor water, sanitation and unsafe hygiene practices are: Cholera, hepatitis A, dysentery, giardiasis, polio, e-coli, diarrhea, typhoid, salmonella food poisoning, bilharzia, guinea worm, intestinal parasites like hookworm and tapeworm, and trachoma.

In the US, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC), estimates 4 billion episodes of diarrhea result in an estimated 2 million deaths annually, mostly among children. Waterborne bacterial infections may account for as many as half of these episodes and deaths.

30% of water-related deaths are due to diarrhea.

Worldwide, 90% of all deaths caused by diarrheal diseases are children under 5 years of age, mostly in developing countries.

88% of the annual 1.8 million deaths due to diarrheal disease is attributable to unsafe water supply, sanitation and hygiene.  

The World Health Organization report, "Safer Water, Better Health" estimates health-care agencies could save $7 billion a year on health-care costs if safe water, adequate sanitation and hygiene were provided where lacking; as well as 320 million productive working days could be gained and children could go to school an extra 272 million days per year.

A significant amount of disease could be prevented especially in developing countries through better access to safe water supply, adequate sanitation facilities and better hygiene practices.


PRODUCTIVITY and EDUCATION

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 5.6 billion working days would be gained annually if there was universal access to safe water and sanitation.

Schools lack private and decent sanitation facilities (if any at all), denying children – particularly girls – their right to education. 400 million school-aged children a year are infected by intestinal worms, which, research shows, sap their learning abilities.

One in eight people in the world do not have access to safe water.  

Millions of women and children in rural areas of developing countries spend hours each day walking kilometers to collect water from unprotected sources such as open wells, muddy dugouts or streams. Young girls often are unable to attend school as they spend much of their day collecting water for their family.

 “...women and girls spend more than 200 million hours every day walking to collect water from distant, often polluted sources—time that could be better spent on more productive endeavors such as work and school. ...it’s clear that the global water crisis is the single biggest problem facing the world’s poor, preventing them from reaching even the first rung on the socioeconomic ladder,” reported Gary White, executive director and co-founder of WaterPartners International

Poor people living in the slums often pay 5-10 times more per liter of water than wealthy people living in the same city.


CONSUMPTION

A person can live weeks without food, but only days without water. ( UC Davis Health System. "Scripts." January 2001)

A person needs 4 to 5 gallons of water per day to survive. For more information, view http://www.icrc.org/ Les Roberts Diminishing standards: How much water do people need? [in Forum: Water and War, International Committee of the Red Cross (1998)].

On average, it takes about 3,000 liters of water per person to produce our daily intake of food.

The average African family uses about 5 gallons of water each day. 

The United Nations estimates that the world population—approximately 6.5 billion in 2006—will grow to 9.4 billion by 2050.

Less than 1% of the world's fresh water (or about 0.007% of all water on earth) is readily accessible for direct human use. 

Managing access to and control over water resources and their benefits is increasingly becoming the core issue of the global water crisis. Due to mismanagement, corruption, lack of appropriate institutions, bureaucratic inertia and a shortage of investment in both human capacity and physical infrastructure, insufficiency is primarily caused by inefficient supply rather than by water shortages. For more information, visit: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001444/144409E.pdf


WATER-RELATED NATURAL DISASTERS

• Almost 2 billion people were affected by natural disasters in the last decade of the 20th century, 86% of them by floods and droughts.
• Flooding increases the ever-present health threat from contamination of drinking-water systems from inadequate sanitation, with industrial waste and by refuse dumps.
• Droughts cause the most ill-health and death because they often trigger and exacerbate malnutrition and famine, and deny access to adequate water supplies.
• Disaster management requires a continuous chain of activities that includes prevention, preparedness, emergency response, relief and recovery.

For more information, view:  http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/facts2004/en/index.html