Global Water and Sanitation Crisis
by How could tackling the water crisis in developing countries benefit the global economy?
Segueda lives in a mud-walled compound in Bougdgin, Burkina Faso, West Africa with 35 other people. She spends hours every day walking to a muddy hole to collect water for her children. She is aware that the water makes them all sick with diarrhoea and other illnesses, but it is the only source of water she has.
Meanwhile in the UK a mother can simply turn on a tap and obtain clean, treated water to give her children a drink. Many families have more than one flushing toilet in their houses, and it would be unthinkable for a school not to have good quality sanitation facilities.
How can there be such a difference with respect to such a basic resource now, in the twenty-first century? Why are there still more than one billion people in the world without access to safe drinking water? How is it that in many parts of the world girls do not go to school because no toilets are provided?
In Europe the average individual uses 200 litres of water every day. In the developing world this figure is 10 litres, for drinking, washing and cooking. The UN-set Millennium Development Goals aim to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015. Non-Governmental Organisation WaterAid estimates that this target will be missed by more than 500 million people.
In the light of this shortfall, the European Union and the British government are actually doing less in this vital area. The British government seem to be transposing their domestic priorities of health care and eduction into their international aid policy. Although health care and education are vital for a poor countries development, water and sanitation should be given a higher priority still.
We have forgotten our own history in forgetting these priorities. In the mid-19th century, the plight of the poor in the UK was worsening. Cholera epidemics had decimated the working class population of the cities, most of whom lived in slums with no access to clean water or sanitation. The Public Health Acts of 1848 and 1875, which led to better drainage sewage and clean water for all, were founded, not so much on compassion than on economics. The cost of lost workers to water-borne disease was higher than the cost of installing plumbing and sewers and improving the nation’s health cut welfare spending.
Liked it
