Most countries will have to make do with the water they’ve got, but there are stark disparities

Over the past 40 years the world’s population has doubled. Our use of water has quadrupled. Yet the amount of water on Earth has stayed the same.

Less than 1% of the water on planet blue is for humans to drink.

About 2% is locked up in ice. The rest is for the fish.

Seawater is only good to drink for humans who live near the sea and can afford the cash and the energy to take out the salt.

For most of the population this is not an option.

Desalinated water costs maybe 15 times more than regular water. It burns polluting fossil fuel energy, as solar-powered desalination is in its infancy.

No, most places will have to live with the water they’ve got.

Many countries are awash; they’ll be fine. Others are desperately mining fossil H2O that seeped into rocks during the last ice age.

And as underground supplies run dry, water shortage sets in.

Large parts of Africa, Asia and Europe, including the south east of Britain are categorised by the UN as facing water stress or scarcity.

And for all the UN’s recent boast about hitting drinking water targets, experts estimate that maybe three billion people worldwide still lack safe water to drink.

And it might get worse with climate change, although scientists’ projections of future rainfall are notoriously cloudy.

The global capital of water shortage is Sana’a in Yemen. It’s a city of two million people who fight to get water from tankers by the jerry can. Their boreholes are running dry.

But this water crisis like so many others is an act of man not an act of god.

Because, as in most developing countries, 90% of water is used for agriculture, in Yemen, much of it to grow the stimulant qat.

Sana’a in Yemen is one of the most water-stressed cities in the world

And experts insist that if farmers had used water more carefully there would still have been enough to go round.

If countries like Yemen are to tackle their water shortages they will need more skill in politics than in cloud-seeding.

Sustainable water depends on several factors: establishing with people who owns the water; who will pay for it and how much; and that the water is finite and therefore has to be limited.

In many places, people also have to accept that water is the ultimate recyclable resource and re-using it is the only choice.

Upstream privileges

The politics stretches from macro to micro. Many countries dependent on shared rivers like the Tigris, Euphrates, Nile, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Mekong.

In an ideal world, the mountainous up-river nations where the rain falls would use it for hydro-electric then send it downstream to grow crops on the fertile plains in a neighbouring land.

But this isn’t an ideal world and often the up-river nations simply hog it and try to grow crops inefficiently themselves. The UN has proved mostly powerless to intervene.

At a micro level, there’s often an intractable unhealthy embrace between land, money and power. In many developing countries farmers grab 90% of water supplies and hold politicians in thrall.

Desalination is only an option for a small proportion of the world

In a future of water security they’ll have to pay the proper amount for the water they use.

Australia has led the way with water trading. The water in the rivers of the Murray-Darling basin has been turned into a tradeable commodity.

Paying by the gallon focuses the farmer’s mind on water saving technology. But even that isn’t enough. The World Bank says if farmers install water-saving drip-feed technology they simply irrigate more land unless politicians find the courage to tell them that water is limited.

Thirsty lawns

Even America is having to deal with the notion that you can’t always get everything you want. Las Vegas pays people to dig up their thirsty lawns forever. But water rationing schemes immediately face political flak.

In the UK, civil engineers want to introduce a sliding tariff so people who water their lawns or their cars pay much more than others who just want to shower, cook and drink with their H2O.

Sometimes it takes a crisis or perception of a crisis to unlock the politics.

Africa is sitting on a large resource of groundwater, but a change in mindset may be required to unlock it

When Japanese troops invaded in Singapore they blew up the pipes bringing water from Malaysia. The Singaporeans have been jumpy about water ever since and have overcome objections to recycling their water – the so-called toilet to tap method long adopted in Europe.

Technology has helped before and will again. Three thousand years ago, India started installing a system of ponds and tanks to capture monsoon rains and allow them to replenish aquifers below. Many are now being repaired.

Future technologies include new forms of osmosis systems for desalination; GM microbes to help turn sewage back into drinking water; and new strains of seeds that don’t require so much water in the first place.

Countries may have to run into crisis before the politics unjams for many of these solutions. But the solutions are there. For most places on the planet, a water crisis is eminently avoidable, if we can find the cash and particularly the resolve to do it.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18353963

“NAMWASH is serious!” was the conclusion of one district administrator, when commenting on the role NAMWASH would play in terms of improving general living conditions and contributing to economic growth in his district. The NAMWASH programme addresses the critical area of water supply and sanitation in small towns in Mozambique. The programme is financed by AusAID, UNICEF and the Government of Mozambique, and its main aim is to improve water and sanitation in five small towns in Nampula. Between May 21 and 24, the programme partners participated in a field visit to the five towns covered by the programme, observing facilities on the ground and visiting stakeholders in the districts.

A derelict water pumping station in Rapale, Nampula, one of the small towns covered by the NAMWASH programme.

In a recent field mission to Nampula Province, the Government of Mozambique department responsible for small towns (AIAS) and UNICEF engineers visited 5 small towns that are receiving significant investments from the Government of Australia (AusAID) under the banner of the programme – NAMWASH.

NAMWASH has the objective of ensuring that 150,000 people in 5 small towns gain access to safe and sustainable water and sanitation. The model of implementation is based on a Delegated Framework where the operation and maintenance of the water supply is done by an independent operator which is then regulated by CRA (Water Regulator of Mozambique). The model will be tested in phase 1 of the project in Ribaue town in Nampula.

This work is essential as Mozambique is experiencing a boom in investment from the extractive industries and overnight ports, railways and roads are being developed and rehabilitated to facilitate the movement and export of goods. Towns along these railways and roads are expanding with ever increasing migrant labour coming into Mozambique from neighboring countries.

CLOSE THE GAP – projects such as NAMWASH need to be used as catalysts for future investments

The meeting will provide an excellent platform to review progress in different countries, with various solutions being adopted to increase access and use of water and sanitation facilities across the globe. In some countries, work has focussed on the mobilising of greater resources and in others the attention has been on reducing unit costs.

However, being on the frontline of delivering one of the largest United Nations assisted water and sanitation programmes in Africa, it is important that in these forums focus is also give to long term technical capacity development to ensure the sustainability of the funds/infrastructures created.

I welcome inputs to this BLOG on the Sanitation and Water for All initiative.

SG

This paper summarizes the findings of the baseline and midterm surveys in terms of health impacts, latrine ownership and the use of improved water sources. Our results indicate that the water point intervention had a sizeable impact on the use of improved water sources and on the health outcome of children under 5 but no impact for older individuals, while the sanitation component of the program had a strong impact on latrine ownership and health outcome for older individuals, and a limited impact on hand-washing with soap and the use of improved water sources when it was available in the community.

Effectiveness of Large Scale Water and Sanitation Interventions: the One Million Initiative in Mozambique [PDF|357KB]

(Source: Sanitation Updates Blog)

Water Supply in Mozambique

The focus area for the programme is rural and small town water supply and sanitation in the Central and Northern Region of Mozambique. Impressive results have been achieved under the Government of the Netherlands funded One Million Initiative in which 1 million new users of water and sanitation were achieved through the construction of 1700 boreholes, 15 piped water supply schemes, 450 rehabilitated water points and 500 Open Defecation Free Communities between 2007 and 2011. The programme has leveraged these experiences to influence the establishment of a SWAp (Sector Wide Approach) for a national rural water supply and sanitation (PRONASAR) programme that is led by the Government of Mozambique and supported by 5 international donors (DFID, GON, SDC, UNICEF and Canada CIDA). In order to ensure that children remain the focus of UNICEFs WASH programme, water supply, sanitation, hygiene promotion and school construction have been constructed in over 500 schools in 7 Provinces of the country since 2008. This improved child environment has resulted in positive impacts on the lives of women and children in Mozambique.

One Million Initiative Mozambique

Impact is now measured in terms of the attribution of water and sanitation on MDG 4 and 5. Health, education, socio-economic impact.

In Mozambique, the One Million Initiative, undertook a baseline in 1600 households in 40 control and 40 treatment villages in 2008. It repeated, the household survey in 2010 and compared the impact of WASH interventions on the health, educational and socio economic status of the beneficiaries. This was further extended to 80 schools.

The study demonstrated that WASH interventions have an impact at scale. Prevalence of water-related diseases from 31 to 14% with a strong and robust statistical correlation between sanitation and health.

The full report and summary of this report can be found on

• Impact evaluation of drinking water supply and sanitation interventions in rural Mozambique
• The One Million Initiative Mozambique

Mozambique is experiencing a rapid proliferation of private sector participation in a number of key sectoral areas such as mining, manufacturing, agriculture and industry. These developments are resulting in an increased migration of skilled (and unskilled) to small urban centres. These centres require essential services such as water, sanitation, roads, schools, communication, health centres etc.

What are we doing to respond to these development challenges?

Why are our colleagues from the communications sector (VODACOM etc) ahead of us in ensuring that the people get a mobile phone before a TOILET?

This BLOG is going to follow developments in this area.

Keep posted