water

NPR feature: Port-au-Prince is a city of millions and no sewer system

John W. Poole / NPR

A makeshift latrine hangs over the water at the edge of Cite de Dieu, a slum in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Port-au-Prince is about the size of Chicago. But it doesn’t have a sewer system. It’s one of the largest cities in the world without one.

That’s a big problem, but never more so than during a time of cholera.

Since cholera was introduced into Haiti 18 months ago – most likely by United Nations peacekeeping troops from Nepal, where the disease is endemic – more than a half-million people have gotten sick and at least 7,050 have died.

Public health authorities say cholera will stay in the environment for a long time, because Haiti has the worst sanitation in this hemisphere.

It’s hard for Americans to imagine what this means.

The cumulative sewage of 3 million people flows through open ditches. It mixes with ubiquitous piles of garbage. Each night an all-but-invisible army of workers called bayakou descend into man-sized holes with buckets to remove human waste from septic pits and latrines, then dump it into the canals that cut through the city.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Haiti, water

April 11, 2012 | 10:30 AM | By Tom Paulson

Crosscut: Local angles on the global water crisis

Seattle’s online magazine Crosscut has two articles today that take a local look at the global water crisis.

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By Collin Tong How Seattle helps with the world water challenge

Mike Urban, mikeurbanart.com

Woman collecting water, Nigeria

Water is something most people in the Puget Sound region take for granted. Yet in many developing nations, access to clean water and effective sanitation can spell the difference between life and death.

Unbeknownst to many, the Seattle-Puget Sound area is home to a cadre of nongovernmental organizations and government agencies engaged in projects abroad to assist the more than 783 million people who live without access to clean water in some of the poorest regions in the world. The local support for water and sanitation ranges from intensive nonprofit efforts in remote villages to major international undertakings and occasional consultations by government officials with colleagues in other nations.

Access to water is critical to good nutrition, a reality recognized by the World Water Day events here and elsewhere last month organized around the theme of water and food security. More than 70 percent of the water used globally goes towards agriculture.

One seventh of the world’s population, nearly one billion people, suffers from chronic hunger. Over 3,000 children die everyday from lack of clean water. Food production is dependent upon sufficient available water, which in turn requires reducing water pollution and promoting effective sanitation systems. Read more at Crosscut.

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By Marsha Baskin A Thirsty World has lessons for Puget Sound

Water runs our world yet we take it completely for granted. In his mind-opening new narrative, The Big Thirst, journalist Charles Fishman takes readers on a fascinating journey from the moons of Saturn to the hotels of Las Vegas.

The golden age of abundant, free and safe water is over, says Fishman. The problem is most people in the developed world don’t know it. While he was in Seattle earlier this month, Fishman took time for an interview. An excerpt:

Baskin: Much has been written about the global water crisis. In The Big Thirst you prefer to talk about thousands of water crises happening all over the world. Some are from drought, others from climate turmoil, still others from insufficient water systems. Why did you take this approach?

Fishman: I think talking about the global water crisis actually has the opposite impact of what water people hope it will do. I think people have too many global crises. There’s a global economic crisis and a global climate crisis, a global health crisis. If you add another crisis people will throw up their hands and say I’m already waking up at 4:30 in the morning to deal with the crises I’ve got, I can’t handle another one. But also it’s not really true…. Read more at Crosscut

FILED UNDER: Basics, Crosscut, water

March 22, 2012 | 11:30 AM | By Tom Paulson

Worrying trends on World Water Day

Today is World Water Day. The gist of it is that population growth, climate change, poverty, and inefficiencies waste a lot of it.

The U.S. intelligence community today issued a report warning that water shortages worldwide threaten to provoke conflict and even that terrorist groups can be expected to target water supplies. As the AP reports:

Drought, floods and a lack of fresh water may cause significant global instability and conflict in the coming decades, as developing countries scramble to meet demand from exploding populations while dealing with the effects of climate change, U.S. intelligence agencies said in a report released Thursday.

The LA Times reprinted this World Health Organization map showing the percentage of people in each country with access to an improved source of drinking water, such as a household connection or protected well, as of 2010. In some parts of Africa, less than half of people have access to safe drinking water. Blue is good, warm colors are not:

WHO

Population estimates of access to clean, safe water

The United States, not surprisingly, uses a lot of water. The average American consumer uses about five times as much as the average resident of DR Congo. Here’s an online calculator to let you estimate your own water usage.

FILED UNDER: Basics, water

March 6, 2012 | 11:08 AM | By Tom Paulson

Global safe drinking water goal achieved

Mike Urban, mikeurbanart.com

Borehole water supply, Nigeria

Amid all the dire reports that seem to indicate the world is going to heck in a handbasket, here’s some good news:

The United Nations children’s agency, otherwise known as UNICEF, reports that 89 percent of the world’s population now has access to safe drinking water. As the Washington Post said:

The water target was one of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals to reduce global poverty that government leaders, nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations have been working to achieve, with varying success.

This is cause for celebration, The Guardian notes, yet this milestone should not deflect attention from the fact that many hundreds of millions more — nearly a billion people — still lack access to clean and safe drinking. And, as also noted by The Guardian, about 2.5 billion don’t have proper sanitation which puts them at risk of many diseases and of contaminating their local water resources.

It should be noted that much of the progress achieved over the past decade has been due to improved living conditions in China and India, and that many parts of the world are still in desperate need of safe water and sanitation. Reuters quotes the head of the UN:

“Some regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, are lagging behind,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in the report. “Many rural dwellers and the poor often miss out on improvements to drinking water and sanitation. Reducing these disparities must be a priority.”

FILED UNDER: Basics, Health, Justice, millennium development goals, sanitation, UNICEF, United Nations, water

October 13, 2011 | 12:28 PM | By Tom Paulson

Scientists propose a ‘Five-Step Plan’ to save the planet

Flickr, Southernpixel Alby

A 5-step plan to save the planet sounds ridiculous, I know. But, as they say, even the longest journey begins with the first step.

Rather than simply get overwhelmed at all of the world’s many problems, an environment and land-use professor at the University of Minnesota and his colleagues decided to come up with a workable game plan to simultaneously deal with three major, overlapping forces that dictate our future:

Population growth, agriculture and the environment. Says study leader Jonathan A. Foley in an online article in Scientific American, Can We Feed the World and Sustain the Planet?:

Right now about one billion people suffer from chronic hunger. the world’s farmers grow enough food to feed them, but it is not properly distributed and, even if it were, many cannot afford it, because prices are escalating.

But another challenge looms.

By 2050 the world’s population will increase by two billion or three billion, which will likely double the demand for food, according to several studies.

That doesn’t sound too promising, especially when Foley and his colleagues go on to note that our current approach to agriculture uses about 40 percent of Earth’s land already and our approach to farming contributes about one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. Most of our water use also goes to agriculture.

And if population growth continues at its current rate, we will need to double food production by 2050.

Yikes! Anyone planning a trip to Mars? Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Science, agriculture, climate change, food, population, Scientific American, water

July 20, 2011 | 8:30 AM | By Tom Paulson

Water advocate questions why the Gates Foundation is so stuck on the toilet

Water 1st

Marla Smith-Nilson and friends

Marla Smith-Nilson is director of Seattle-based Water 1st International and has worked for decades trying to improve access in the developing world to clean water and safe, healthy sanitation.

Smith-Nilson said she welcomes the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation decision to get more involved in water and sanitation issues. But she is concerned that their primary interest in re-inventing the toilet is focused too much on the simple fix. Here are Smith-Nilson’s thoughts:

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Today, 2.5 billion people lack access to both a safe, convenient water supply and a sanitary toilet – a situation that stems from but also drives poverty, illness and inequality.

As someone who has worked for 20 years on water and sanitation needs in the developing world, I welcome the Gates Foundation’s increased interest and investment in addressing these twin problems.

But I am concerned with their emphasis on reinventing the toilet — or with any solution that is based primarily on solving the water and sanitation problems by virtue of a technological advance. I’m an engineer by training and hardly opposed to technological progress.

The fundamental challenge in water and sanitation is not so much a technological hurdle to overcome as it is a systems problem that simply cannot be resolved by trying to fix any one part in isolation.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Marla Smith-Nilson, sanitation, water, Water 1st International

July 19, 2011 | 8:26 AM | By Tom Paulson

Gates Foundation pushes re-invention of the toilet

Flickr, MrUlimi

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced that it was shifting its emphasis in water and sanitation efforts to push for a radical re-invention of the toilet.

The Gates Foundation today formally announced its new strategy at a sanitation conference in Kigali, Rwanda (though the gist of the toilet re-invention project was leaked a week ago by Germany’s Die Welt).

Sylvia Mathews Burwell, head of development for the Gates Foundation, made the announcement of $42 million in new grants devoted to the cause of water and sanitation in a speech at a meeting organized by the African Ministers’ Council on Water.

Here’s the Gates Foundation’s amusing video clip making the case for us to get our s#!t together and invent a new toilet:

Mathews Burwell said their focus is on the toilet because it is a 200-year-old technology that helped spark a revolution in public health and hygiene, but now needs updating: Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Frank Rijsberman, sanitation, toilet, water

May 19, 2011 | 10:00 AM | By Tom Paulson

Critics say World Health Organization too cozy with corporate interests

WHO

World Health Organization

A number of civil society and non-profit organizations are claiming that the World Health Organization is overly influenced by commercial and corporate interests.

At this week’s World Health Assembly meeting in Geneva, Corporate Accountability International, which represents 100 organizations from 24 countries, claims the WHO is compromising its independence and mission of improving global health. The critics say:

The group is concerned about the influence companies could have on the WHO as it implements its Millennium Development Goals, which set benchmarks for improving access to drinking water and sanitation, and the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases.

The umbrella organization delivered a formal letter to WHO director general Margaret Chan asking that the UN agency reject corporate influence and maintain its independence.

The AFP reports on another group, Council of Canadians, which contends WHO’s policy on water has favored the interest of corporations who seek to privatize many public water sources. The AFP quotes the Council chair Maude Barlow:

“The concern is that the relationship between the highest levels of the United Nations and the private water sector legitimizes the growing influence of these corporations on policy, both at the UN and at the nation-state level, which in turn promotes a private market system for water delivery and access at the expense of the public and the poor.”

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