Water and sanitation under conference spotlight

Over one billion people in the world do not have access to water, and at least 2.4 billion do not have proper sanitation, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg was told on Wednesday. According to a Framework for Action on Water and Sanitation document prepared for WSSD, at any one time, half the world's hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from water-borne diseases. About 6,000 children die every day due to lack of access to safe water and sanitation. In Africa, half the people in rural areas have no access to safe water and 52 percent of the rural population lack sanitation. Studies have shown that improved sanitation can reduce episodes of diarrhoea by up to 40 percent, and deaths related to the illness by up to 60 percent. But the framework document cited South Africa as a success story. Since 1994, the backlog of people without access to safe water had been halved to seven million. The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council and the Global Water Partnership (GWP) estimate that meeting the UN's Millennium Development Goals on water coverage - halving the number of people without water - would require between US $14 billion and US $30 billion a year on top of the roughly US $30 billion already being spent. Between 2005 and 2015, a programme of action should be launched to reach up to 880 million people in 2015. Activities include transfering technology and supporting capacity building, the NGOs said. Effective water management was key, the framework report said, and added that the current world water crisis was more a crisis of governance than of scarcity. However, privatisation of water, seen by some governments as the solution to water management problems, does not work, according to Miloon Kothari, of the UN Commission on Human Rights. "There is a direct clash between the principles of cost recovery and providing [water] for people who need it," Kothari, Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, told the WSSD conference. "The problem is the over emphasis on profit making and cost recovery. The extent and quality of services to vulnerable groups like slum dwellers is affected. There are serious questions about privatisation, which is failing. If privatisation fails, it is very difficult for municipalities to reclaim that space," he said.