Water campaign aims to manage scarce resources

The Kenyan government has launched a national water campaign aimed at managing the country's water resources, and ensuring an adequate and high-quality supply.

Kenya is classified as one of the countries facing chronic water scarcity in both its urban and rural areas, with between 75 and 85 percent of its land being semiarid or arid, notably in the north and east, according to experts.

The new campaign, supported by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), is aimed not only at reducing poverty but also at preventing disasters like the severe drought between 1998 and 2001, which news reports say nearly crippled the country's economy and put up to 4.7 million (16 percent) of the population under threat of starvation.

"Diminishing water resources in the country is negatively impacting on socioeconomic activities in the country, contributing to increased poverty," the Chinese news agency, Xinhua, quoted Kenya's water minister, Kipng'eno arap Ng'eny, as saying.

In a feature marking World Water Day on 22 March, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) highlighted the plight of urban dwellers, particularly in Kenya, where most people have no access to running water, and bottled water available at supermarkets costs more than petrol.

In middle-class areas of Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, for example, families can pay as much as 10,000 Kenya shillings a month (about US $128), to meet their water needs.

In other parts of the city, such as Kibera - one of Africa's largest slums - the phenomenon of "flying toilets" (whereby faeces is deposited into plastic bags and thrown into the streets) is a common problem caused by the absence of waste disposal facilities, according to the Nairobi-based agency.

Nairobi's water and sanitation crisis worsened in 2000, when a scorching drought forced the authorities to ration both water and power, it said.

"As in most African cities, the problem is not so much that bulk treated water is in short supply, but that about 50 percent of the water is wasted or unaccounted for," UNEP stated.

In an address during a ceremony to mark the launch of the water campaign on 20 March, Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi pledged that his government would provide "all necessary" support ranging from policy formulation to the provision of finance to ensure the success of the campaign.

UN-Habitat, which has taken a leading role in raising international awareness on water and cities, recently launched a new programme, Water for African Cities, in seven demonstration cities: Nairobi, Abidjan, Accra, Addis Ababa, Dakar, Johannesburg and Lusaka.

The urban water crisis has been receiving increasing attention at all international dialogues on water, which began in Dublin and Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It gained momentum at subsequent meetings in Nordwjik in 1994, Beijing and Istanbul in 1996, Cape Town in 1997, and, more recently, at the second World Water Forum at The Hague in 2000, according to UN-Habitat.

At most of these meetings, great concern was expressed over the water crisis in African cities, according to the UN agency.

Largely prompted by the Cape Town meeting of African ministers in 1997, the Water for African Cities Programme was aimed at improving water resource management in African urban areas by way of establishing early warning systems and managing catchment sites to protect fresh water from pollution, UN-Habitat said.

According to Kalyan Ray, Coordinator of the UN-Habitat Water for African Cities Programme, the explosive growth of urban centres in the last 25 years or so - which continues unabated - is rapidly depleting previously plentiful fresh-water resources.

"Overall, Africa is urbanising at a rate of about 5 percent, the fastest rate in the world. Africa's urban population could jump from 138 million in 1990 to 500 million in 2020, when African cities with a population of more than one million will accommodate almost 200 million people," he said.

Klaus Toepfer, UNEP executive director, who attended the Kenya water campaign launch, said water would be a priority issue at the World Summit on Sustainable Development to be held between August and September in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Toepfer said some 14 African countries were affected by water scarcity, and the rising demand for the increasingly scarce resource was raising growing concerns over future access to water, particularly where available supplies were shared by two or more countries.

"These strains and stresses are potential sources of future conflicts, which may further be worsened by the potential impacts of climate change," Xinhua quoted him as saying.

"Of all the natural resources available to human beings, water is the most essential for virtually every human activity. Yet, as the world's urban population reaches the 3 billion mark, it is distressing to note that the world's one billion urban poor lack adequate access to water," Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, the UN-Habitat executive director, said on Friday, World Water Day.

In a statement to mark the occasion, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said water remained one of the most pressing issues on the humanitarian agenda, particularly in disaster situations.

At least one billion people living in the world today lacked adequate access to safe drinking water, while 2.4 billion lived without basic sanitation, it added.

"For us, water is both a blessing and a curse. Last year we responded to the needs of over three million people whose lives were destroyed by floods and drought," Uli Jaspers, water and sanitation expert with the Federation, stated.

"We also brought water to about one million people living in poor communities. It is in communities like these where most of the 3.4 million deaths from water-related disease occur each year," he added.