City water supplies at risk

Leaking pipes, pollution and urban sprawl risk depriving Africa's growing cities of a basic but precious resource - water. "At the moment the poor are paying up to 40 percent of their income just to get water," said Anna Tibaijuka, executive director of the UN Centre for Human Settlements (HABITAT), at the World Summit on Sustainable Development on Monday. According to the UN Development Programme, at least 1.1 billion people lack access to safe water and almost 2.5 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation. More than 2.2 billion people in developing countries die each year from waterborne diseases, inadequate sanitation and hygiene. A Managing Water for African Cities project, run by HABITAT and the UN Environment Programme, aims to help African countries effectively manage their growing water needs while protecting the continent's threatened water resources and ecosystems from pollution. Johannesburg is one of eight cities involved in the project. Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa's minister of water affairs, explained that unequal distribution of resources in South Africa had deprived poorer areas of proper facilities. This meant that up to 60 percent of the vast township of Soweto's water was leaking out of faulty pipes. In South Africa, the water management initiative involved the community, and urged them to cut down on leaks from their taps and prevent their rivers and streams from becoming a health hazard, Kasrils said. Ghana's Minister of Public Works Yaw Barimah said that a recent study in his country revealed that up to 50 percent of Ghana's water usage was unaccounted for. "If we can save even 25 percent of that percentage, it will benefit the people of Ghana tremendously," he said. "If we are really serious about poverty, water has to be addressed, but we have to decide how to do so. We must engage municipalities, and they must engage people at grass-roots level for better use of the resource," explained Tim Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, which provides funding for the project. In a statement issued at the Johannesburg summit, the NGO the Sustainable Development Network (SDN) said government provision and management of water had failed poor people. The organisation said water provided by government was typically of poor quality and used wastefully. The organisation added that water delivered to agricultural and industrial users was often underpriced, which also encouraged waste, and destroyed wetlands and wildlife populations. SDN suggested that water ownership and management should be decentralised, and called for the elimination of subsidies to make water use more efficient. The other seven cities involved in the Managing Water for African Cities project are: Abidjan, Accra, Addis Ababa, Dakar, Lusaka, Nairobi, and most recently Dar es Salaam. Water for Asian Cities will be launched at the Johannesburg summit later this week.