AFRO-NETS> Global Access To Water Flows from Simple Fixes

[Claudio Schuftan <aviva@netnam.vn>]

Global Access To Water Flows from Simple Fixes
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Simple fixes could bring water to millions, say experts
 
13 August 2003
By Anna Peltola, Reuters
 
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Simple innovations such as recycling household 
water and fixing leaky pipes would bring safe drinking water to hun-
dreds of millions of people lacking it today, politicians and scien-
tists said Tuesday.
 
More than 1.2 billion people lack access to clean water, according to 
the United Nations, and 12 million die of diseases caused by poor wa-
ter quality each year, said speakers at World Water Week, an annual 
gathering of some 1,200 water experts from 100 countries.
 
A U.N. action plan aims to halve the number of people lacking access 
to clean drinking water and tolerable sanitary conditions by 2015, 
but little progress has been made so far.
 
"There are people in the semi-arid and arid areas who still have to 
walk about 10 hours looking for water," said Martha Karua, Kenya's 
minister of water resources. "That situation is totally unacceptable. 
Kenya is a water-scarce country, but I believe that with efficient 
management of our water resources, we can use the available water re-
sources for the benefit of everybody and to cover all our needs," she 
said.
 
She said rebuilding Nairobi's crumbling water infrastructure with 
leaking pipes would cost more than US$ 80 billion, but much also 
needed to be done to eradicate corruption and misuse.
 
"In Nairobi around 40 percent of the water is unaccounted for," Karua 
said. "It is estimated that there are around 4,000 water vendors li-
censed by the Nairobi City Council. What is amazing is that very few 
of these have any known water source, which means basically that we 
are licensing people to vandalize the system."
 
Providing safe drinking water and sanitation would also save money 
from health budgets by freeing hospital beds from those suffering 
from water-borne diseases and preventing epidemics.
 
"SARS developed in an area where there was virtually no sanitation 
available and no safe drinking water, and it affected both the people 
there but also people living in Canada and the world economy," said 
Peter Wilderer, professor at the Technical University of Munich.
 
Wilderer has studied recycling household water and said the technical 
innovations to cut water use dramatically are already there.
 
"This is not an academic exercise. Many large industrial firms have 
realized this is the market of the future," he said. 

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