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Can you imagine walking for three hours to get a
glass of water to drink? Can you imagine missing
work because you have to spend your day
collecting water for your family? For most of us
the supply of water seems to be endless; we
simply turn on a tap… Yet over 1 billion people,
one in every six, do not have access to clean
drinking water.
Although water is vital to life it can also
spell disaster.
World Water Day 2004, celebrated
under the theme
"Water and Disasters", set out
to make people more aware of this link and what
they can do to make themselves less vulnerable.
The objectives were to:
- enhance awareness about water-related
disasters
- boost political commitment to reduce
vulnerability to such
disasters
- develop knowledge and improve early warning,
forecasting
and preparedness for all
water-related disasters.
Weather, climate and water resources can have a
devastating impact on socio-economic development
and on the well being of people. Water is
essential to life and scarcity can lead to
outbreaks of killer diseases like cholera and
dysentery. On the other hand too much water can
result in devastating floods.
Around the globe contamination denies over 3
billion people access to clean water, and 2.5
billion people have no sanitation services.
Developing nations discharge an estimated 90% of
wastewater untreated into rivers and streams.
There are 3.4 million deaths from water-related
diseases each year. Most of those who die (90%)
are children, and virtually all are in
developing countries. Annually, over one million
people die of malaria, a disease closely linked
to the poor management of water resources, and
about 6% of the global burden of disease is
water related. Much of this morbidity and
mortality can be mitigated by providing adequate
sanitation services,
a safe water supply, and
hygiene education.
According to the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO) extreme weather conditions and
climate-related events, such as tornadoes,
thunderstorms, storms, cyclones, floods and
drought, account for nearly 75% of all
disasters. They lead to enormous human
suffering, loss of life and economic damage.
Natural and man-made disasters increase the
burden of disease associated with inadequate or
poorly managed water resources, increasing their
impact on people’s livelihoods. Monitoring these
events, predicting their movements and issuing
timely warnings are essential to mitigate their
disastrous impacts on people and their economic
activities.
Almost 2 billion people, one-third of humanity,
were affected by natural disasters in the last
decade of the 20th century, 86% of them by
floods and droughts. In Third World countries
where diseases, like cholera, dysentery and
other water-related diseases are endemic and
floods have become seasonal events, it is
important to observe the impacts and strategise
on how to manage water effectively.
Cholera outbreaks as a result of poor water
management have claimed many lives in southern
Africa and have led to much expenditure on a
problem that is preventable. A
water-borne
disease, cholera can be wiped out completely if
policy makers and communities adopt water use
regimes similar to those in many developed
countries.
Floods can also cause severe problems and as the
world celebrated World Water Day, southern
Africa was bracing itself for possible floods.
Flooding can have very serious consequences
including death, loss of property, displacement
of people and isolation from surrounding areas.
Crises sparked by natural and man-made disasters
can turn common illnesses into life threatening
conditions, leading to high rates of suffering
and death. Vulnerable groups, such as women,
children and the elderly suffer
disproportionately in disasters and have high
death rates.
The lack of access to proper water and
sanitation facilities has exacerbated the
HIV/AIDS pandemic in southern Africa, as it
increases the risk of communicable diseases
spreading. A Thematic Overview Paper entitled,
'HIV/AIDS and water, sanitation and hygiene', states that HIV/AIDS
damages the sustainability of water and
sanitation systems in a number
of ways. In
particular HIV/AIDS, reduces the ability of
water users to pay water fees and to spend time
and energy on management activities; it also
erodes management capacities due to loss of
knowledge and skills (social capital), and
damages the ability of households to participate
in planning and decision-making, and ensure that
their needs are taken into account.
Against this ominous background organisations in
the water sector aim at improving people's
quality of life through lasting improvements to
water, sanitation and hygiene using local skills
and technologies. “The impact that disasters
have on poor and already vulnerable populations
is well documented,” says the
Deputy Director of CARE’s Emergency and
Humanitarian Aid unit. “Those with less actually
have more to lose, as their meagre possessions
are more valuable than we can imagine. The
United Nations states that, “the disaster
management strategies have to be based not only
on the technical data, but on a strong social
and cultural knowledge base. People’s
participation at all stages of the disaster
management cycle, in ways that are easy to
understand, will reduce their vulnerability and
will enable them to participate effectively in
any mitigation measures.”
United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, in
his message on World Water Day called on all
governments, international organisations,
non-governmental organisations, academia, the
media and national meteorological and
hydrological services to pool their knowledge
and actions and to "be informed and be prepared"
to mitigate the adverse impacts of natural
hazards, especially water-related disasters, for
the sustainable development of all nations.
The United Nations World Health Organization
(WHO) is training staff from ministries of
health in preparedness and response, as well as
in the development of emergency contingency
plans. They focus on strengthening the
preparedness of health systems, as well as their
ability to respond to all types of disasters.
Despite decades of effort and billions of
dollars, billions of people still have no access
to adequate water or sanitation, the
Geneva-based Water Supply and Sanitation
Collaborative Council (WSSCC) states in a report
called Listening. The report claims, "The main
barrier to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene
for all is not a lack of resources; it is a lack
of willingness to learn from past failures and
to listen to those who have pioneered new
approaches. … That is why the WSSCC believes
that, at the present time, the greatest
contribution it can make towards achieving the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for water
and sanitation is to listen to, and if possible
to amplify, the voices of those who have felt
the frustrations of failure, those who have
helped pioneer the successes, and those who have
lived and learnt the lessons from both," the Chairman of WSSCC stated.
The WSSCC
report suggests that progress towards water
and
sanitation goals must be measured not by
counting
the number of taps and toilets and
dividing them by the total population served,
but by recording changes in use, behaviour and
maintenance and, above all, by improvements in
health.
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