World water crisis exposed
The UN’s latest Human Development Report, Beyond scarcity: power, poverty and the global water crisis, was launched on 9 November 2006 in Cape Town, South Africa.
Detailing how the global water crisis is consigning large segments of humanity to lives of poverty, vulnerability and insecurity, the report rings a global alarm bell.
"Tragically, for the 5000 children who died yesterday from easily preventable water-related diseases, it is already too late. 5000 will die today and every day until governments around the world wake up to this emergency,” said Barbara Frost, WaterAid's CEO.
The report recommends a Global Action Plan for Water, requiring donors to meet the funding gap for countries committing at least one percent of GDP to water and sanitation. In turn, End Water Poverty is calling for aid recipient countries to create and work to a framework of one country plan, one coordinating body and one monitoring and evaluating system.
This is the latest in a long line of Human Development Reports from the United Nations detailing the devastating effects of poverty. Yet very little happens in the way of action. Within the UN there are 23 separate agencies working on water: this demonstrates a shameful waste of time and resources.
People living without water and sanitation don’t need 23 agencies to discuss and agree a strategy – they need one international water monitoring body taking urgent action that is prepared to name and shame those failing to deliver.
End Water Poverty welcomes the UN’s Human Development Report, but warns that they are empty words unless they can inspire immediate action by governments.