Mercy Global Concern - 2003

Fresh Water - Foul Water

At the Water Day held recently at the United Nations in New York it was estimated that if the whole world's water supply were reduced to a gallon, only a teaspoon of it would be fresh water!

For most of us, water comes out of a tap, but many millions of people have to walk many kilometres to a well and then carry the water home each morning, before their families can drink. For others, their only source of water is a dirty pond or river. One in every six of us - more than a billion people - do not have reliable clean water.

However it comes, water is essential for people, for plants, and for animals. We need water to drink, to cook and to wash - and to flush the lavatory. We need roughly 50 litres of it every day to lead a healthy life, and that does not include the water many communities need to irrigate fields and make their crops grow. In a lot of countries, watering crops uses up to 80% of freshwater supplies.

For large numbers of people, especially the rural poor in developing nations, gathering water is an essential part of their daily routine. During the dry season, the nearest water may be an hour's walk away. Often, children especially girls are kept from school to go and gather water for their families.

In shanty towns and poor urban areas, people may have to queue for hours to get water from a communal tap - or from a water seller, who may charge more than a can of water, than rich people pay for a regular piped supply.

The United Nations says that the proportion of people without clean water must be halved in the next 12 years. Governments promise to spend more to bring clean water to every community and household. But many communities are doing the job themselves, sinking wells, catching rain from roofs and building small dams to stop rainwater running away.

We depend on water to live. But we also pollute our water by using it to take away our waste. Dirty, smelly liquids trickle down shanty alleyways; city sewers empty into rivers; and big factories dump their waste into the sea. We all do it. Chemicals and oil kill wildlife. We have all seen pictures of big pollution disasters from oil tankers. But for humans the big killer is sewage. When it pollutes drinking water, it brings epidemics of diseases like cholera and typhoid, and diarrhea. It is estimated that half of the sick people in Africa and Asia are sick because of diseases caused by dirty water. That is because some 2.4 billion people do not have proper sanitation. Every day around a billion people squat at squalid pit latrines in shantytowns. And another billion people make do with plastic bags or fields or streams. Many women and girls, shamed by this, wait for dark before they will go at all. The United Nations has promised to try and halve the proportion of people without safe sanitation by the year 2015.

Lucy's story

Lucy Akanboguire is a teacher from Ghana. She tells the story of how water changed her life. " I used to get up at 3 am and walk to collect water from a river 5 kilometers away. The earliest I got back was 10 am, which meant that I was often late for work. This angered the head teacher. I always went alone so that my children could get to school. Sometimes they had water to wash with and for preparing breakfast and sometimes they did not. They often went to school late and without breakfast because of my absence.

In my community it is the job of women to provide water for their husbands. Lack of it often resulted in quarrels. Fetching water can take up most of a women's day. Some are bitten by snakes during the dark dusk dawn journey to the river, others fell down from fatigue - injuring themselves and breaking their water pots. Girls are also expected to carry water and so very few are enrolled in school. This means that in very rural areas, one girl is educated for every 30 boys. Female teachers are rare - I was the only one in my school. We suffered most from water shortages during the long dry season from November to March. Women quarelled, beat or injured each other a broke each other's containers in the 'mad rush' for water. As it was so scarce we were forced to collect dirty water, which posed severe health hazards. Sanitary facilities were non-existent. Diarrhoea, dysentery, Guinea worm and cholera were rife and often killed because we didn't have health facilities.

In 1994 I heard about the UN fund for 'Water Aid' and organized our community. After several meetings, the project was agreed and the first of two wells was dug by hand. On the first day after the hand pump was installed, I awoke at 6am and cried thinking that I was too late to fetch water from the river. Then I realized that in their excitement my children had already collected clean water from the water pump and were preparing breakfast. I feel so happy to have clean water for my children.

Now I can get to school on time and I have time to organize extra-curricula activities like science club, drama and singing. Because of clean water women's live have been greatly enhanced."

Water - A priority for the 21st Century.

Water problems are one of the most pressing issues facing the world this century. We are faced with the critical question of how to provide a stable supply of water for drinking and food production for the projected population of 8 billion by 2025. This year 24,000 participants, reconfirming global society's high level of concern regarding water issues, attended Water Forum.
What action can be taken to counter these issues?

Whose Water Is It?

Around the world water shortage and water pollution cause approximately four million deaths every year, or one death in every eight seconds. The majority of the victims of water borne diseases are children under the age of five from developing countries.

Across the world there are 261 " international rivers" or transboundary rivers shared by one or more countries. Conflicts between countries lying on either side, or upstream and downstream, of these rivers persist around issues such as control of the flow and water pollution. For example, Slovakia and Hungry are engaged in a confrontation over joint-river development project on the Donau River. In the Middle East Israel, Syria and Jordan have been arguing over water supply and management of the Jordan River for decades.

Water and Climate Change

In the 20th century, humankind's golden age of manufacturing, the average ground temperature rose by 0.6 degrees. The intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), which provides the latest opinions on the risks related to unnatural climate change, predicts that by the year 2100 the earths ground temperature may increase by up to 5.8 degrees. This year's Water Forum provided a rare opportunity for global warming experts and water experts to discuss issues with each other. According to IPPC Third Annual report on global warming, the latter half of the 20th century has seen the frequency of heavy rains in the northern hemisphere increase. In addition, the report stated that since the mid- 1970s the appearance of the 'El Nino' phenomenon has become more frequent and more persistent. This information points to the necessity of ALL COUNTRIES to establish policies that address these issues. However, poor countries and people affected by rising sea levels have insufficient funds to cope with climate change.

At the Water Forum, William Cosgrove, Vice president of the World Water Council, asserted the necessity of creating a framework for an international fund to address the problem. At a workshop on "Climate Change and Influence on Flood and Drought in East Asia, it was reported that regional differences in rainfall patterns in Japan and China are becoming increasingly marked. In other words, regions that typically receive heavy rainfall are now receiving even more (specifically as short periods of heavy rain) and typically regions that receive little rain are experiencing even less.

As climate changes become more pronounced, it will become necessary for countries to provide contingency plans in their flood control policies that account for situations that may exceed predictions. At the conference it was emphasized that multiple stakeholders, need to overcome difference and cooperate.

"Water is indispensable for human health and welfare. Prioritizing issues is an urgent global requirement."

Deirdre Mullan
Mercy Global Concern
July 2003