Transcript Water from fire hydrant in Brooklyn 2010 heat wave

Is water free?
If so, who pays for it?
Water in Developing nations
• Lack of resources to treat water
• Majority (80-90%) of untreated sewage enters local water supply
• Industrial pollution is under-regulated
Credit: National Geographic
Nations with water sanitation infrastructure
Dark green: 90%+ Green: 75+ - 90%, Yellow: 50-75%,
Red: Less than 50% of population access (UN WHO, 2004)
Women’s work
• Millions of women haul
water long distances every
day (Ethiopia - 8 hours/day
getting water)
• To ensure basic health
needs, 20 - 50 liters of
clean water are required for
every person every day
Water as a human right
• Dirty water and poor sanitation kill 3.3 million
people around the world annually, most of
them young children (UNESCO)
• Diarrhoeal diseases and malaria lower average
life expectancy by 4% and 3% respectively
(UNESCO, 2002)
• 1 billion lack access to treated water
• Reduce by half, by 2015, the proportion of
people without sustainable access to safe
drinking water. (UN Millennium Development
Goal, 2000) and the proportion of people who
do not have access to basic sanitation (2002)
Achieving clean water?
• On track to meet drinking water
Millennium Development Goal,
• Sanitation target will not be met by 2015
without much extra effort
(UNESCO, 2002)
Water as a resource: privatization
• Multinational water system companies
exclude the poor
• Cochabamba, Bolivia, 1999:
40-year rights granted to corporate water
supplier brought riots
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Credit: www.somossur.net
Achieving clean water: barriers
• Ghosts of water projects past
• Roughly half of water projects built fall into
disrepair soon after groups that built them
move on (National Geographic)
• Konso, Ethiopia: 2007 survey found 9 of 35
well projects functioning
– Often lacking low cost (~$3) part
Achieving clean water: strategies
• Local community ownership:
– WaterAid nonprofit asks village to form a
WASH (water, sanitation, hygiene)
committee of 7 people (at least 4 women)
– WASH co-plans projects
– WASH maintains the project
– House-based surveys report latrine use
risen from 6 to 25% since Dec. 2007
Achieving clean water: strategies
• Local community ownership:
– WASH holds community fees to pay for
spare parts and repairs
– WaterAid and other nonprofits advocate
villeage-based user fees are key to
sustainability (~1 penny per jerry can)
– WASH committee elected in Konso, Ethiopia
Credit: Thomas Havisham, Panos
Water as a resource: industry
Water as a resource: industry
• Industrial use of water increases with national
income (World Bank, 2001)
• Globally, industry withdraws 22% of freshwater
• Projected to reach 24% by 2025
• Raw material industry (wood, agricultural) biggest
contributor to organic pollutant load
• More than half the organic pollutant load
generated in low-income countries (UNIDO)
Water as a resource: agriculture
• Haiti losing 36 million
tons of topsoil a year
to erosion
• Trees to withstand
erosion are
harvested to sell as
firewood
• Haiti Regeneration
Initiative, founded
2008
• Goal of encouraging
farmers not to
remove trees for
planting or harvest
Water as an unknown
2011 UNESCO Global Change and Water
“Global change involves more than climate
change. The major drivers… are population
growth, climate change, urbanization,
expansion of infrastructure, migration, land
conversion and pollution.”
Water as an unknown: climate
• Climate change affects precipitation patterns, but
there is a tradeoff between accuracy and
precision of climate forecasts
• “More intense and longer droughts have been
observed over wider areas since the 1970s, particularly
in the tropics and subtropics” (IPCC, 2007)
• “The frequency of heavy precipitation events has
increased over most land areas” (IPCC, 2007)
• “Likely” than area affected by drought will
increase (IPCC, 2007)
Water as an unknown: climate
• Micro-insurance cushions farmers against
weather-related crop losses
• Kilimo Salama (Swahili “safe farming”) offers payas-you-plant insurance if they plant within a 9 - 12
mile radius of one of Kenya’s 30 solar-powered
weather stations Ezekial Rop walks on his farm in Moiben, Kenya.
• Weather station rain
gauges sense
drought/flood
threshold and text $
credit to farmer’s
cell phones
National Geographic News,
Oct. 29, 2010
Credit: National Geographic, Jeff Haskins, Kilimo Salama
Water as an unknown: climate
• India, Tibet, Pakistan: glacial melt supplies
summertime water
• Mideast: drought and resource conflict
Is water free?
What is the easiest tradeoff to make in
deciding who pays for water?
What is the most difficult tradeoff to
make in deciding who pays for water?