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DAM-L WSSCC Chair warns of risks to water and sanitation sector (fwd)



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Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2001 12:40:22 -0600
Subject: WSSCC Chair warns of risks to water and sanitation sector
To: dianne@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca
Message-ID: <200111021247531.SM00865@mail.iatp.org>

Right to Water (right-to-water@iatp.org)    Posted: 11/02/2001  By  svarghese@iatp.org	
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WSSCC Chair warns of risks to water and sanitation sector

In his opening remarks before a scheduled talk at the International Water
Association Forum on 16 October in Berlin, Germany), Sir Richard Jolly,
Chair of the Water  Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC),
told the meeting that there were risks posed by the current wave of
terrorism to the water and sanitation sector and that extreme poverty
tended to breed extreme acts of violence.

"Whatever its other causes, and there are many, terrorism thrives in
stituations of injustice,"and that "extreme poverty and extremes of
inequality encourage extreme responses," said Dr. Jolly.  Stating that "the
world today is divided by greater inequalities than ever before - with the
rich overwhelmingly Western and white and the poorest overwhelmingly
non-white, non-Western and non-Christian," Dr. Jolly expressed concern that
the extremes of economic inequality excerbated other differences and
sensitivities.

On the risks to the water and sanitation sector he feared that "water
supplies could be deliberately contaminated, that resources for water and
sanitation projects might be diverted to support the war against terrorism
and that water-related and other conferences might be cancelled or
relocated, to avoid the risks of air travel.   Those of us in water and
sanitation can help and do something about this situation because the
scandal of 1.3 billion people without safe water and the 2.4 billion people
(half of the population in the developing world) without basic sanitation
is part of this inequality in basic human needs and a part which we can use
our professional skills and voices to do something about," said the WSSCC
Chair.   

In describing the link between terrorism and poverty, Dr Jolly said it was
a harsh reality of the failure of the sustainable development process.  "It
is time to recognise the basic minimum requirements of people for a better
quality of life through improved education especially for the girl child,
better nutrition, better health and removal of obscurantism and bigotry,"
he stressed.  In some countries, women and girls are deprived of formal
schooling, giving preference to the education of boys.
 
Calling poverty "the biggest global terrorism that has been let loose on
billions of unserved populations," Dr Jolly challenged Forum participants
to work together towards a global effort, to recognise and understand the
importance of water and sanitation to eradicate poverty, degradation,
inhuman living conditions and their contribution to sustainable development."

The Berlin Forum took place just 48 days before the International
Conference on Freshwater that will be held in Bonn in December.  Hosted by
the German Government, the Forum was organised jointly by the Global Water
Partnership, the IWA and the WSSCC, an international organisation with over
1100 members in some 140 countries.   The gathering of experts, water
utility managers and donors focused on the challenges facing Central and
Eastern Europe as a contribution to the Bonn Conference.

Dr. Jolly reviewed the achievements of the International Drinking Water and
Sanitation Decade (IDWSSD) in the 1980s, the challenges that still lie
ahead and asked :"Why is it that water often becomes the central focus,
sanitation is in second place and hygiene totally forgotten?"  "We
desperately need to change our priorities," he said, adding that "in terms
of human health, the priorities need to be reversed."  "Whereas investments
in water quality and quantity can lead to a 17 per cent median reduction in
diarrhoea-related  deaths, he argued, "sanitation can lead to a 36 per cent
median reduction and hygiene 33 per cent."  According to Jolly there were
economic benefits in promoting adequate sanitation and hygiene:

*reducing the health burden of individuals from water-borne and
water-washed diseases,
*reducing the time taken off work or school by ill people and their careers,
*improving nutrition due to reduced losses of nutrients through diarrhoea,
the biggest killer of children under five,
*reducing the time and effort spent, normally by women and children in the
Third World,  to carry water from distant sources,
*making time for other activites such as childrens'  school attendance and
adultsī earning a livelihood.

Urging more priority for sanitation and hygiene rather than on water
supply, Dr. Jolly told participants that large-scale master plans for
sanitation have been unworkable, inefficient and expensive, in the same way
that large-scale water schemes suffered from many of the same problems.
"Sanitation and water based on people-centred approaches and worked through
on a human scale are ultimately more sustainable and affordable."  He cited
the experience of the Uganda Water Development Department which estimated
in 1992 that the capital costs for sewers in rural towns were 50 times the
cost of a sanitation platform or 16 times for a Ventilated Pit Latrine and
the recurrent costs to be 20 times.  Despite these well-known figures, he
said, water schemes still dominate and appropriate much of the sectoral
investment in the sector.

Dr. Jolly informed the meeting of the Council's Vision 21 initiative which
aims to have a world in 2025 in which each person knows the importance of
hygiene and enjoys safe and adequate water and sanitation.  It is an
initiative to put an end to the scandal of the over one billion people who
still have no access to a safe  drinking water supply and to the almost
three billion people without adequate sanitation.  Vision 21, brought out
by partners in the WSSCC, offers a practical way forward to end this
shameful scandal that continues to plague the poorest of the poor, mostly
in the developing world.

The Vision 21 people-centred approach, he said, reverses the top-down
process, which has not been able to cope with the burgeoning crisis,
despite the progress and achievements made during the IDWSSD in the 1980s.
He described the broad principles of Vision 21 that could be applied to
different sectors and types of organisations as:

· People come first
· Recognise the human right to basic water and sanitation services
· Private/Public Partnership to achieve goals.

Dr. Jolly also announced that the WSSCC was preparing, as part of its
contribution to the forthcoming World Summit for Sustainable Development
(Johannesburg, South Africa, September 2002), a 'People's Report' on
sanitation and hygiene.  He argued for an international development target
for sanitation which was missing from the Millennium Summit goals agreed
upon by more than 130 Heads of States and Governments who gathered at the
United Nations in New York in 2000. 

As one of the key architects of the Human Development Report (HDR), Dr.
Jolly described the accepted definition of poverty as "shortness of life,
absence of knowledge and education, insufficient means to achieve a decent
standard of living and social exclusion." He also said that "we managed to
devise a measure of human poverty deprivation along these dimensions, with
lack of access to water as one of the components of this deprivation, along
with lack of access to health, and the incidence of under-nutrition among
children under five years old."

Calling the HDR approach to calculating development "a totally misleading
approximation," Dr .Jolly urged UNICEF, WHO and the WSSCC to team up and
produce data during the next 12 months, and to produce more accurate
measurements on the progress of nations.  "Progress can and should be
measured by reference to the rates of progress achieved over the last five
years," he emphasized. According to Jolly, the HDR  "treats 'on-track
countries' as those which have achieved 90 to 99 per cent coverage, those
lagging as countries which have 70 to 89 per cent coverage and those far
behind as those countries with coverage rates below 70 per cent."  UNICEF,
WHO and the WSSCC jointly published the Global Water Supply and Sanitation
Assessment 2000 last November.

"Like combating terrorism, poverty has to be fought on all fronts and in
partnership with eveyone," he said.  "Terrorism is the product of a lack of
education, obscurantism and absolute deprivation. Like poverty, it is a
kind of exploitation, and the two converge unless they are faced in a
holistic manner," he added.  Dr. Jolly asked all Forum participants to take
a pledge that "whatever position we have, whether public or private,
whether manager or beneficiary, we will work together to eliminate poverty
through better hygiene, sanitation and safe water for all."


A citizen of the United Kingdom, Sir Richard Jolly has served as Chair of
the WSSCC since 1997.  He previously worked as Deputy Executive Director
for UNICEF and later as Special Adviser to the Administrator of UNDP.  He
is currently working on a book on the History of the United Nations.

(Note to journalists: for more information, please contact: Ms. Eirah
Gorre-Dale, WSSCC; Cellphone: +1 (914) 309-5491; or in New York, c/o UN
OPS, ENVP, Tel. +1 (212) 457-1862, Fax:+1(212) 457-4044; 
E-mail: EirahGD@unops.org/   In Geneva, Mr. Laurent Favre, WSSCC
Secretariat, Tel.+(41 22) 791 3685; E-mail: wsscc@who.ch; website:
www.wsscc.org)






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