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Water as a Human Right
Fraternité Matin, Côte d'Ivoire
By Kemal Derviş and Trevor Manuel More recently, we have heard forecasts
of inevitable future “water wars”, predictions rooted in fears that
there is simply not enough fresh water to meet the needs of an
expanding and quickly urbanizing global population. All
too commonly, water pricing operates on the perverse principle that the
poorer you are, the more it costs. Urban slum residents pay some of the
world’s highest prices for water. The poorest households of El
Salvador, Nicaragua and Jamaica devote more than 10 percent of their
income on water; in the United Kingdom, by contrast, spending more than
three percent of family earnings on water bills is considered an
economic hardship. The
Government used its regulatory powers to require all municipalities to
provide a basic minimum of 25 litres per day free of charge to each
household, with the target of achieving free basic water for all by
2008, with no household more than 200 metres from a water source. The
task is not yet complete, but South African’s citizens rightly expect
the government to keep its promises. The remote provincial towns
and the burgeoning mega cities of the developing world all need major
investments in water utilities. This will be costly, and in many cases
impossible without financial help. But the ultimate price of a failure
to invest in clean water supplies – in health care costs, lost
productivity, and ultimately, human lives – far outweighs the expense
of spending what is necessary now. The
emerging industrial powerhouses of the 19th Century faced the same
problem. Infant mortality rates in New York and London were similar
then to levels seen in the developing world today – and for the same
basic reasons. Those cities invested massively in public water
utilities that rapidly reduced gastrointestinal disease and built a
foundation for economic growth and a rising quality of life. It can be
done. The
2006 Human Development Report urges every developing country to prepare
a national plan to accelerate progress in water and sanitation, with
ambitious targets backed with at least 1 per cent of GDP, and clear
strategies for overcoming equalities. Currently, national public
spending on public water supplies is typically less than 0.5 per cent
of GDP. The
Report also calls for a Global Action Plan under G8 leadership to put
water and sanitation problems front and centre on the world development
agenda. The authors make a persuasive case for an additional US$3.4 to
$4 billion in annual international aid for water and
sanitation—assistance that should be considered an overdue investment,
with enormous long-term returns in health and productivity, and basic
quality of life. Each of the eight Millennium
Development Goals is inextricably tied to the next, so if we fail on
the water and sanitation goal, hope of reaching the other seven also
rapidly fades. We have a collective responsibility to succeed. On
practical and ethical grounds both, it is difficult to imagine a better
investment in the health and well-being of the world’s poor.
In
the 1970s, the Club of Rome and others warned of coming dire scarcities
of food, oil and other essentials, the seemingly inexorable
consequence of rising demand for limited resources.
The
concern is understandable: there are now more than a billion people
with no regular access to clean water for drinking, bathing, cooking or
basic sanitation. And the consequences are already appallingly evident:
an estimated two million children die annually because their families
don’t have potable water or functioning toilets.
Yet
a rational analysis of the water problem shows that there is no
objective reason – financial, logistical, or geographical – why the
poor cannot be provided with enough clean water to meet their basic
human needs. As we have seen with staple grains and hydrocarbons, the
supply and delivery of crucial goods is the result of many variables,
some inherently unpredictable, from shifting market incentives and
technological innovation to public investment and policy frameworks.
And sometimes the missing ingredient is political will.
In Cape Town yesterday
[THURSDAY 9 NOVEMBER], the United Nations Development Programme
launched a pioneering study that debunks many of the myths of the
worldwide water crisis -- among them the inevitability of cross-border
conflict -- and suggests many practical solutions.
The central argument of the newly released 2006 Human Development
Report (“Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis”)
is that access to a safe and affordable water supply should be
considered a basic human right. Governments can and should recognize
this right by ensuring that all citizens
have access to a minimum of 20 litres of clean water per day, and that those who cannot afford to pay get it for free.
Unquestionably,
many parts of the planet are faced with acute water shortages, a
problem which is being exacerbated by global warming. Whether it is
water or the broader problem of global warming, the challenge is
fundamentally not one of aggregate resources, but rather one of the
priorities of political leaders, nationally and internationally.
One
of the targets of the Millennium Development Goals is to halve the
proportion of people in the world without access to safe drinking water
by 2015. If we continue with business as usual, 234 million people will
miss that basic water target.
Too
much of the policy discussion on water delivery has been dominated by
a dead-end debate on privatization versus state ownership. This is a
false choice: there is a wide range of rational financial and policy
approaches for securing clean water supplies, with most relying on
some combination of public and private sector involvement. The real
challenge is how to get potable water to those who can least afford to
pay.
Households
hooked up directly to municipal water pipes typically get the cheapest
water. The poor have to go through a web of intermediaries – tanker
truck operators, vendors and other water suppliers – to purchase their
water supplies. Every step they are forced to take away from the water
source adds to the price.
In
South Africa, the basic policy framework for a solution is now in
place. Access to water was one of the defining racial divides during
apartheid. In the post-apartheid period, the adoption of a rights-based
approach to water supply created a legitimate sense of entitlement
among citizens, empowering communities to hold local governments,
private utilities and the national government to account.
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