Thirst for justice

Global Crisis

WaterAid is trying to stem the tide of death and misery caused by a lack water

John Vidal reports.

When the 10 young Bangladeshi women meeting in a small wood and corrugated iron house in Outfall slum, Dhaka, were asked how many of them knew someone whose child had died because of unsanitary conditions and easily-avoided waterborne diseases, there was a short pause.

Honufa, shyly, put her hand up first. Then Taslima, then Rakhi. But they didn't just have second-hand experience, they said. Each of them told the local WaterAid questioner that they had lost at least one child of their own.

This was not unusual, they insisted. Four child deaths between three women out of 10 is not extraordinary. Multiply Taslima, Honufa and Rakhi's experiences across the 500,000 other women living in Dhaka's slums, or those of the very many millions who lose their babies in Accra, Jakarta, Nairobi, Calcutta, Lima, or 1,000 other developing world cities, and you can sense the heartbreak behind cold UN statistics which tell us that 2.4bn people now live without sanitation, 1.2bn do not have adequate water, and 80% of the world's illnesses are water-related.

Behind each woman with a baby dying of diarrhoea, or a subsistence farmer having to walk 15 miles a day to get enough water, or a community unable to grow its crops in a drought, is usually a quite manageable water problem. And almost every time the people who do not enjoy the benefits of clean, accessible water know exactly what is needed, but do not have the minimum financial or technical resources to tackle the problem.

Some of the life-threatening illnesses in Outfall slum quite likely started at an old tube well just 100 yards from Taslima's house.

Shared by more than 1,000 people, it was, frankly, obscene - an obvious health hazard, with rotting vegetable matter, puddles of stagnant water, mosquitoes, litter and even excreta.

Yet to clean up the well and install it on a concrete plinth out of the muck would cost just £60. To clean up the whole slum's stinking open ditches, to install simple latrines and washhouses for 10,000 people, and to employ community hygiene teachers would cost about £100,000 - less than a British local authority may spend on repairing 50 yards of road or what the UK government spends on defence in three minutes.

Skip to Malawi, where the village of Gumbi, 31 miles outside Lilongwe, has been semi-starving this year because its crops have failed. Yet only 800 yards from the village is a river that flows six months of the year. The six nearby villages, in similar situations, have teamed up and know exactly what is needed: a low earth dam several hundred yards long would allow them to retain water and grow winter crops for more than 2,000 people.

They'll dig the earthworks themselves, but they need advice and haven't a clue who to see, or how to draw up plans, or what are the technical problems, or how to raise the money which could transform their lives from one of undignified dependence to one of self sufficiency and development.

On the other hand, consider what happens when water comes to a place for the first time. In Bolivia, the taps came to one suburb of El Alto, the sprawling city that has grown up in the past 20 years on the high plain above La Paz, last year. It was the signal for week-long celebrations. "Today we have started development. Now we can move forward. Without water we are nothing", said one man.

When water was brought to the town of Feya in Ethiopia and 23 nearby villages, it transformed the lives of up to 70,000 people.

All human cultures recognise that water is life and that nothing makes more difference to life than water. Those without it are condemned to live in semi-human conditions and its provision, safe supply and distribution, linked to hygiene and sanitation, will determine not just how much but whether great parts of the world will develop at all over the next century.

Without it, people have no chance; with it, they can avoid the kind of backbreaking work and disease that has left millions in Africa and elsewhere crippled, unable to earn money, unable to look after children or send them to school, or to spend more time in the fields.

Last September, former South African president Nelson Mandela declared at the Earth summit in Johannesburg that access to water was a human right, and those countries, like the US, that are trying actively to prevent a world commitment to improve sanitation, were shamed. The proposal was passed and just two weeks ago the right to water was reaffirmed by the UN; all countries are now obliged to extend access to sufficient, affordable, accessible and safe water supplies and to safe sanitation services.

The omens are not good. Last week a report from giant insurance group Swiss Re underlined the urgency of a host of UN and non-governmental assessments of the water crisis facing the developing world. Within 20 years, said the report, half of the world's population will live in water-stressed conditions, and one third - more than 3 bn people - will face water scarcity, unless significant changes in water management are made by government, private industry and consumers.

The reality is that much of Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, South America, and China are already in trouble and many places do not have the resources to address the problems. In the burgeoning slums of the developing world, water and sanitation problems are now acute and, with massive population increases expected in the next decade, the problems are inevitably going to worsen.

In the meantime, the work of groups such as WaterAid, working with the poorest to effect the most fundamental changes in life, is going to become even more vital.

They may be only drops in an ocean of need, but they set an example, and bring enormous hope and transformation.