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FINANCING COOPERATIONWaterCredit: solving the global water crisisthrough community collaboration, governmentengagement and economic stimulationGary White, CEO; Stephen Harris Jr, Grants Manager; and Rosemary Gudelj, Manager of Public Affairs, Water.orgThe global water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) crisis isacute. According to the Joint Monitoring Programme, atleast 11 per cent of the world’s population – 780 millionpeople – still lack access to improved drinking water and 37per cent – 2.5 billion people – lack access to proper sanitationfacilities. Lack of WASH access constitutes a ‘silent emergency’in which people are denied access to one of the most importantdeterminants of public health. The human toll of this globalchallenge includes illness, reduced income for families and eventhe death of an estimated three children every minute.Diarrhoeal diseases kill more than 2 million people every yearand 5,000 children under the age of five a day. The World HealthOrganization (WHO) estimates that other water-borne diseasesinfect about 10 per cent of the population of the developing world,causing malnutrition, anemia and stunted growth. Over and abovethe severe loss of life, water- and sanitation-related diseases severelyconstrain productivity and take a significant economic toll onaffected populations. WHO estimates that improvedwater and sanitation services would yield avoidedhealth-related costs of US$7.3 billion per year, andUS$750 million from gained adult working days.Although the world met the Millennium DevelopmentGoal (MDG) target of halfing the proportion of peoplewithout sustainable access to safe drinking water earlyin 2012, water and sanitation access is not advancingquickly enough to meet the needs of billions of people.Though many issues contribute to this challenge, amajor bottleneck is simply lack of household financialliquidity. Globally, people are spending up to 20per cent of their income on water because long-term,sustainable solutions (such as household water connectionsor rainwater harvesting tanks) are not affordabledue to the up-front cost. However, the poor who areclassified as living in the ‘base of the pyramid’ (BOP)are able to pay for these WASH products and servicesImage: Water.orgUnsanitary latrines hang over a flooded area in Dhaka[ 163 ]