Water for people.pdf - WHO Thailand Digital Repository

1 6 6 / C H A L L E N G E S T O L I F E A N D W E L L - B E I N GCities: Competing Needs in an Urban EnvironmentThey also seek the cheapest and most convenient means to disposeof wastewater, which often results in their contaminating watersources for their ‘downstream’ neighbours or for other groundwaterusers. Even where reticulated water supply and sanitation systemsare operational, maintenance may be the last item on the budgetand therefore prone to resource cuts. Sewage leakage and pressureirregularities in the water supply system, resulting from insufficientmaintenance, eventually create substantial contamination risks.Good urban water management is complex, and requires not onlywater and wastewater infrastructure but also pollution control(especially from industries), sustainable use of water sources,wastewater management and flood prevention. In addition, it requirescoordination across many sectors and, usually, between different localauthorities as most cities’ water supplies and wastewater are notlimited to water catchments within their boundaries.The importance of ensuring good water quality for watersystems used for recreation and of limiting ecological damage to thewater systems that receive wastewater, storm and surface runoff hasadded considerably to authorities’ tasks. From a financialperspective, however, management decisions often have a cascadingeffect: the installation of a new or improved sewage system canimply investment in an increased capacity of treatment plants.All these tasks require governance structures that provide asound legal, institutional and financial basis. In cities with rapidlygrowing populations or those with weak economies and limitedpossibilities of raising funds for water management, thesestructures must also be adapted to the particular difficulties facinglocal authorities.Water, Sanitation and Hygiene:‘Improved’ vs. ‘Adequate’ ProvisionProgress in providing water and sanitation services used to beexpressed in coverage figures originating from national authoritiesand service providers. The Global Water Supply and Sanitation 2000Assessment Report (WHO/UNICEF, 2000) made a significant stepforward by defining access to improved water sources and sanitationin terms of probability of safety, and by basing itself on surveys andcensuses among users. In line with the intention of the WHO/UNICEF(United Nations Children’s Fund) Joint Monitoring Programme ofWater Supply and Sanitation (JMP), it is argued here that themethodology should be further developed so that progress can beassessed by measuring the numbers of people with access to ‘safeand sufficient’ water and ‘safe and convenient’ sanitation that meetsbasic welfare and hygiene needs. In this context, adequate waterprovision would refer to the supply of water that meets drinkingwater quality standards (i.e. water that can be safely drunk and usedfor cooking), in sufficient quantity to allow for washing and otheraspects of personal hygiene and domestic cleanliness.All city dwellers have access to water in some way since no onecan live without it. The issue is not whether they have access towater but whether the supplies are safe, sufficient for their needsand easily accessed at a price they can afford. Similarly, for sanitation,all city dwellers have to make some provision for defecation, even ifthis is defecating on wasteland. The issue is not whether they haveprovision but whether they have a quality of provision that eliminatestheir (and others’) contact with human excreta and wastewater bymaking available toilets that are convenient, clean, easily accessedand affordable by all. Meeting these basic needs and thus reducingthe burden of disease related to their insufficiency should be thedriving force, and raising the health status of vulnerable groups theprimary goal, of public action.Water and sanitation provision standardsOver time, many cities have acquired governance structures thathave greatly improved water management (including all the nationalor provincial laws, institutions and financial systems to support this).In cities of high-income nations, it is taken for granted that eachhome or business has a twenty-four-hours-a-day piped water supplythat can be used for drinking, bathing and other domestic purposes,as well as hygienic, easily cleaned toilets available to all. Yet it wasjust over 100 years ago that provision of access to safe, pipedwater supplies, sanitation for all city dwellers and governancestructures to ensure that these operations were carried out, beganto be accepted, initially in Europe and North America, as a key partto any city’s water management (Mumford, 1991).This acceptance now seems universal. In 1976, at the UnitedNations (UN) Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat), 132governments formally committed themselves to a recommendationstating that ‘safe water supply and hygienic disposal should receivepriority with a view to achieving measurable qualitative andquantitative targets serving all the population by a certain date’(UN, 1976). In 1977, at the UN Water Conference at Mar del Plata,governments agreed that national plans should aim to provide safedrinking water and basic sanitation to all by 1990 if possible, that iswithin the International Drinking Water Supply and SanitationDecade (IDWSSD), (UN, 1977). In 1990, at the World Summit forChildren, the many assembled governments made a commitment toachieving universal access to safe water and adequate sanitation bythe year 2000. However, these targets were not met, and hundredsof millions of urban dwellers still suffer from very poor or nonexistentprovision for water and sanitation. There is also the worrythat the targets set within the Millennium Development Goals,which imply improved provision for water, sanitation and drainage –i.e. to have achieved, by 2020, a significant improvement in the