Water for people.pdf - WHO Thailand Digital Repository

5 0 8 / F I T T I N G T H E P I E C E S T O G E T H E RThe World’s Water Crisis: Fitting the Pieces TogetherIt is in their multi-purpose use – where stored water in the samedam may be able to support urban water supply, irrigation, powergeneration and flood storage (implemented through managementguidelines addressing issues of environmental protection, value,sharing, risk and governance) that dams bring the different challengestogether into a single point of focus. The exact contribution of damsto the resolution of the challenges is argued in different ways indifferent settings. In many developing countries, and particularly thosewith high variability in their resource or with cities located far from theresource base, dams appear as an absolute requisite to economic andsocial development. In other situations, it may be argued that damsare now redundant and can therefore be removed to restore naturalecosystems. Other actors may insist that multi- or bilateral fundsshould not be directed towards investment in dams where there is arisk of unacceptable social or environmental consequences.The example of dams clearly reveals the multidimensional nature ofsustainable development and its attendant problems for watermanagement. It highlights the need to consider all of the challenges as apractical basis from which to move forward. When an integrated frameworkis adopted, the actual point of entry matters little: what matters is theconvergence of interests and challenges within the broader picture.The Multidimensional Nature of theWorld’s Water CrisisOur assessment of individual challenges demonstrates themultidimensional nature of the world’s water crisis and thecompounding effect of one crisis upon another. It reveals the sheermagnitude of the task faced by those who need to resolve not justone crisis, but several, often simultaneously.The global overviewQuite simply, sustainable development is not being achieved. It isnot being achieved through water supply, sanitation, natural orurban ecosystems, nor through food security, industry, energy oreconomic and social advancement. The everyday lives of billions ofpeople are not being made more secure. Rather, development hasmostly brought additional pressures on water and the environment,and those pressures are set to mount further still.In 2000, 1.1 billion people were without adequate water supply.More than twice that number – 2.4 billion – were without basicsanitation. In this book, a first estimate has been made of the annualtotal number of people in ill-health or dying because of deficient water,sanitation and hygiene. Each year, this amounts to 1.7 million deaths(equivalent to 4,740 per day) and the loss of 49.2 million Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs). This does not include the toll of lives ravagedby malaria – over 1 million deaths and 42.3 million life years per year.Progress has been made over the last ten years in coping with aglobal population increase of 15 percent. In fact, at a global level,the delivery rates of ‘improved’ services have stayed slightly aheadof population growth rates. But the gap in water supply, sanitationand health coverage and service has not been closed, and still todayit is the poor who remain unserved. The 2000 UN MillenniumSummit set a target of halving the proportion of people withoutsustainable, safe drinking water by 2015. The World Summit onSustainable Development (WSSD) held in Johannesburg in 2002agreed on an equivalent sanitation target.Freshwater ecosystems have been hit hard by reduced andaltered flow patterns, by deteriorating water quality, byinfrastructure construction and by land conversions. More rivers havebeen disrupted, fewer rivers retain good ecological status, waterquality has declined in many localities, more structures are beingbuilt and more lands, including wetlands, are being converted toagriculture. Consequently, biodiversity and commercial fisheries arein global decline as freshwater ecosystems have been more severelyaffected than the land or the sea. Although many local, andsometimes national, improvements can be seen, these are not yetstemming the global decline in the state of the environment.Special efforts must be made to provide better water andsanitation services to the world’s cities as their populations swellthrough natural growth and migration. In a little over ten years’time, urban areas will house the majority of the world’s population.There is little cause for optimism that development targets will bereached. As chapter 7 explains, the case of African and Asian citieshas highlighted that ‘improved’ coverage is not a question ofaddressing adequacy of provision in concentrated populationcentres. Depending on the definitions used, this new evidence couldput urban areas particularly – and therefore totals in general – evenfurther behind in coverage, and further increase the quotednumbers of those lacking coverage – perhaps even twofold.It is not a global food shortage that is causing food insecurity –it is the inability of those in poverty to access the world’s availablefood. Agricultural production has increased steadily in recentdecades and the growth of global food supplies has exceeded thedemands of an increasing population. The fact that 800 millionpeople are seriously affected by chronic malnutrition is due to thesocial, economic and political contexts – global and national – thatperpetuate, and sometimes cause, unacceptable levels of poverty.Over the next twenty-five years, food will be required for another2–3 billion people. Within the current demographic context, theglobal food security outlook is reasonably good. Towards 2050, astabilized world population could enjoy access to food for all. It isexpected that 20 percent of increased crop production in developingcountries will come from expansion of agricultural land, and80 percent from intensification. A 20 percent increase in the extent