I hope not many people really "had to go urgently", but on the occasion of World Water Day, UNICEF, the UN's Child's Fund, got 756 people lined up to a latrine in central Brussels to raise awareness for the need for clean water on World Water Day. (Full)
The 2009, the theme for World Water Day is "Shared Water - Shared Opportunities", with a focus on transboundary waters.
Many claim the global water crisis is one of the causes of the global food crisis. And soon will become the scarcest natural resource. (Full)
Interested? Here is some background reading on the importance of water hygiene, sanitation and the right to access to clean water. (Thanks Simon!)
60% of all rural diseases are caused by poor hygiene and sanitation condition. At any one time, half of the world's hospital beds are filled with people from water-borne diseases caused mostly by water polluted with untreated sewage. Proper sanitation is the best preventive medicine in the world.
Yet, 2.6 billion or 40% of mankind still do not have access to proper sanitation and toilets. And 2 million children die every year from diarrhea. Do we need more reasons to convince us that sanitation is so important?
And yet, sanitation is a problem that people are often shy to discuss. But a reluctance to talk about sanitation is part of the reason why an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide do not have access to sanitation. Under the motto "DON'T BLUSH, SPONSOR A FLUSH!", the World Toilet Day wants to break the taboo and improve sanitation globally. (Read more)
To break the cycle of poverty in Africa, access to clean water for drinking, water for irrigation, toilets with hygiene and nutritional education must be improved. Using simple but effective technology, PumpAid builds water pumps, called Elephant Pumps, that can be maintained by poor rural communities without any assistance.
Pumps are built in response to grassroots demand and in full consultation with the local community. The local community come together to assist in the building process, providing materials such as bricks, sand, stones and unskilled labour.
The Elephant Pump can also supply water for irrigating gardens where villagers can grow fruit and vegetables to improve their families' diet or even to sell to bring much needed cash into the household.
The Pump that has been developed by Pump Aid and is based on a 2,000 year old Chinese design. Pump Aid has adapted this design so that it is strong, long lasting and made from locally available materials.
The pump can lift water from as deep as 50m deep and produce one litre of water every second. Wells are usually dug by hand but teams may need help to blow out rocks and heavily impacted earth. Pump Aid never uses mechanical diggers because it would deprive someone a job and increase the total price of installing a pump. In addition some of the places we work in are so remote it would be impossible to bring in machinery.
The location of a well is determined by geological formations and vegetation growth but the final decision is made by one of the water diviners in the Pump Aid team. As the Pump handle is turned, water is drawn up the pump by plastic washers attached to a rope. The Pumps are so easy to use that children as young as five years old can manage to pump out a bucket full of water.
The Pump is encased in concrete to prevent any contamination, ensuring that a clean sustainable supply of water is provided for the local community.
When a Pump is built, the beneficiaries will receive a training workshop so that they can maintain and repair the Pump using easy to find materials such as plant fibres and plastic. They will also receive hygiene education on practices and tips on using the overflow of water for agriculture. Often nutrition gardens are set up alongside the Elephant Pump.
An Elephant Pump cost £500 for materials and to install, which is cheaper than a metal piston pump and lasts for up to 50 years. 250 people can be provided with 40 liters of clean water from each Pump, everyday.
Pump Aid started in 1998 and has so far built over 4000 pumps. Currently around 80 Elephant Pumps are built each month, resulting in 20,000 people benefiting from access to clean water.
This blog entry is part of the Blog Action Day campaign inviting bloggers to publish posts about poverty today, October 15th.
People queueing up for water are a familiar site for anyone who has been in Africa:. A chore often left to women and children.
According to a study in rural areas in South Africa surveying 1,052 children in 366 households, water carrying ranked as the most time-consuming of household chores for children.
In average, a child spent just under 16 hours a week hauling water from the nearest water source to their homes.
The study shows the impact of fetching water on children’s school attendance, sense of well-being and general health. All three factors relate to how much time the kids spend on the chore. This in turn is dependent on the distance of the water source and how many trips they make daily to get water.
For example, 62% of children who make two or more trips a day to collect water report that they miss school. The proportion of children who miss school among those who fetch water once a day was considerably lower, at 44%.
Similarly, children fetching water two or more times a day are four times more likely to develop health problems than those doing a single trip a day.
Q-Drum came up with this solution: A 50 liter Linear Low Density Polyethylene drum that can be pulled or rolled by kids. The drum is tough, surviving 3 metre drop-test filled with water, resisting a load test up to 3,7 tons.
In the 12th century, Sri Lanka’s king Parakramabahu said: "not a single drop of water received from rain should be allowed to escape into the sea without being utilized for human benefit."
Thanks largely to unsafe drinking water, more than 2 million children die of diarrhea each year. Six hundred million subsistence farmers lack irrigation water and are mired in poverty. Wetlands have been decimated in Europe, North America, and Asia, and fish populations are collapsing. Drought caused a more than 50 percent drop in Australia’s wheat production in 2007 and sparked a ten-year peak in global wheat prices.
Every year roughly 100,000 cubic kilometers of rain fall on earth—some 15,000 cubic meters per person per annum. The total amount of water that evaporates also is more or less constant. Population, however, is not constant. It has doubled in the last fifty years, resulting in a 50 percent decline in water availability per person.
As people accept that climate change is real and here to stay, they are likely to realize that while reducing greenhouse gas emissions is all about energy, adapting to climate change will be all about water.
This article presents a holistic view on the importance of water management. It makes me think: In the whole discussion about the global food crisis, did we forget the global water crisis?
For several years, Indians have been protesting against the presence of Coca Cola plants in their community. Yesterday 1500 villagers marched to the Coca-Cola company's bottling plant in Mehdiganj in Varanasi demanding that the bottling plant shut down immediately. They accuse the Coke Company of creating severe water shortages in the area and polluting the water and land.
During a two-day conference on Right to Water a representative of the Uttar Pradesh State Pollution Control Board admitted the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Mehdiganj did not have a current hazardous waste authorization required to operate.
Worse is that data collected by the Ground Water Board confirms ground water levels have dropped up to 8 meters (26 feet) in the first seven years of Coca-Cola's operations, from 1999 to 2006, leaving wells and hand water pumps dried up.
As local farmers rely on the ground water to meet their needs, and over 80% of the community in Mehdiganj engage in agriculture, "Do we need to satisfy Coca-Cola's thirst for water when even the farmers don't have enough water to make a living?" said Amit Srivastava of the India Resource Center, an international campaigning organization. He added: "All of Coca-Cola's claims of being a socially responsible corporation ring hollow when weighed against its track record in India." (Full)
Saudi Arabia has started the fourth phase of its program to extract rain from clouds, part of a project started five months ago to secure more water resources in the kingdom.
The head of the Meteorological and Environmental Protection Administration, Saleh al-Shahri, said 11 planes are being used in the current phase, together with a high-tech network of mobile cloud physics radars, a communication and satellite network, and experts from various Saudi universities and research centers.
The process, commonly known as "cloud seeding" is a form of weather modification, attempting to change the amount or type of precipitation that falls from clouds, by dispersing substances into the air that serve as cloud condensation or ice nuclei.
The program is part of the kingdom's ongoing efforts to counter the scarcity of water, especially since ground water is subject to depletion. The average annual rainfall for Saudi Arabia is around 4.4 inches (112 mm) per year but whole regions may not experience rainfall for several years. (Full)
Dubai began constructing the world's largest pre-stressed concrete drinking water reservoirs.
The three giant rectangular reservoirs, each with a capacity of 60 million imperial gallons (roughly about 240 million litres), are being constructed in the Mushrif area of Dubai and will cost US$168.6m. The aim to cope with the increased demand for water boosted by multi-billion dollar property projects in the emirate.
The three giant Mushrif reservoirs will: • Cover a total area of approximately 165,000 square metres • Measure 372 metres x 169 metres and will be 5.6 metres deep • Consume 270,000 cubic metres of concrete • Use 27,000 tonnes of reinforcing steel
The Earl Thomas Reservoir serving San Diego in California currently holds the record as the world's largest pre-stressed concrete drinking water reservoir with a capacity of 35 million gallons.(More)
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) consumes more water per capita than any other country in the world with the exception of the United States and Canada. Lacking natural water sources to meet the demand, the Emirates use desalination. Dubai alone has an installed desalination capacity of 188 million gallons per day (MIGD). (More)
To cope with the energy demanded its these massive desalination plant, the UAE has recently decided to switch to nuclear energy. (More)
Meet the Toposa people. These traditional herdsmen live in a remote area on the shared borders of Uganda, Kenya and Sudan. Their tribe is called "Karamojong" in Uganda, "Turkana" in Kenya (an area stretching from the Rift Valley to Lokichoggio) and "Toposa" in Sudan (from Lokichoggio to Narus and Kapoeta, in the eastern Juba).
They live the life as it once was. Clothing is optional in their "country". If they have a cloth, serves the whole village, used when travelling outside the community.
Their life is centered in function of their cattle. Their cattle is their life. Traditional diet is cow blood mixed with a sort of cassava.
The family and tribe has a patriarchical system: Toposa men take decisions on behalf of the family or tribes in meetings where women and children are kept at a distance while the men discuss the people’s affairs. Tradition has it that important matters are decided in the early hours of the morning before sunrise.
Last year, the Toposa in South Sudan faced drought, cutting not only their water supplies, but also their food production. Only delivering food aid was not enough, so we started trucking in water with the food. It was clear that a more permanent solution was to be found, to provide them with water, a rare item in the Toposaland.
This solution was to dig a bor hole, where they could pump water from an underground well. We trucked in the mechanical pump, and connected it to a small plastic storage tank. A low cost, low tech but also low maintenance solution.
Today is World Water Day. This annual event highlights the need for clean water and proper sanitation. Let's have a closer look...
FACT: More than one billion people throughout the world have little choice but to drink from potentially harmful sources of water. 2.6 billion people have no access to proper sanitation. (International Red Cross)
FACT: The consumption of unsafe water results in diarrhoea, worm infestation and other water and sanitation-related diseases. (International Red Cross)
FACT: About 200 million tonnes of human waste are discharged untreated into watercourses every year -- exposing people to bacteria, viruses and parasites. (International Red Cross)
FACT: On a typical day in sub-Saharan Africa, half the hospital beds are occupied by people with faecal-borne diseases. (UN)
FACT: Poor sanitation, hygiene and unsafe water claims the lives of an estimated 1.5 million children under the age of five every year. (International Red Cross)
FACT: Every dollar spent on improving sanitation - ranging from digging latrines or building sewers - has $9 in benefits such as higher economic growth or lower hospital bills. (UN)
FACT: In 2002 the world set a Millenium Goal to be reached by 2015:"Halve the estimated 2.6 billion -or 40 percent of the world population- with no access to sanitation.". To reach this goal, the world would need to spending $10 billion a year. We are no-where near. (UN)
Access to clean drinking water is critical for human survival and is an essential ingredient for improving the lives of those living in poverty in developing countries. And yet:
More than one billion people worldwide do not have access to clean water.
Water-related diseases are the leading cause of death in the world, taking the lives of 6,000 people a day, and are responsible for 80 percent of all sickness in the world.
40 billion hours are lost annually to hauling water, a chore primarily undertaken by women and girls.
All this can change: An innovative PlayPump® water system, provides easy access to clean drinking water while bringing joy to children leading to improvements in health, education, gender equality, and economic development.
The PlayPump systems are innovative, sustainable, patented water pumps powered by a children at play: Installed near schools, the PlayPump system doubles as a water pump and a merry-go-round for children. (Learn more)
The Aquaduct was the brainchild of five California-based design students who wanted to address the problem of 1.1 billion people in the world who don't have access to clean drinking water. The pedal-powered machine transports and filters water without burning fossil fuels or wood, both of which contribute to a reduction in CO2 emissions. The winner and five runners-up, you can find on innovate-or-die.
Looking at the video, it makes me think... Hmmmm... A typical First World solution to a Third World problem.. Or am I too cynical? Let me explain: - I always thought that polluted water needed filtering AND cooking (or treatment by chemicals) to make it safe. - The filters will need to be replaced, which costs money. A supply chain would need to be set up, which costs money. Is this affordable? - Where clean water is needed most, people survive on less than a dollar per day. Could they at all afford this tricycle?
Peter. Flemish, European, aid worker, expeditioner, sailor, traveller, husband, father, friend, nutcase. Not necessarily in that order.
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