UN Report: Aid Donors Should Focus on Water - Amen!

John Sauer of Water Advocates sent this article by Fiona Harvey from the Financial Times. You will have to register (free) to read the article online.

Donor nations should focus on providing water and sanitation in developing countries before trying to improve education, health and trade, a United Nations study found.

Installing toilets and ensuring safe water supplies would do more to end poverty and improve health than any other measure, said the UN University.

Without such fundamental services as sanitation and access to clean water, projects to improve the economy or people's wellbeing are likely to fail, said Zafar Adeel, director of the UN University's International Network on Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INEWH).

"Development aid would be much better spent if you tackle the water and sanitation issue first," he said.

The study says donors have failed to focus on water and sanitation, favouring instead projects such as improvements to infrastructure, health and education.

A report published last month by the charities WaterAid and Tearfund found the developed world was giving a smaller proportion of its overall aid to water and sanitation projects.

Furthermore, less than a quarter of the aid intended to give people access to clean water and sanitation was going to the regions where it was most needed.

Water and sanitation are pressing problems: more than 2.6bn people lack access to decent sanitation and about 1bn lack access to clean drinking water.

As a result an estimated 5,000 children die every day in the developing world from preventable infectious conditions such as diarrhoea.

A lack of access to water and sanitation leads to serious health problems, damages economic productivity, and prevents girls from completing their education, as a lack of private toilets means most leave school at puberty in many regions.

As well as imperilling the success of other aid efforts by failing to sort out sanitation, donor countries are missing out on an opportunity to get much more out of their aid, said Mr Adeel. "The return [from directing aid to water and sanitation] is on the order of eight or 10 times the expenditure."

Aid for water and sanitation services also opens new service business opportunities for local entrepreneurs, according to the UN University report.

The report found that mapping where in the world water and sanitation problems are most urgent would be a valuable first step in redirecting aid to focus on these issues.

Download a copy of the report.

Note that it is not only access to toilets that prevents girls from completing their education, but also lack of access to water. In developing regions the burden of getting water most heavily falls on women and girls, so if the girls are helping their mothers get water, they can't go to school. See my post about Amy Hart's film Water First: Living Drop By Drop, and the story of Charles Banda in Malawi. His work attests to the fact that improved water and sanitation can have a remarkable effect on women and girls, including birth rates.

"No matter how far you've gone down the wrong road, turn back." -- Turkish proverb

Comments

[Michael]

Hi, David.

Your comments are appreciated. My replies:

1) I have seen the problems firsthand in DCs: connection between poor-quality water and lack of sanitation with poor health, lack of education for girls, and diminished opportunities for women.

2) Depends upon the nature of the water project. If it's a large constructon project, then yes, more corruption is an issue. If it is a small, village-level project, it's less of an issue because it's under the radar.

3) In many cases, the outsiders are working with locals, who also recognize the issues: better health for all, lower infant mortality, lower birth rates, and enhanced opportunities for girls/women. See the work of Charles Banda in Malawi.

I will concede that outsiders often try to impose unworkable solutions on DCs, mainly because often the needs of the companies who do the work take precedence of those of the DC. That is changing, however.

[David Zetland]

While I agree on principle, I have a few reservations:
1) The organizations that support more water for aid are in the water aid business.

2) Water projects attract disproportionate corruption (underground projects are easier to hide)

3) Outsiders are VERY BAD judges of what developing countries need (a general critique of aid).

Given these, I'd say that national governments need to take the first step, and that small, local projects are the way to start.