Towards a green economy 3 Challenges and opportunities

This section identifies the challenges associated with water scarcity and declining water quality in many parts of the world. It outlines opportunities for societies to manage their water resources more efficiently and to make the transition to a green economy. In doing so, societies can achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

3.1 Challenges

Poverty, access to clean water and adequate sanitation services Nearly 1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water and 2.6 billion lack access to improved sanitation services (WHO/UNICEF 2010)4

. As a direct result, every

4. WHO (2010) notes that rapid urbanization between 1990 and 2008 has led to an increased (urban) population of 40m not using water from improved sources and an increased (urban) population of 260m not using improved sanitation.

year, 1.4 million children5 under the age of five die due to

a lack of access to clean water and adequate sanitation services (UNICEF 2004). In east Nigeria and north Cameroon, every 1 per cent increase in use of unprotected water sources for drinking purposes is directly associated with a 0.16 per cent increase in child mortality (Ward et al. 2010).

Gleick (2004, 2009) argues that failure to provide people with affordable and reliable access to water and sanitation services is one of humankind’s greatest failings. Lack of sanitation makes people sick. When water is unclean, water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea and water-washed diseases including scabies and trachoma are common (Bradley 1974). Diarrhoea is the third most common cause of child mortality in West Africa after malaria and respiratory infections (ECOWAS-SWAC/OECD 2008). New water-borne diseases such as the Whipple disease are still emerging (Fenollar et al. 2009).

Box 1: Economic impacts of poor sanitation

Together, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam lose an estimated US$ 9 billion a year because of poor sanitation (based on 2005 prices). This amounts to around 2 per cent of their combined GDP, varying from 1.3 per cent in Vietnam, 1.5 per cent in the Philippines, 2.3 per cent in Indonesia and 7.2 per cent in Cambodia.

The annual economic impact of inadequate sanitation is approximately US$ 6.3 billion in Indonesia, US$ 1.4 billion in the Philippines, US$ 780 million in Vietnam and US$ 450 million in Cambodia. In these four countries, the total value of this impact is US$ 8.9 billion per year.

In 1991, a cholera epidemic swept through most of Peru6

and cost US$ 1 billion to control. If one

tenth of this amount (US$ 100 million) had been spent on the provision of sanitation services, the epidemic would not have occurred. Source: World Bank – Water and Sanitation Program (2008) and Tropp (2010)

6. The epidemic also spread into several other countries in South, Central and North America

The adverse impacts of water-borne disease on an economy can be large (Box 1). When people are sick, they cannot work and, among other costs, considerable expenditure on medical treatment is needed.

The adverse impacts of inadequate access to clean water, however, do not stop with water-borne disease. When water is not on tap, people (mainly women and children) must either spend a large amount of time fetching water or pay high prices for it to be carted to them. In Western Jakarta, Indonesia, the cost of water purchased from a water cart is ten to fifty times the full cost to a water utility of establishing a reliable mains water supply (Fournier et al. 2010). In certain circumstances, it is challenging to to find a way to convince governments and private investors to go ahead despite a widespread perception that poor people are not able to pay for water (services) and that it is not cost-efficient to supply water to informal settlements. A lack of easy access to clean water also erodes the capacity of the poorest to engage in other activities. When children, for example, spend a large proportion of their days fetching water, they have less opportunity to attend school and obtain the education necessary to escape from poverty. When women are forced to spend time carting water, they have little opportunity for gainful employment elsewhere. More than a quarter of the population of East Africa live in conditions where every trip to collect water takes more than half an hour (WHO/UNICEF 2010).

5. 3,900 children per day. 124