World Bank Press: Water Worries Start to Gain Attention
Expect to hear a lot more talk about water, The Wall Street Journal writes. As the world population has tripled during the past century, the use of water has increased sevenfold.
The World Commission on Water predicts water use will increase 50 percent during the next 30 years and bemoans "the gloomy arithmetic of water." Others project that a decade from now 40 percent of the world's population -- three billion people -- will live in countries that hydrologists classify as "water stressed."
Even though more than 2.4 billion people got access to safe drinking water for the first time during the past 20 years, an estimated 1.7 billion people still lack it, and perhaps 2.6 billion people lack basic sanitation. Two million tons of human waste is released into rivers and streams around the world annually. About 1.8 million people, mostly young children, die from diarrhea and related diseases each year; many of those deaths could be prevented with clean water and sanitation.
Worrying about water isn't new. But there is a new intensity. "Water has come to the top of things that we can do something measurable about," says Steven Radelet, an economist at the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank that focuses on global poverty. Among foreign-aid thinkers, there is a growing consensus that improving health isn't just a byproduct of wealth, it is a vital factor in fostering economic growth, and that water is key to health. "Water," the World Bank's Claudia Sadoff said, "was an early and large priority in the development of this country's economy, yet we seem to place very little emphasis on water in our foreign aid relative to what it deserves."
The World Commission on Water predicts water use will increase 50 percent during the next 30 years and bemoans "the gloomy arithmetic of water." Others project that a decade from now 40 percent of the world's population -- three billion people -- will live in countries that hydrologists classify as "water stressed."
Even though more than 2.4 billion people got access to safe drinking water for the first time during the past 20 years, an estimated 1.7 billion people still lack it, and perhaps 2.6 billion people lack basic sanitation. Two million tons of human waste is released into rivers and streams around the world annually. About 1.8 million people, mostly young children, die from diarrhea and related diseases each year; many of those deaths could be prevented with clean water and sanitation.
Worrying about water isn't new. But there is a new intensity. "Water has come to the top of things that we can do something measurable about," says Steven Radelet, an economist at the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank that focuses on global poverty. Among foreign-aid thinkers, there is a growing consensus that improving health isn't just a byproduct of wealth, it is a vital factor in fostering economic growth, and that water is key to health. "Water," the World Bank's Claudia Sadoff said, "was an early and large priority in the development of this country's economy, yet we seem to place very little emphasis on water in our foreign aid relative to what it deserves."
Much of the conversation is -- encouragingly -- focused on perfecting technologies to increase the supply of water, making its use more efficient (drip irrigation, for instance), strengthening the institutions that manage water resources and relying more on market mechanisms to encourage wise use. Water is, in short, best viewed as a challenge – but a manageable one. It won't be easy, though. Yemen, [for example,] is a poor country with near 20 million people, close to half of whom live in poverty. Its population is growing rapidly; by 2045, projections show it will have nearly as many people as Germany will. Most of its populace lives too far from the coast to make transport of desalinated water practical; most of its water is drawn from an underground aquifer that is likely to be depleted within a couple of decades.
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