Friday, December 24, 2010
imagine
Imagine not having clean water to drink, now imagine that is all you have to keep you hydrated and but its making you sick.
Water and Health
At any given time, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from a water-related disease.
Nearly 90 percent of all diseases in the world are caused by unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygiene. Every year, there are 4 billion cases of diarrhea as a direct result of drinking contaminated water; this results in more than 2.2
million deaths each year—the equivalent of 20 jumbo jets crashing every day.
The weakest members of communities are the most vulnerable; every day water-related diseases claim the lives of 5000 children under the age of five. That’s roughly one every 15 seconds.
“Clean water and sanitation are among the most powerful preventative medicines for reducing child mortality. They are to diarrhea what immunization is to killer diseases such as measles or polio: a mechanism for reducing risk and averting death.”
- United Nations Development Program, 2006
(Water. It is at the heart of a daily crisis faced by a billion of the world’s most vulnerable people—a crisis that threatens life and destroys livelihoods on a devastating scale.
Unlike war and terrorism, the global water crisis does not make media headlines, despite the fact that it claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns. Unlike natural disasters, it does not rally concerted international action, despite the fact that more people die each year from drinking dirty water than from the world’s hurricanes, floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes combined.
This is a silent crisis experienced by the poor, and tolerated by those with the resources, technology, and the political power to end it. Yet this is a crisis that is holding back human progress, consigning large segments of humanity to lives of poverty, vulnerability, and insecurity.)
At Living Water International, we are addressing this most basic of needs by helping deprived communities acquire safe, clean water. Our goal is to substantially ease the global water crisis while addressing root causes such as injustice, oppression, and abject poverty. As this happens, communities and worldviews are transformed—both among those in desperate physical need, and among those who have been blessed with much.
What Would It Take
How much money would solve the world water crisis?
Most people are taking a serious look at the numbers within the context of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to “reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.” So most of the best numbers only address half the need, but include providing adequate sanitation for the world’s 2.5 billion who are lacking it, and we are left to wonder what the cost would be for providing only water to those 884 million lacking The question itself is not entirely clear either. When is the “world water crisis” no longer a crisis? When we’ve met the UN’s MDG? When everybody has access to clean water? When people have clean water? Or “improved” water, which may only be a covered shallow hand-dug well? Could some non-profit sectors provide sustainable water more efficiently than the mostly governmental agencies whose data is being extrapolated to arrive at our figures? Is the number even relevant if sufficient reliable implementing agencies do not currently exist?
The World Bank offers a range of cost estimates to reach MDG goals. They estimate the cost of reaching “basic levels of coverage…in water and sanitation” to be $9 billion at the low end, and $30 billion a year for “achieving universal coverage” for water and sanitation. The same report acknowledges that the “institutional arrangements” do not exist to reach the goal in any case, and concludes that, “taking these estimates and their caveats together, we estimate that the cost… is between $5 and $21 billion.”
Water and Health
At any given time, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from a water-related disease.
Nearly 90 percent of all diseases in the world are caused by unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygiene. Every year, there are 4 billion cases of diarrhea as a direct result of drinking contaminated water; this results in more than 2.2
million deaths each year—the equivalent of 20 jumbo jets crashing every day.
The weakest members of communities are the most vulnerable; every day water-related diseases claim the lives of 5000 children under the age of five. That’s roughly one every 15 seconds.
“Clean water and sanitation are among the most powerful preventative medicines for reducing child mortality. They are to diarrhea what immunization is to killer diseases such as measles or polio: a mechanism for reducing risk and averting death.”
- United Nations Development Program, 2006
(Water. It is at the heart of a daily crisis faced by a billion of the world’s most vulnerable people—a crisis that threatens life and destroys livelihoods on a devastating scale.
Unlike war and terrorism, the global water crisis does not make media headlines, despite the fact that it claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns. Unlike natural disasters, it does not rally concerted international action, despite the fact that more people die each year from drinking dirty water than from the world’s hurricanes, floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes combined.
This is a silent crisis experienced by the poor, and tolerated by those with the resources, technology, and the political power to end it. Yet this is a crisis that is holding back human progress, consigning large segments of humanity to lives of poverty, vulnerability, and insecurity.)
At Living Water International, we are addressing this most basic of needs by helping deprived communities acquire safe, clean water. Our goal is to substantially ease the global water crisis while addressing root causes such as injustice, oppression, and abject poverty. As this happens, communities and worldviews are transformed—both among those in desperate physical need, and among those who have been blessed with much.
What Would It Take
How much money would solve the world water crisis?
Most people are taking a serious look at the numbers within the context of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to “reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.” So most of the best numbers only address half the need, but include providing adequate sanitation for the world’s 2.5 billion who are lacking it, and we are left to wonder what the cost would be for providing only water to those 884 million lacking The question itself is not entirely clear either. When is the “world water crisis” no longer a crisis? When we’ve met the UN’s MDG? When everybody has access to clean water? When people have clean water? Or “improved” water, which may only be a covered shallow hand-dug well? Could some non-profit sectors provide sustainable water more efficiently than the mostly governmental agencies whose data is being extrapolated to arrive at our figures? Is the number even relevant if sufficient reliable implementing agencies do not currently exist?
The World Bank offers a range of cost estimates to reach MDG goals. They estimate the cost of reaching “basic levels of coverage…in water and sanitation” to be $9 billion at the low end, and $30 billion a year for “achieving universal coverage” for water and sanitation. The same report acknowledges that the “institutional arrangements” do not exist to reach the goal in any case, and concludes that, “taking these estimates and their caveats together, we estimate that the cost… is between $5 and $21 billion.”
Friday, December 03, 2010
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