Despite the very real danger of global water shortages, today’s water crisis is not an issue of scarcity, but of access. One billion people still lack adequate access to safe drinking water and more than two billion people lack access to adequate sanitation. And now that the world's urban population exceeds the world's rural population, unprecedented challenges are being faced.
CIWEM supports World Water Day 2011 on 22nd March, focusing international attention on the impact of rapid urban population growth, industrialisation and climate change on urban water systems through their theme of Water for Cities: Responding to the Urban Challenge.
The unplanned growth of cities creates huge pressure on local ecosystems, overwhelms environmental resources and exacerbates pressures on public health services. Millions do not have access to adequate clean water or sanitation, and yet remedial policies are often based on inadequate knowledge and fail to achieve their objectives.
CIWEM believes that the developed country model for building capacity in water supply, sanitation and hygiene is inadequate for developing countries. Often the stakeholders in development projects have preconceived narratives based on fundamentally flawed logic and are too tied up in bureaucracy to be able to adapt to local conditions.
CIWEM calls for profound shifts in ideology, policy, institutional approaches, engineering R&D, and in donor and recipient government attitudes, to develop and apply alternative service models to provide water and sanitation for all within a reasonable time limit.
CIWEM believes that improvements in the water and sanitation sector can be best achieved through the community‘s involvement as an equal partner with government and sector agencies, building on indigenous knowledge so that policies and programmes are relevant to their beneficiaries. Emphasis must be placed on education, social mobilisation and community participation, backed by measures to strengthen local institutions in implementing and sustaining water and sanitation programmes. Such an approach requires substantial public dialogue and social interaction at all levels of society.
CIWEM Executive Director, Nick Reeves OBE, says:
“The lack of access to water and sanitation for millions of people is the greatest development failure of the modern era. Sanitation has enormous economic, social and ecological implications.”
“Society has long believed that science and technology can provide effective solutions to most of the environmental problems that we face. But it is political commitment that is key to making services work and to do this, governments must be held to account by active citizens demanding their rights. Governments must be pressured to spend more on essential services and to spend it better. There will be no sustainable development unless we develop coordinated mechanisms and processes that, together, offer a participatory system to develop visions, goals and targets for sustainable development.”
Source: The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM)
