23 March 2009

Issue: Water

"The human right to water is essential for living a life of human dignity. It is the pre-requisite for all other human rights."
(Kofi Annan)


Yesterday (March 22) was World Water Day, and this coming week (March 22-28) is World Water Week. It's perfect timing for this blog to address the world water crisis. Water is often discussed in conjunction with sanitation, but for today's post I am just going to focus on water.

Across the world, nearly 900 million people lack access to clean water. This lack of access to water poses a huge public health problem; every day, 4,200 children die of water-related diseases. (An estimated 125 million children under the age of five live in households that do not have regular access to clean water.) Most of these children dying of water-related diseases are die from diarrhea--an illness that kills an estimated two million children every year. Incredibly, the number of diarrhea-related deaths around the world is currently on the rise.

This is a big, big deal and it directly affects roughly 1/7 of the world's population.

There are really two linked issues when we're talking about the world water crisis: water scarcity, and water quality.

The water scarcity issue is particularly prevalent in Africa, where vast tracts of the land is dry and receives little rain. In some rural regions, women walk ten miles a day to fetch water for their families--carrying 40- or 50-pound water containers--and during the dry season, women may walk nearly twice that distance. (You'll notice I said women, not people--water-gathering is typically considered a female activity, linked to domestic reproductive tasks, and across the world women generally bear the brunt of water-collecting labor.) In fact, the World Health Organization has estimated that African women and children spend, collectively, 40 billion hours a year gathering water.

You can imagine that this takes its toll on women and families in various ways. Health problems can develop from carrying heavy loads long distances (even, in some cases, curved spines and pelvic deformities that cause problems during childbirth). Pregnant women who carry these heavy loads suffer increased health risks. Women and girls traveling alone can be vulnerable to violence and rape. And in some families, girls are required to gather the water--a task that can take so much time that it makes it impossible for the girls to attend school. This time-consuming activity also prevents women from working in other income-generating activities or vital domestic tasks (or caring for their own health).

In the West, we're always being exhorted to drink eight glasses of water a day. Certainly this would be good, healthy advice for anyone, but it isn't an option for much of the world. In fact, one flush of a Western toilet uses as much water as the average person in the developing world uses for a whole day's washing, drinking, cleaning and cooking.



So once a woman has spent half her day collecting and carrying water, the difficulty still hasn't ended. Because chances are, the water she found is not clean or safe for her family to drink. Issues of water quality affect people in urban and rural areas alike.

My own personal introduction to the water quality issue came when my husband and I were living in Mozambique. We were conducting a research project that took us out to a rural village with our research assistants to do some interviews. We noticed a hole in the ground toward the center of the village, and we went to take a look. This was the water supply for the entire village: A crumbling hole dug in the ground--not even a well--with dirt and dead insects floating on top. I remember feeling sick: Even though I'd read about water quality issues, I looked down at that dirty water and imagined scooping up a cup of it for a child to drink, and I felt the world's inequity sink down into my bones.

When a person drinks unclean water (any water from a non-purified source, which can include groundwater, contaminated rainfall, floodwater, or river water, to name a few), that person is vulnerable to various waterborne diseases. Diarrhea, cholera, and typhoid are the most common diseases that are transmitted through unclean water supply. There are dozens of other waterborne diseases--giardiasis, guinea worm, etc. (These are all diseases that occur from drinking unclean water; I am not even going to go into diseases that are connected to standing water, like malaria, dengue fever, or schistosomiasis and related parasitic infections--maybe in a future post.)


This interesting document
is a reminder that water scarcity and quality are not necessarily issues of physical scarcity, but that the Africa water crisis is "structurally induced scarcity." In some cases, the world water crisis has been accentuated by politics, economic interests, and even unscrupulous marketing practices. I can't resist mentioning an issue that I find particularly telling:

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, people began to learn that Nestle and other baby formula companies had been aggressively marketing infant formula in less-developed countries. The suggestion implicit in the marketing campaigns was that babies would grow fatter and healthier with formula than they would with breastmilk. Many women (who grew up in communities where breastfeeding was previously the normal--and even only--way of feeding a baby) began to give their babies formula instead, in response to the marketing campaigns. And this is what happened: Families began to spend money they didn't have on infant formula they didn't need. They began to mix the formula with the only water sources they had, which were often unclean. And, since the formula labels were often in a foreign language like English (or because the mothers had not been to school or learned to read), the mothers often used very small amounts of the formula, to make the container last longer.

You can imagine what happened. In addition to losing the natural benefits of breastfeeding (like passing antibodies on to the babies, facilitating the release of bonding hormones, and having a natural method of fertility suppression and birth spacing), the families lost money and inadvertently exposed their babies to the dangers of unclean water and malnutrition. And babies got fatal diarrhea. And babies began to die. You can read more about this in Gabrielle Palmer's marvelous book, The Politics of Breastfeeding, which I highly recommend.

When I worked with UNICEF in the Philippines, I learned that UNICEF still will not accept monetary or in-kind donations from Nestle, because Nestle has continued to promote the use of baby formula in the Philippines, undermining the health of babies and accentuating the already-enormous issue of water impurity and children's health.

We already have technology for many solutions to the world water crisis. In some cases, solutions are free: Encouraging a cultural return to exclusive breastfeeding, helping urban communities negotiate with their local governments to extend clean water systems to the entire community. Other solutions are well-established and cost-effective: Creating rainwater collection systems, or digging pumps and wells in rural areas to create access to groundwater sources. There is very little mystery behind the world water crisis. It's an issue of distribution, and with increased resources this is something the world community should be able to make fast progress on. Despite this, the world water crisis is actually becoming worse over the past few years. As the world's climate changes, communities are being subjected to more drought and the drying-up of water tables. It's urgent.

There are many, many organizations that are working on clean water and sanitation issues around the world. I'd like to introduce you to one project that I particularly like: Tap Project.



There are a number of ways you can get involved with the Tap Project.

1) Are you planning to go out to eat anytime soon? Click here for an interactive map, which will show you restaurants in your community that participate in Tap Project. At these restaurants, you can donate $1 (or more, of course) to Tap Project.

2) Learn more about becoming a Tap Project volunteer in your community or workplace by clicking here.

3) Make a donation (or learn more about using eBay's Giving Works program) by clicking here.

4) Or (this is even quicker and easier), text the word "TAP" or "AGUA" to UNICEF (864233) to make a $5 donation!

5) Check out this cool article in the New York Times to see some of the great ad campaigns that have been created to help Tap Project.

Do something for World Water Week...

13 March 2009

Followup: Sudan

You can read my original post about the conflict in Sudan by clicking here.

Since the beginning of March, there have been some major developments in the crisis in Darfur. Last week, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the president of Sudan. He has been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity; this arrest warrant is significant because it is the first time that the ICC has ever issued a warrant for a sitting head of state. (You can read more about the ICC here.)

In response to the issuing of the warrant, the al-Bashir government rejected the authority of the ICC, and promptly issued a statement saying they would be expelling 13 major non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are distributing aid in the Darfur region, including Oxfam, Care International, Doctors Without Borders, and Save the Children. This is obviously a political ploy, an attempt by al-Bashir to "raise the stakes," and it's one that will have a devastating impact on the lives of millions of people.

The government began kicking these organizations out of the country a few days ago. NGOs like these have been providing ongoing aid to millions of displaced people across Darfur and Southern Sudan. The UN warned that "the loss of these non-governmental organizations means that more than one million people will be without food, 1.5 million without health care, and over one million without drinkable water" (read the full article here). You can listen to or read a March 10 NPR story about the situation in Darfur here.

Aid organizations predicted that the Sudanese population could begin to feel the effects of these expulsions within a few days--so, that means today. I read that some NGOs from Asian and Arab countries have applied to begin working in Sudan, in attempt to fill some of the gaps left behind by the departure of these major NGOs. This is a small glimmer of hope, but the information trickling in from Darfur is pretty dire. Save Darfur has up-to-the-minute information on their website.

A couple of things you can do:

1) Sign up, if you haven't already, to receive e-mail updates with action alerts from Save Darfur.

2) Click here to send a letter to Secretary of State Clinton, urging her to make Darfur an immediate priority.

3) Send a postcard to President Obama. He has issued some strong statements over the past few days, but we need to hear more. According to this interesting article, President Obama has "moral authority" in this area because of his African heritage, and we need to keep the pressure on him to be an unwavering voice about this conflict.

03 March 2009

Followup: Democratic Republic of the Congo

A few months ago, I posted about the conflict in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Please click here to read my post, if you haven't already.

The conflict is still raging. In fact, it's the deadliest war our planet has seen since World War II. People are still dying and being displaced from their homes. Women are still being raped with impunity. Eastern DRC is the most dangerous place on earth for women.

I've been receiving frequently e-mails from the organization Raise Hope for Congo, and I've been able to write letters and sign petitions through their action alerts. This week, I got an e-mail describing the Congo Challenge. For the next three months, the organization is encouraging people to learn more about the crisis in the DRC and become involved in raising the profile of the conflict, and in generating awareness about the atrocities occurring in conjunction with the war. They will be sending e-mails with suggestions on how to get involved, "whether you have 5 minutes or 5 hours," they say.

I want to encourage you to sign up for the Congo Challenge, to read the e-mails, and to become activists, whether that means writing letters to politicians or publications, signing petitions, or using social networking to spread awareness. You can sign up by clicking here. This isn't asking much... but at least it's something.