The Poor Suffers Most Form “Water Stress”

The Poor Suffers Most Form “Water Stress”

By Seare Habtemichael

Today, we have come to eyewitness the clear and present dangers threatening our very survival. We are facing the consequence of climate change, for which its cause is attributed to humans. We have seen countries being devastated by hurricanes, or we have heard of people dying of the tsunami destruction. We must have also seen big cities, and villages in China and America being eroded by powerful floods that came up as a result of heavy rainfall.

On the other hand, in parts of Africa, the sun is burning the fauna and flora creatures of the continent. Sub Sahara Africa, for that reason, is burning from the scorching tropical sun, and irregular, minimal rainfall. Hence, some are dying of heavy floods, and heavy rainfall, and others are suffering from water crises. Many parts of Africa, Asia, and America are therefore facing a sever water crises. And Sub-Sahara Africa is among the regions that are suffering from lack of rainfall and drinking water.

Hence, in many parts of the world millions of people are in a desperate need of drinking water. Regrettably enough, however, the large part of the world that is under water crises is the poor people of the developing countries. Therefore, in some parts of the world it is not the shortage of petroleum that citizens have to worry about, but the shortage of drinking water. Even in the developing world, it is the poor individuals who suffer the most from water stress. Then rich ones can always afford to buy aqua fresh imported from abroad. The majority poor, however, pray to the ‘rain god’ in an attempt to get little drops of water from the white clouds above.

Hence, the concern of the few rich individuals and countries in our world is nothing but petroleum, yet for the rest billions of world citizens, accessing enough dry crust of bread, enough water, or both is a daily struggle. For sure, around our corners we have observed women and children running after water tankers in search of a gallon of water. Also we have heard of the millions of women and children in the developing world who are travelling many kilometres carrying a pot of water.

The Third World’s population, therefore, is enduring the most of water scarcity. These are mainly the poor villagers of the developing world who often must walk down to a stream that may be tens of kilometres below their village or up to a spring and, and then must walk back to their village carrying water-filled containers up steeps and dangerous hillsides. These are the people who include the millions of households in the developing world that have never dreamt of enjoying access to water to clean up their toilet facilities. Also these are the broke slum dwellers in many cities of the continents of Africa, Asia, and Latin America drawing drinking water from the local river where their sewage is dumped.

Studies have uncovered that half of all the people in the developing countries have no access to proper sanitation. As water is critical for life and for livelihoods, billions of people suffer from disease, poverty and a lack of dignity and opportunity because they have no access to this basic resource. Hence, according to reports every day 4,400 children under the age of 5 die around the world, having fallen sick because of unclean water and sanitation. In fact, it is said that five times as many children die each year of diarrhoea as of HIV/AIDS.

According to the United Nations report, 31 countries, most of which are from the developing world, are facing water stress and scarcity and over one billion people lack adequate access to clean drinking water. And regrettably enough, by the year 2025, as much as two thirds of the world’s population predicted to have expanded by an additional 2.6 billion people-will be living in conditions of serious water shortage and one-third will be living in conditions of absolute water scarcity. Thus, World Bank report has predicted that the poor developing world’s population will be the most to suffer from acute water shortage in the coming couple of decades. In the next 20 years all the major cities of most of the developing countries will run dry.

By 2050, there will be 2.5 billion more people on the planet and a good majority will be born in nations already facing a terrible water shortage. Hence with the increase of the world population, water will turn out to be the world’s most precious resource before long. This indicates that access to water is mainly a crisis for the poor who have fallen outside the scope of limited water infrastructure that serves largely either the rich, or excluded for the reason of a lack of legal rights to claim adequate water.

More importantly, the problem of water provision severely affects slums and shantytowns. According to studies, over the next few years a majority of the world’s population will live in cities — for the first time in human history. In large parts of Africa, more than 60 percent of city dwellers are in fact slum dwellers. For many of them, water comes not from faucets inside their shacks but from water tankers or standpipes, neither of which is reliable as a water source. Open sewers increase the risk of water-borne diseases. Unfortunately, water is a crisis for women and children, because they bear the burden of collecting water.

In some places, women have to walk nearly 10 kilometres to reach a water source. Girls drop out of school either because they have to help fetch water or because there aren’t adequate sanitary facilities in school toilets. Millions of school days are lost as a result. Water scarcity affects some parts of the world more than others. According to studies, today, 800 million people live under a threshold of “water stress.” As rivers dry up, lakes shrink and groundwater reserves get depleted, that figure will rise to 3 billion in 2025, especially in parts of Asia and Africa. There is an urgent need to reduce waste and invest in infrastructure to “harvest” rainwater or increase storage.

The United Nations, therefore, declared 2005-2015 as the ‘Water for Life’ decade. The goal is to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015 and to stop unsustainable exploitation of water resources. And governments pledged to do this when they adopted the Millennium Development Goals in 2000. Hence, for the Millennium Goals to be implemented, a variety researches have been carried out, and came up with various recommendations. According the studies, most water use is in agriculture. Farming uses up to 70 times more water than is used for cooking and washing. Many countries have to import more than half their food needs because they do not have enough water to grow more food. If one does not change the way he/she uses water, the amount needed for a rapidly growing world population will double in the next 50 years.

Water mismanagement and corruption is another problem that causes water scarcity. Some countries have enough water in their reservoirs—dams. Some of the pipelines may be broken, and then do not get urgent maintenance. If unrepaired for long, water is lost to water leakages in pipe lines and canals. According to studies, up to 40 percent of water is lost in such a way. This in turn may cause to the illegal tapping. This will no doubt increase in the cost of water, but the poor is the one who suffers from the bills of water because the cost affects the poor more than others.

Global warming is also responsible for declining rainfall in some regions, glacial melt in others, and rising sea levels. Climate change is expected to worsen the situation by causing erratic and unpredictable weather, which could drastically diminish the supply of water coming from rainfall and glaciers. Other natural disasters occur with more sudden intensity. The floods that affected many parts China in the past years, the hurricane that devastated many states or the 2004 tsunami are examples of the threats that natural events continue to pose for millions around the world.

Inadequate water management initiatives must also be held responsible. It is expected, by 2025, India, China and select countries in Europe and Africa will face water scarcity if adequate and sustainable water management initiatives are not implemented, and an estimated 3 billion people will be living below the water stress threshold, says a study by Grail Research. Although developing countries currently have low per capita water consumption, rapid growth in population and inefficient use of water across sectors is expected to lead to a water shortage in the future, states the study. After all, it is assumed that as global freshwater reserves are rapidly depleting and this is expected to significantly impact the most populated areas of the world. Hence, developed countries will need to focus on reducing consumption through better management and practices. Or otherwise, low to middle income developing regions as well as highly developed countries will face water stress in the future, unless existing water reserves are managed effectively.

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