[Photo credit: Jean Mellano, Save the Water™]
By Keith Logan, Guest Writer for Save The Water™ | March 15, 2015
There once were three villages, and all were well. Over time, the first village ran out of water, the second village’s water became unclean, but the third village was able to keep their water clean and in abundant supply.
In the first village, when the water ran out, the people could not wash, drink, water their crops or animals; they could not live. The villagers quickly moved away, and the village turned to dust and blew away.
The second village had water, but it was contaminated. The crops survived, but everyone was always getting sick, especially the children. As the children got sick, they could not go to school; they stopped learning. Some aid workers came to the village, and offered that any children who could read and write the opportunity to go to a big school, but none of the children could go, because they never attended enough school to learn.
The third village had clean water. The adults and children were healthy. The adults were able to work in the fields and stores. They earned enough money to bring a good teacher to the village. The children were not sick, and were able to go to school and learned to read and write. The aid workers came to the third village and offered the opportunity for any children who could read and write to go to a big school to advance their knowledge.
Many children went to the big school, and came back to the village as young adults. They brought with them knowledge of renewable energy, global network economics, sustainable agriculture, and much more. The villagers built simple windmills to pump more clean water, charge cell phones, and charge batteries. They built latrines and water purification systems. The educated young people brought the knowledge of the internet to the village, and the village joined the global economy, and began exporting to the bigger cities. The village prospered, and life was good.
The world is now in three villages. Here is our story.
The first village: running out of water
A harsh reality is before us: before we can speak of water and sustainable development, we must address data indicating that soon much of the world is not going to even have water, let alone good water.
According to a February 2015 report summarized by UN University INWEH / ScienceDaily, “Within 10 years, researchers predict 48 countries — 25% of all nations on Earth with an expected combined population of 2.9 billion — will be classified ‘water-scarce’… and by 2030, expect overall global demand for freshwater to exceed supply by 40%.”
Hitting home? I am writing from California. We are having a drought; not just any drought; not even a 100-year drought. The Guardian reported that the 2012–2014 drought in California was its most intense in at least 1,200 years.
Let us look at another area: São Paulo, Brazil. International Business Times reported in early 2015 that reservoirs serving almost half of the 20 million people in the metro area were close to running dry, with water cutoffs affecting millions.
The Asian Development Bank reports that Pakistan’s water availability has dropped dramatically since independence, and it is now one of the most water-stressed countries in the world.
So, if we want to bring this home to sustainable development — to people, planet, and economic well-being — we must embrace the fact that momentum is toward material economic disruption caused by water scarcity, with a resultant absence of the ability to live, work, or grow food in major regions of the world. This will wreak havoc on billions of humans, with economic (and likely military) repercussions across the globe.
How can saving village number one be seen through the lens of sustainable development? By initiating a long-term plan to build water infrastructure based on sustainability principles — restoring the environment, the economy, and people’s lives — all are enhanced via the following:
- Restore urban watersheds. A well-vegetated watershed can store significant water without dam disruption, naturally replenishing springs and rivers and slowly refilling aquifers.
- Rebuild aging delivery infrastructure to reduce leakage. Many urban systems are very old; as Daniel J. Van Abs notes, many supply lines and combined sewers are 100 to 150 years old.
- Expand water reclamation and recycling (e.g., statewide re-use of gray water for non-potable needs), reducing demand without massive new dams or diversions.
Implementing these concepts would employ hundreds of thousands of people and circulate money through local economies, lifting communities more effectively than passive capital gains.
The UN University summary also highlights governance: up to 30% of aid funds for water are lost to corruption, as discussed by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). Patronage cultures waste scarce resources. Another standout is agriculture, which uses ~70% of global freshwater; the sector must transition to more efficient, sustainable practices (World Bank blog).
Village number two: cleaning the water
UN literature consistently links clean water with population health and education. Simply put, sick children don’t go to school, and uneducated populations cannot lift a society out of poverty.
Progress is real where funds reach projects on the ground. According to ODI, between 1990 and 2008 Uganda’s rural access to clean water rose from 39% to 64%; Zambia’s rose from 23% to 46%.
Promising approaches favor smaller, distributed, lower-tech solutions: water harvesting, rehabilitating small dams, and installing basic wells with pumps — decentralized and affordable relative to mega-projects (Environment Magazine).
NGOs show results too. The African Well Fund and peers (The Water Project, charity: water) have implemented hundreds of projects at relatively low cost. A Togo pilot rehabilitating small dams more than doubled capacity and stretched seasonal supply to year-round, each dam serving dozens of villages (Environment Magazine).
Large agencies have successes as well. In Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, a World Bank–supported project expanded urban water delivery, tripling access from 300,000 to over 1,000,000 people. In Madagascar, a rural water and sanitation project provided safe water to 400,000 people and dramatically reduced time fetching water and cholera incidence (World Bank blog).
Crowdfunding could complement traditional finance by routing resources more directly to communities, though trade-offs around coordination and capacity remain.
The world is waking up on village one. Village two is in great need, yet many people and resources are engaged. Village three is happening — not en masse, but step by step. Africa is rising out of poverty faster than many regions; more people have clean water than before. If we are vigilant and if leaders address universal access to clean, healthy water, sustainable development can thrive as the community of village three walks proudly into the 21st century.
References
- Brazil Drought: Worst Water Crisis in 80 Years… — International Business Times (Accessed Mar 15, 2015)
- Decentralizing Solutions for Rural Water Supply… — Environment Magazine (Accessed Mar 15, 2015)
- California just had its worst drought in over 1,200 years — The Guardian (Accessed Mar 15, 2015)
- Uganda and Rural Water Supply — ODI (Accessed Mar 15, 2015)
- UN University INWEH summary — ScienceDaily (Accessed Mar 15, 2015)
- Do our urban water systems have what it takes? — NJ Spotlight (Daniel J. Van Abs) (Accessed Mar 15, 2015)
- African Successes — One Pagers — World Bank Blog (Accessed Mar 15, 2015)
