Let Clean Water Flow

March 2009 could have been called International Water Month. The Fifth external page World Water Forum was held in Istanbul between 16 and 22 March; the UN World Water Development Report was released in advance of that conference; and International external page Water Day, established by the UN in 1993, was observed on 22 March.

The UN report, published every three years, noted that demand for water was at an all-time high - and growing - thanks to population growth, mobility, rising living standards and changes in food consumption. Some countries are reaching the limits of their water resources and competition for water is intensifying, making access an increasingly politicized issue.

In the external page United Nations Millennium Development Goals, initiated in 2002, the international community committed itself to reduce by half the number of people without access to safe drinking water and sanitation by 2015. The UN report suggested that more than 90 percent of the world population would have access to clean drinking water by 2015, but that by 2030, five billion people, or two-thirds of the projected world population, would be without proper sanitation unless current development efforts were doubled.

The same concerns over global water resources were reflected in Washington in March with a big push toward expanding the US commitment to development activities, which would provide the world’s deprived areas with clean drinking water and proper sanitation.

The new US administration’s desire the re-engage with the world and place a renewed emphasis on US soft power has galvanized the activities of interests in Washington that would like to make the commitment to developing water resources a cornerstone of US foreign policy.

They have some reason for optimism. When US President Barack Obama took office in January, he mentioned the water issue in his inaugural speech, saying, “Let clean water flow.”

Massive challenge

But while Obama has proposed doubling US spending on foreign aid, the administration’s budget, released in February, does not specify what level of additional funding will support water development efforts.

One US lawmaker is attempting to fill that vacuum through legislation that would commit the US to spending US$1 billion annually to improving international water resources. The US spent US$300 million on the effort last year.

In mid-March, Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois introduced legislation which he said would “re-establish US leadership on water around the world.”

“The goal is to reach an additional 100 million of the world’s poorest people with sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015,” Durbin said during a gathering on Capitol Hill to announce the legislation. “This would represent the largest single commitment of any donor country to meeting the Millennium Development Goal on water.”

Durbin’s bill proposes the establishment of an Office of Water within the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The legislation would also provide assistance for the development of expertise within water-challenged countries as well as seed money for the deployment of clean water and sanitation technologies.

“We ought to be assigning some of our best minds to solve the global water challenge,” said Durbin. “Right now, however, we don’t have the staff at USAID to meet our goals on water or any other urgent development need.”

Within 24 hours of Durbin’s announcement, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan Washington think tank, released a external page paper dubbed a “Declaration on US Policy and the Global Challenge of Water,” detailing how the Obama administration could better tackle global water challenges. The document outlined a plan to coordinate activities across the 15 US government agencies that currently work on water issues.

“The United States now has the opportunity to take a global leadership position on a critical resource - water - that will become even more critical in the future,” said the paper. “The world over, water is intricately linked to the stability and security of communities and nations, human health, education, economic prosperity, humanitarian relief, and stewardship of the physical environment.  Beyond that, water is vital to other key resources essential to the human condition, most notably agriculture and energy.”

“There is nothing that would do more to lift up the world’s perception of America than if we were to embrace a goal that, within 10 years, every human being in the world would have access to safe drinking water,” said John Hamre, president of CSIS and former US deputy secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, at a CSIS event.

The CSIS declaration also specifically recommended that the Obama administration “fashion and implement an aggressive global water campaign”;  “appoint a special high-level representative to lead implementation of the US global water campaign”;  “commit an additional US$1 billion each year for the next four years to support a US global water campaign”; and “reinforce public-private-sector partnerships by leveraging the technical expertise, innovation and financial and human resources of the private and independent sectors.”

Modest impact

Observers welcomed the proposals for additional clean water funding, but noted that additional strategic planning, governance structures and money would be needed to make a real dent in the problem.

“The investment gap is huge and the response it will take will be enormous,” Winston Yu, a water resources specialist at the World Bank, told ISN Security Watch.

The World Bank advocates a water program which revolves around “four I’s”:  investment, institutions, information and incentives. “It is not necessary a crisis of supply that we face,” said Yu, “but of governance.”

“The most significant barriers to making real progress to address this urgent situation have been a lack of strategic thinking and political will,” Patricia Dandonoli, president of WaterAid America, a New York-based charitable group that undertakes research and provides clean water programs in Africa and Asia, told ISN Security Watch.

In many cases, policies are already in place to reduce water demand and loss, improve water management and protect and manage water resources, according to the UN report. But, the report added, these reforms have yet to have a measurable effect, because action is too often confined to the water sector alone while key decisions about water are taken outside the water sector.

For policy reforms to bear fruit, the report noted, an integrated approach involving decision makers from all sectors that have an impact on water management - such as agriculture, energy, trade and finance - is required. The report noted progress in developing such integrated approaches in places like Zambia, Turkey and Australia. In other countries - such as Tunisia, Morocco, Thailand and the Philippines - programs to cut water losses in urban distribution networks and irrigation canals have succeeded.

Although there may be a broad international consensus to deal with global water resource issues, adequate funding to make a decisive impact will be hard to come by.  Durbin and others want the US to take the lead with US$1 billion per annum, but the UN report calculated that the total cost in industrial countries alone of replacing aging water and sanitation infrastructures could reach US$200 billion per year.

The US, of course, is as cash-strapped as any nation, but Stephen Morrison, director of the CSIS Global Health Policy, warned against cutting funding in the face of a recession. “During recessions in the late 1970s and early 1980s institutional support for water projects was gutted and it took 15 years to recover,” he told ISN Security Watch.

At the rate of US$1 billion per year, if the US Congress decides to appropriate those funds, the US alone will certainly not be able to fund necessary water relief efforts. James Kunder, former deputy administrator of USAID, told ISN Security Watch: “The funding proposed by Durbin will have only a modest impact.”