Press Release
18 March 2008
£8 million pledged to promote water sharing and avoid conflict
£8 million for the Nile Basin, £0.5 million for South Asia and £1.5 millon for sanitation
Image
courtesy of Sven Torfinn /Panos Pictures
International Development Minister Gareth Thomas pledged over £8 million today to tackle the growing threat of water conflict.
Speaking ahead of this weekend’s World Water Day, Gareth Thomas pledged over £8 million for a series of initiatives to promote water sharing, including a fund to help some of the 130 million people living within the Nile Basin.
The £8 million contribution to the
Nile Basin Initiative will help the
10
countries that share the biggest river in the world make better use of this
resource. It will also stimulate growth and trade through helping industry, and
reduce poverty through helping regions work together better. It will also help
prepare the communities that live in this highly susceptible area for the
effects of climate change.
Gareth Thomas also announced £500,000 support to a new South Asian water initiative to promote dialogue on agriculture and flooding between the seven countries that share the rivers flowing from the Himalayas. This area will be one of the most badly affected by climate change as glaciers melt, long-term water flows change and the monsoon becomes more unpredictable. The funding will help the countries reduce tensions over water-sharing to help drive the economy, and in turn provide more food, jobs and electricity for the one and a half billion people living in these river basins – home to more than one third of the world’s poorest people.
Gareth Thomas said;
"Today’s funding will enable countries to talk about how they use their joint resources and think about what they need to change in order to build economic growth and save lives.
"Through water sharing and co-ordination we can provide long term solutions to the world’s water shortages. Climate change and rising food and energy costs make the need for an open dialogue all the more urgent. If we do not act the reality is that water supplies may become the subject of international conflict in the years ahead. We need to invest now to prevent us having to pay that price in the future."
Gareth Thomas also announced that £1.5 million will go to a global fund to help communities in developing countries build more toilets and understand why better hygiene improves their health. Two-fifths of the world’s people have no toilet and a billion people face disease because they lack a clean and reliable water supply.
Case study - More toilets, more girls in school in Malawi
How is the water crisis affecting people’s lives?
- Over a billion people live without a safe and reliable water supply and 2.6 billion, half the population of developing countries, are without proper sanitation.
- The global water crisis claims the lives of 5,000 children every day.
- To get water, women in developing countries in Africa have to walk, on average, four miles every day carrying 20 litres of water, the equivalent of carrying a five-year old on your head from Big Ben to Paddington Station.
- Improved coverage for 300,000 people for water and 450,000 people for sanitation is needed every day up to 2015 in order to achieve the MDG targets.
- In Pakistan half of girls drop out of class just because schools do not have latrines.
- By 2025 it is expected that more than 3 billion people will be living in water-scarce countries.
- Improving sanitation in the UK in the 1880s contributed to a 15 year increase in life expectancy in the following four decades.
- Living with squalor and disease, half the people in Asia and most people in sub-Saharan Africa don’t have decent sanitation near to home. On current trends we will not achieve the sanitation MDG target in Africa until 2076.
- Improving water, sanitation and hygiene education reduces the number of deaths caused by diarrhoeal diseases by an average of 65%.
- Global temperature rises of even 2C will increase the water shortages experienced by between 1-4 billion people.
Sources:
How the Government is helping to improve water and sanitation around the globe
DFID has committed to double its assistance to water and sanitation in Africa to £95 million a year by 2008, and more than double funding again to £200 million a year by 2011
DFID works with developing countries to improve water and sanitation by developing local capacity through individual programmes, seconding professional staff to national governments and funding international NGOs that support local partners.
Last month DFID launched a £32 million, five-year water, sanitation and hygiene
education programme in Sierra Leone. The UK contribution will deliver wells,
hand pumps and improvements to existing water supply systems. It will provide an
additional 1.5 million people with safe water, improved sanitation and hygiene
education and help save the lives of up to 3,000 children each year.
Five hundred thousand people in rural areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo will get clean water and sanitation thanks to DFID, working through UNICEF with support from the EC and the Belgian Government.
Children at 400 schools in Malawi have benefited from DFID funding improvements to sanitation.
The water supply to over a million people in Southern Iraq is being improved thanks to a £40 million infrastructure programme.
DFID’s post-earthquake emergency water and sanitation programme in Pakistan provided water and sanitation facilities to 5,000 families. In North West Frontier Province DFID improved water for 300,000 people and is on target to reach one million people by 2008.
DFID is providing £75 million over five years in support of the government of Ethiopia’s national water, sanitation and hygiene programme.
Notes to editors
1. Gareth Thomas is the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the
Department for International Development (DFID) and the
Department for Business,
Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR).
2. Today’s boost in funding comes as DFID plays a major part in pushing forward the 5 Ones programme - DFID is working for one national plan for water and sanitation and one sector co-ordination group. DFID is also calling for one lead UN body for water and sanitation identified at national level, one annual report to monitor progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) water and sanitation targets, and one high-level global annual meeting.
3.
UN World Water Day is an initiative that grew out of the 1992 United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro. The theme
for this year is sanitation, in accordance with the
International
Year of Sanitation 2008, and will take place on 22 March.
4. The UK is committed to strengthening support to improve water management in developing countries and increase access to water and sanitation services by poor people.
5. The ten countries the Nile Basin Initiative will help are:
- Burundi
- Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
- Egypt
- Eritrea
- Ethiopia
- Kenya
- Rwanda
- Sudan
- Tanzania and
- Uganda.
6. The seven countries that share the waters from the Himalayas that will benefit from the South Asian Water Fund are:
- Afghanistan
- Pakistan
- India
- Nepal
- Bangladesh
- Bhutan and
- China.
7. The Global Sanitation Fund is operated by the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council.
8. In Sierra Leone, DFID is supporting a major (£32 million) water, sanitation and hygiene programme to reduce infant mortality and improve maternal health.
9. In Ethiopia, DFID is funding a five-year, £75 million water, sanitation and hygiene project in Ethiopia, which will help 3.2 million people access clean water and basic sanitation, including new water infrastructure and skills development to improve the way water services are run.
10. Achieving progress towards the Millennium Development Goals and beyond is not a task we can tackle alone. It will involve working with partner countries, civil society and other donors to achieve our shared goals and improve the lives of millions of poor people.
11. In 2000, the world signed up to the Millennium Development Goal target to halve the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water, and in 2002, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, to halve the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015. These targets are central to DFID’s approach to poverty reduction and sustainable development.
