The Water Poor
| Author | Michael Curley |
| Position | Visiting scholar at the Environmental Law Institute. He is the author of Handbook of Project Finance for Water and Wastewater Systems and Environmental Finance for the Developing World, as well as four other books on environmental law and finance. He has taught at Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University, Vermont Law School, and ... |
| Pages | 34-39 |
34 | THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, September/October 2021.
Copyright © 2021, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.
CENTERPIECE
The Water Poor
ey are the hundreds of m illions of people across the planet who have no access to safe
drinking water or basi c sanitation. We have the technology in hand. e major bar rier
lies in nancin g both capital inestment for facilities and their o ngoing operating costs
Michael Curley is a visiting schola r at the Environmental
Law Instit ute. He is the author of Ha ndbook of Project Fina nce for Water
and Wastewater Systems and Environmental Finance for the Developing
World ,
He has taugh t at Johns Hopkins Unive rsity, George Washing ton
Universit y, Vermo nt Law School, and Wake Fores t University.
THERE are three great scourges among
the developing world poor: malnutri-
tion, anemia, and dysentery. e last is
usually a result of unsafe drinking wa-
ter and poor sanitation. In fact, over 80
percent of all of the disease in the world comes from
contaminated water and lack of sanitation. Dysen-
tery and other waterborne diseases kill more people
each year than all forms of violence combined, in-
cluding war. e largest single killer of children is
waterborne disease. Over 1.8 million children will
die this year from them. irty-ve children will
die while you’re reading this article.
According to World Vision, a faith-based hu-
manitarian organization that has been in the anti-
poverty business since the 1950s, the countries with
the worst water poor problems are: Eritrea, where
80.7 percent of the people lack basic water service;
Papua New Guinea, with 63.4 percent; Uganda,
61.1 percent; Ethiopia, 60.9 percent; Somalia, 60
percent; Angola, 59 percent; the Democratic Re-
public of the Congo, 58.2 percent; Chad, 57.5 per-
cent; Niger, 54.2 percent; and, Mozambique, with
52.7 percent of its people without basic water.
In 2015, the plight of the water poor nally
made it on the public agenda in a big way. e UN
General Assembly adopted 17 Sustainable Devel-
opment Goals. e purpose of these goals is to be
a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustain-
able future for all.” Water and sanitation became
SDG 6. e ocial wording maintains the goal is
to “ensure availability and sustainable management
of water and sanitation for all.”
In adopting the resolution for SDG 6, the UN
set six specic targets for nations to act on. Target
number one is for nations to provide “safe and af-
fordable drinking water.” Target three is to “improve
water quality, wastewater treatment, and safe use.”
e UN has actually been in the water poor busi-
ness since 1977, when the world body convened a
conference in Mar del Plata, Argentina, and declared
the 1980s to be the International Drinking Water
Decade. Unfortunately, the UN’s eorts did little
more then shed some modest light on a very dire
situation.
Estimates of the global number of water poor vary
somewhat, but all are very large. In 2017, the UN’s
Department of Economic and Social Aairs calcu-
lated that “2.2 billion people lacked safely managed
drinking water and 4.2 billion people lacked safely
managed sanitation.” According to statistics pub-
lished by the Centers for Disease Control in 2019,
almost 900 million people across the globe have no
access to safe drinking water. At the same time, CDC
estimates that more than 2 billion people do not
have access to basic sanitation service. Whether you
use either the UN’s numbers or CDC’s, an enormous
amount of water poor are suering across the globe.
A few summers ago, a young woman went to
Honduras on a church-run trip to an orphanage they
ran there. When she returned she described how the
children were constantly getting sick from the water
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