Addressing Water Crisis in Developing Countries

As widely described in the media, professional journals, and popular books, much of the developing world and areas of the developed world are facing a severe and worsening crisis in the water-resources sector—most pressing is the lack of reliable water supply and sanitation services. The expanding population of the developing world confronts an overcommitment of resources, destructive pollution, and inadequate infrastructure, coupled with an immense backlog of competing financial needs for traditional government programs. The current situation ~its initial phase already evident decades ago! reflects, in large part, the procrastination of the international community ~IC!. The IC referred to in this paper includes the following groups: leaders and publics of the developed countries that participate in matters of peace and war, trade and finance, and social and environmental issues; leaders of the developing countries; and the international bodies most dependent upon the developed governments, including the UN, international development financing agencies, and nongovernmental organizations ~NGOs!. The developing countries look to this group for assistance. Results to date, however, confirm that the more vocal water and environmental segment leading the efforts of the IC does not have the expertise or the understanding of potential solutions to solve this crisis. IC leaders themselves should no longer sit on their hands and watch. Today billions of the world’s population live in a state that can only be called deprivation. UN data indicate that over one billion people lack access to domestic water, and 2.4 billion people lack elementary sanitation. The desperateness of these untenable human, economic, and security conditions has been growing for decades. Ethnic skirmishes, demonstrations by the poor against their newly elected governments, and antagonism against the developed countries and their globalization measures are becoming more forceful. Several programs are essential in these poor regions, but basic water and sanitation services, coupled with a responsive political leadership within the countries, are the foundation for activities that would improve these conditions. But representatives of the poor are cynical toward the international commissions, conferences, workshops, and neverending studies and pilot programs that have gone on for the past 40 years. The poor see only that their water supply becomes more polluted and more scarce. The IC has a responsibility, and if that is not enough, a selfish objective to place its highest priority on rectifying the situation with a sense of great urgency. Regional and international security depends on healthy living conditions and gainful economic activity by everyone. This paper will summarize the IC’s goals for providing water supply and sanitation services to the world’s impoverished