Washington, DC — The World Summit has ended with a new pledge to reduce the number of people without access to sanitation by half before 2015. Meeting in Johannesburg, the world leaders also reaffirmed the goal reached at the Millennium Summit two years ago that called for halving the number of people without access to clean water by that date.
But the challenges are immense. During the next thirty years water use will grow by 50 percent. More than a billion people in the world lack access to clean water and 2.4 billion people live without decent sanitation. And throughout the summit, delegates were reminded of the grim consequences of this problem: twelve million people die each year because of a lack of access to clean water, including three million children, according to the World Bank.
In Africa, the scope of the problem is enormous and the solutions are contested. Billions of dollars have been invested in projects to expand access to clean water, such as "harvesting" rainwater and there are literally thousands of organizations working on these issues. Some governments and corporate leaders advocate public-private partnerships as a means of expanding investment in the provision of clean water to greater numbers of people, while others have criticized proposals which they see as the privatization of essential services. These critics argue that access to water is a basic human right and that governments have a responsibility to provide a minimum amount of water free of charge to all their people.
The South African government is working simultaneously to bring clean water to all of its people and to expand conservation. Already the government is providing a minimum of six kiloliters of free water a month to 26 million of its poorest citizens. Yet not everyone is happy with this approach and on Tuesday, September 3 a group of local activists briefly disrupted a speech by South African Water Minister Ronnie Kasrils, to protest what they characterize as the privatization of water policy.
Nonetheless, according to Sandra Postell, the head of the Global Water Policy Project, South Africa is a country that many people look to for innovation in water management policy. South Africa demonstrates what is possible, she told AllAfrica's Jim Cason. The water management decisions South Africa has taken are especially relevant for poorer countries, where more people depend directly on the ecosystem. Below are excerpts from that interview.
You've suggested that some of the efforts the South African government has made to provide water to its people might be models for other countries. Could you tell us a little bit more about those efforts?
I've been talking quite a bit about what's going on in South Africa. It is a country that a lot of us in the water field are looking to for some innovations in water policy and water management. Over the last seven years they have really undertaken a number of initiatives.
The first is in water policy. They were presented with a unique opportunity when the post-apartheid government came to power in 1994. They re-wrote the constitution and many of their basic laws and policies, including the water policy. They put in place a very interesting approach to water that really is quite unique in the world today. It is grounded in the principle of the public trust, the idea that water is held in trust by the government for the good of the people.
What's interesting is that it is not just an underlying philosophy, but they have come up with a policy and an allocation priority that puts that public trust into practice. It is put into practice via something they call the water reserve. This is in two parts; the first part says that all South Africans should have access to a minimum quantity of fresh water to meet their basic needs. This is defined as something like 25 liters per person, per day.
When the new government took over in 1994, 14 million South Africans still did not have access to fresh drinking water. That number has been cut in half under the new government, from 14 million to 7 million. And they are on track to provide universal access to safe drinking water by 2007 - which is far ahead of the UN millennium development goal. There might be different stories about what is happening on the ground, but these are officials numbers and there has been tangible progress. I'm not saying things are perfect, they are not. But it is interesting to watch.
The second priority relating to the reserve, after human health, is that ecosystems should receive the water that they need for good health. This is the more revolutionary aspect of their policy. Everyone is more or less in agreement on human health. But the idea that ecosystems be accorded a high priority for getting the water that they need to sustain ecological health is quite novel in the water policy area and the South Africans are implementing it.
Aquatic scientists in South Africa are now going about the process of determining the major water sheds and what the ecological component of the reserve should be. A number of scientists in South Africa are considered pioneers in this field of establishing environmental flows for rivers, determining how much water a river needs. It is a complicated question, but they have developed methodologies appropriate to their country that allow them to go into water sheds, work with communities to understand the ecological services that society is getting and then determine the environmental flows that need to be provided in those rivers. This is a very interdisciplinary approach, very scientifically grounded. But it is oriented for implementation within watersheds and involves the local people in those water sheds.
Could you give us an idea of the kinds of specific things that the South Africans are doing to expand access to fresh water and conserve this resource. For instance, you have written approvingly of a program in the Western Cape region, can you tell us about that program?
This is the "working for water" program, a program for alien vegetation removal It really has a number of goals. One is job creation, it is intended to help create employment. Second is the goal of conserving native bio-diversity. The Western Cape of South Africa is one of the most biologically diverse regions for the world in terms of plant varieties. It is extraordinary.
The alien [plant] invasions were disturbing the natural bio-diversity. Because the alien plants use more water than the native vegetation, they have been sucking the rivers and streams dry. Based on observation and the use of good scientific studies and economic analysis on this, the South Africans found that a program to remove alien vegetation would increase the availability of water in this part of South Africa at a lower unit cost than other alternatives. And water is a very scarce resource in this part of South Africa.
Thus the moved ahead on the basis of seeking to manage the watershed rather than seeking technological solutions to water issues. In this case there are important benefits. It is a bio-diversity preservation effort, it is a job creation effort and it is a water supply conservation effort.
Okay, it sounds like South Africa has developed some interesting models. But there are substantial differences between South Africa and the rest of the continent. How much of what they are doing offers models that might be adapted for use in other parts of the continent?
It is very adaptable. The concept applies anywhere. In rich countries or poor. In my view, it may be more important to implement such programs in poorer countries because it is usually in poorer countries that more people subsist directly on the goods and services that fresh water ecosystems provide. One example to look at is the river basin of the Senegal River, where there has been much controversy over the Manatali dam, built on a tributary to the Senegal river [in Mali].
Part of the reason it has been so controversial is that there are a lot of people living in the Senegal River valley who,for a long time, have depended on the natural flood regime of that river for subsistence cropping, for grazing and fishing. That natural flood regime would be destroyed by the operation of the dam for hydropower and irrigation, the main reasons for its construction.
There has been an effort to see whether it could be operated in a way that does provide hydropower and irrigation benefits, but that also operates in a way to replicate the flood in some years or to some degree, so that the subsistence and ecological values are sustained.
So they would be deliberately flooding certain areas because that is a way to sustain the ecosystem?
That's right. And it is not just the ecosystem. It is the goods and services that the ecosystem is providing and upon which a lot of poor people depend. So it is really a more holistic look at the river, determining who benefits, how they benefit and incorporating ecosystem values into the equation of optimal river management.
I'm not completely up to date on what's happening now, but it has been controversial. I think they just started generating hydropower from that dam, recently. But I don't think the idea of replicating the flooding has been done to any significant degree.
But your larger point is that particularly in poorer countries, if you manage this valuable resource you can get better value?
More value flows from the river system if you incorporate the ecological value, because it is usually poorer people who are directly dependent on the ecosystem. If you operate the river for hydropower and irrigation, more often than not the hydropower and irrigation go to already better off constituents. rather than improving conditions for the very poor. The hydropower provides energy for the urban areas, which tend to have higher per capita incomes, the irrigation goes to somewhat wealthier farmers and the subsistence farmers end up loosing out.
I see this management as being important for both richer and poorer countries. We are trying to do similar things in the United States, looking at rivers and how we can incorporate ecological benefits into river management. But I actually see it as potentially more important for poorer countries.
There is a fair amount of skepticism about what a big United Nations meeting can accomplish. What would be the main things you would like to see come out of the Johannesburg Summit that would have the most concrete impact on people's access to efficient, equitable and sustainable use of fresh water?
It is all in the follow up. And the follow up really depends on three things: leadership, commitment and funding. Rio produced conventions on bio-diversity, and forests and climate change, but where have they really gotten us? Not too far, because there has not been enough commitment, leadership and funding to make things happen.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
So even getting to the point of a convention doesn't mean you are going to see things change on the ground. There has to be follow up. The same thing is true in the water area.
Would you like to see a more concrete time-frame than that laid out at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000? Frankly, if you talk to the World Bank and many of the critics, few believe the Millennium goals are really going to be met in Africa, except perhaps in South Africa?
The Millennium Goal is to reduce by half the share of people without access to water by 2015. I actually think the Millennium development goals, the idea that we should be aiming to still have a lot of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015 is not a strong enough goal. I think we should be looking toward universal access. That might just be conceived as unrealistic. But the resources required are not insurmountable.
What would it take?
Well the numbers vary a lot on this depending on how you assume that it is done, the technologies used and so on. But it is still a relatively modest share of global military expenditures, for example. It really is a question of how you define security..
If twenty percent of the population doesn't have access to safe drinking water, so that when they take a drink they risk disease and death, this seems to me an urgent matter of security. This requires an effort on the scale that we devote to military expenditures. The last time I made the calculation, quite a modest share of military expenditures globally would be required to satisfy the goals of safe drinking water and sanitation for everyone.
Your point is well taken. Why are we talking about only cutting in half the number of people without access to safe water, if for fifty or even a hundred billion dollars we could actually get close to a hundred percent on this?
The U.S. is thinking about invading Iraq which is going to cost us probably at least $60 billion. So the money is there, if you want to find it and spend it, it is a matter of commitment and what you consider important to security.
I'm not saying the U.S. is responsible for providing safe drinking water to the world's people. No, it has part of the responsibility. But we could do it if we got serious about it. It is not an uncomplicated issue, but it is not something that cannot be done.
