March 22, 2009 - WORLD WATER DAY
March 16-22, 2009 - 5th WORLD WATER FORUM, Istanbul, Turkey
Current reports/stories on the global water crisis Circle of Blue
Facts from http://water.org/waterpartners.aspx?pgID=916
Refer to H20CrisisFactSheet files attached (click on Files button at bottom of page)
- 3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease.
- 43% of water-related deaths are due to diarrhea.
- 84% of water-related deaths are in children ages 0 - 14.
- 98% of water-related deaths occur in the developing world.
- 884 million people, lack access to safe water supplies, approximately one in eight people.
- The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.
- At any given time, half of the world's hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from a water-related disease.
- Less than 1% of the world's fresh water (or about 0.007% of all water on earth) is readily accessible for direct human use.
- An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than the typical person living in a developing country slum uses in a whole day.
- About a third of people without access to an improved water source live on less than $1 a day. More than two thirds of people without an improved water source live on less than $2 a day.
- Poor people living in the slums often pay 5-10 times more per liter of water than wealthy people living in the same city.
- Without food a person can live for weeks, but without water you can expect to live only a few days.
- The daily requirement for sanitation, bathing, and cooking needs, as well as for assuring survival, is about 13.2 gallons per person.
- Water projects in developing countries fail at an average rate of 50% or higher.
A Water Warning, by Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, "The Economist", November 19, 2008
"I am convinced that, under present conditions and with the way water is being managed, we will run out of water long before we run out of fuel."
Is Privatizing Water the Right Solution?, by Alexei Barrionuevo, The New York Times, March 14, 2009
"Quillagua is among many small towns that are being swallowed up in the country’s intensifying water wars. Nowhere is the system for buying and selling water more permissive than here in Chile, experts say, where water rights are private property, not a public resource, and can be traded like commodities with little government oversight or safeguards for the environment."
