World Water Day 2009 in Ottawa

Photo: World Water Day volunteers on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.


A small but enthusiastic group of people gathered on Parliament Hill today to celebrate World Water Day and demand more funding to solve the international water and sanitation crisis.

“About 2.5 billion people around the world lack proper sanitation,” said George Yap, international program director with the NGO, WaterCan. “And 1.2 billion (of those) have no toilet whatsoever.”

On top of that, approximately one billion people worldwide do not have access to safe drinking water, according to a WHO/UNICEF report.

Needless to say, all this leads to some shocking statistics just released in a factsheet at the 5th World Water Forum.

According to the report, 3,900 children die each day from water-borne diseases and 1.8 million people die each year from diarrhoeal diseases.

Mr. Yap wants the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to double the amount of funding it allocates for water and sanitation issues from 2.5 per cent to five per cent of the agency’s annual budget.

“We live in a privileged society,” said Kate White, executive director, United Nations Association of Canada. “Canada has a role to play is this crisis.”

Ms. White recently returned from visiting the slums around Nairobi, where she witnessed “flying toilets” – human feces wrapped in plastic and discarded everywhere.

She urged people to pressure their members of parliament to make water and sanitation issues more of a priority.

The water and sanitation crisis has a gender bias as well according to Robert Fox, executive director, Oxfam Canada.

“Water is women’s work,” said Mr. Fox. “Girls and women gather the water. Everyday they have to walk further to access clean water. Girls are not in school because they have to search for water. Investment in public water around the world is critical,” said Mr. Fox.

Fortunately, there is some good news. In Bangladesh, microcredit is having a positive affect on the health outcomes of citizens there.

“Water and sanitation are building blocks to a healthy society,” said Judy Wasylycia-Leis (NDP-Winnipeg North). She is one of several MPs who returned yesterday from a fact-finding trip to Bangladesh, along with Chris Dendys, executive director of the NGO, Results Canada.

They were impressed by the initiatives taken at a local level. They found that people were able to build low-cost latrines and provide education on proper hygiene, which resulted in lower rates of illness.

According to the International Year of Sanitation website, improved sanitation is a good investment. Each dollar spent yields about nine dollars worth of benefits, says the report. These include: time saved by not having to seek out a toilet or private location in which to relieve oneself, increased productivity in the workplace, lower health care costs, greater enrolment in education – and perhaps most interesting from a western perspective – increased revenue from tourism.

Still, there is a long way to go. The UN’s Millennium Development Goals call for halving by 2015, the number of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. At the current rate, that target for improved sanitation will be missed by over 700 million people, according to a WHO/UNICEF report released in 2008.