A Big, Messy Problem

Mar 19th, 2009 5:59 PM UTC
By ONE Partners

At a breakfast session this morning for journalists in a small hotel in Istanbul, Paul Reiter, head of the International Water Alliance, described the world’s quest to reach the third target of Millennium Development Goal 7, to halve the proportion of the population that lacks access to clean water and sanitation, like this. Alongside him, Jaehyang So from the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program and Jon Lane from the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council gave their input to a lively conversation about the world’s successes and failures to reach poor communities with water and sanitation and achieve public health goals of decreasing death rates from diarrheal disease.

Their reflections on the challenges in meeting the MDGs by 2015—which ranged from country adoption and behavior change to problems inherent in taking solutions to scale—confirmed Reiter’s observation. A problem of this scope, I suppose, requires a conference this size—20,000 participants from scores of countries, various heads of state and parliamentarians, and 800 reporters from around the world. Its sheer breadth is overwhelming—drought and climate change, water management (and mismanagement) and utilities, governance and accountability.

Nevertheless, there are glimmers of clarity and hope. Interestingly, many of those nuggets of good news seem to stem from elements related to developing countries.

For Martin Wegelin (who pioneered UV disinfection via rainwater collection in plastic bottles on rooftops in the slums of Nairobi 20 years ago), the progress is evidenced by a shift in the audience for his message. Seventeen years after Wegelin began his work on home-based solar disinfection, household water treatment is now in vogue in the development community—with ceramic filters, water tablets, chlorine drops, and innovative behavior change programs gaining market and consumer traction.

This morning, in a session sponsored by the Household Water Treatment and Storage Network, Wegelin said: “Last decade, I began my talks by saying ‘Hello, members of the sodis (solar disinfection) community.’ This decade, I begin my talks with, ‘Hello, members of the Household Water Treatment community.’ Next decade, I plan to say, ‘Hello, families and communities who are drinking clean water.’”

-Janie Hayes, PATH

TAGS: From Our Partners, PATH, Policy News, Water and Sanitation