Water for the World Act of 2009
As mentioned on the blog last night, the Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act (S. 624) has passed the Senate by unanimous consent! This piece of legislation, introduced by Senators Durbin (D-IL) and Bob Corker (R-TN), seeks to reach 100 million people around the world with sustainable access to clean water and sanitation over the next six years. The Act would demonstrate the United States’ continued leadership on this issue and build on progress already made. Last year, the U.S. helped provide almost 2 million people with first time access to an improved source of drinking water and more than 1.5 million people to improved sanitation! As the UN Summit on the MDGs is underway in NYC, it’s also worth mentioning that it would enable further progress towards achieving MDG #7.
Here’s what the Water for the World Act would do:
- Target underdeveloped countries with focused initiatives to improve access to clean water and sanitation;
- Foster global cooperation on research and technology development, including regional partnerships among experts on clean water;
- Provide technical assistance and capacity-building to develop expertise within countries facing water and sanitation challenges;
- Provide seed money for the deployment of clean water and sanitation technologies; and
- Strengthen the human infrastructure at USAID and the State Department to implement clean water and sanitation programs effectively and to ensure that water receives priority attention in our foreign policy efforts.
And last night Senators Corker and Durbin issued a joint press release praising the bill’s passage. Here’s a key excerpt:
“Access to safe drinking water is a right that everyone in the world ought to enjoy but too few are able to realize,” Durbin said. “Water access is no longer simply a global health and development issue; it is a mortal and long-term threat that is increasingly becoming a national security issue. The United States needs to do much more to ensure that global water access is protected and expanded.”
“The needs around the world are tremendous, but our foreign aid dollars are limited. We need to make every single penny count by better focusing and coordinating our efforts,” said Corker. “A lack of clean water leads to the deaths of 1.8 million people each year – 90 percent of them children. It stifles economic growth, keeps women and girls from going to work and school, and has contributed to political unrest in Sudan and elsewhere. Experts tell us every $1 invested in safe drinking water and sanitation produces an $8 return in costs. I’m a fiscal conservative and want to see each of our foreign aid dollars go as far as possible, and I believe water is one of the wisest places we can invest.”
The bill will now go to the House of Representatives. We’ll have more developments as they occur!
This is very big– and very exciting– news. The Water for the World Act just passed the Senate by unanimous consent. This important legislation can make a tremendous impact for the world’s poorest people by helping to improve water and sanitation in developing countries.
We’ve been big advocates for the Water for the World Act here at ONE. You may recall we ran a campaign in support of it recently. We’ll have more analysis of this development shortly. Stay tuned!
The Water for the World Act passed through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this afternoon.
That’s thanks in large part to the more than 108,000 other ONE members who signed our petition supporting this bill — S. 624, which will bring first-time, sustainable access to clean water and sanitation to 100 million people by 2015.
But it’s also thanks to a few key senators: Richard Durbin (IL) and Bob Corker (TN), who introduced the bill, and Richard Lugar (IN) and John Kerry (MA), who made the call to move it through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today.
The Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act now has 30 cosponsors — up from our goal of 20 — and we’ve succeeded in bringing it to the attention of Foreign Relations Committee members. The bill still has a long way to go, but this is a huge achievement.
We couldn’t have done it without you.
Today at an event at the National Press Club hosted by The Atlantic, participants gathered to discuss domestic and international water and sanitation issues.
While speaking about the Water for the World Act, which Senator Durbin introduced, ONE members got a nice shout-out. As you know, we launched our Water for the World campaign earlier this year, which included a special message from Matt Damon to ONE members in June. In the process, ONE collected the names of over 100,000 people who supported improving access to clean water and sanitation for the world’s poorest people.
Here’s what Senator Durbin had to say:
As I said, we introduced our bill in March. By mid-June we had six Senate co-sponsors.
Then the ONE Campaign launched a campaign with other non-profits to enlist more co-sponsors.
Matt Damon, the actor, is the spokesperson for that effort. I don’t know if he used the old Bourne Ultimatum or what, but whatever he said is working. We now have 26 co-sponsors — Democrats, Republicans and Independents – as well as the Majority Leader.
Oct 19th, 2009 9:45 AM UTC
By A.M.
Senator Edward Kennedy, the “Lion of the Senate,” was a stalwart champion for ending extreme poverty in the poorest parts of the world. He lent his powerful voice for human rights, for an end to child poverty, and for freedom. From Bangladesh to South Africa to Ireland, Sen. Kennedy’s fingerprints remain on the movement against global poverty, and the world is better off for it. Most recently, he signed onto the reauthorization of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a bill that authorized $48 billion over the next 5 years to improve global health for the world’s poorest people. He is already missed.
Senator Paul Kirk, a longtime Kennedy aid and friend, is temporarily filling the late senator’s seat. Sen. Kirk recently cosponsored the Durbin-Corker Water for the World Act (S. 624), bringing the total number of cosponsors of that bill to 25. We thank him for his support, and look forward to working with him in the fight against extreme poverty.
-Arjun Mody
Thanks in part to the efforts of more than 107,000 ONE members, we’ve hit our target of 20 cosponsors for the Durbin-Corker Water for the World Act — which would provide 100,000,000 people with first-time access to safe drinking water and sanitation on a sustainable basis by 2015.
Our thanks to Senators Harry Reid and Dianne Feinstein, who signed on to cosponsor the bill last week. Here’s the full list of cosponsors:
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL)
Sen. Bob Corker, Bob (R-TN)
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)
Sen. Roland Burris (D-IL)
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI)
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Sen. Byron Dorgan D-ND)
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT)
Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO)
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT)
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD)
Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT)
Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
ONE’s Government Affairs team is following the bill’s progress closely, and we are hoping for a hearing this fall. We’ll post another update when things get moving.
Meanwhile, let’s not stop at 20 — this bill and the 884 million people globally who lack access to clean water deserve more attention. Sign the petition here, and don’t forget to share it with your friends.
Thank you,
-Emily Stivers
There’s been a lot of great momentum lately about providing clean water for the nearly one billion people in the world without it. In 2005, Congress passed the Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act, and from 2007 to 2008, US funding for water, sanitation, and hygiene programs went up 45%.
So what’s missing from this picture, you ask? The system to implement it. If we want to make a difference in helping poor families around the world access clean water, we need a modern and efficient aid agency to deliver on our promises. USAID needs an overall plan for fighting poverty in order to get the most out of this amazing infusion of resources for providing clean water. The best way to make a long-term difference in water and sanitation is to integrate water – and all other the other life-saving assistance that ONE members fight for – into a single strategy for fighting global poverty.
The current system is broken. There’s not even a single place in the US government to find out what the US is currently spending on water & sanitation and in what countries. In the Water for the Poor Act of 2005, Congress mandated an annual report on the government’s progress. But because there are fifteen different US agencies implementing water or sanitation programs overseas, the report does not capture all our efforts. The Millennium Challenge Corporation provided $429 million to help countries upgrade their water delivery systems and connect more households to clean water last year. But that investment is not even reflected in the Water for the Poor Act Report country data, which only reports USAID and State Department activities.
A scattered bureaucracy may not sound like such an urgent problem, but lives hang in the balance: without a clear direction, our water and sanitation assistance simply isn’t going where it’s needed the most. In 2008,
- Jordan received over $41 million from USAID for water and sanitation programs in FY 2008, even though 98% of its population already has access to improved drinking water.
- Niger, where only 42% of the population has access to improved drinking water, received only one-fiftieth that amount.
Learn more about why lending your voice to the fight for foreign assistance reform can also mean improving access to clean drinking water and improved sanitation for the world’s poorest.
-Porter McConnell, Aid Reform Campaign, Oxfam America
