Water

Drylands: Sustaining Life on Earth

Sep 16th, 2011 4:46 PM UTC
By ONE Partners

Ahead of an important UN Meeting next week on desertification, Luc Gnacadja, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), explains why the issue is so important.

Imagine you’re holding a one minute sand timer.  Turn it over, and let the sand flow.

Consider that, in the single minute it takes for the sand to fall, 23 hectares of land will be lost to drought and desertification.  That’s approximately 20 football pitches, per minute.

Over the course of a year, that equates to 24 billion tons of fertile soil, the most significant, non-renewable natural resource we have.  That’s 24 billion tons, per year.

While the remaining sand piles up, consider the global impact this loss of fertile land has on water and food security.  Over the next 25 years land degradation could reduce global food productivity by as much as 12%, leading to a 30% increase in world food prices.

We’ve all seen the impact of rising food prices in the cost of our supermarket shopping baskets.  But if you are in the bottom billion of the world’s poor, of course, this is more than an economic annoyance at the checkout.  As a poor farmer in the Horn of Africa, you watch as your crops wither from lack of rain, your once productive land turns to dust and your family goes hungry.

Thankfully, there is a solution.  We need to stop working against the natural environment and do something positive to mainstream sustainable land management techniques into global policy and local practice.  In delivering food and water security, these techniques will help us take genuine steps towards combating global poverty.

The United Nations General Assembly will meet on 20 September in New York.  Preparations to discuss desertification, land degradation and drought in the context of poverty eradication and sustainable development, are thankfully gathering pace. We can all see the importance of a unified emergency response when drought and famine strike – the situation in the Horn of Africa is testament to that. Leaders also need to take bold steps to ensure the best land management techniques are adopted for global food security, poverty reduction and environmentally sustainable growth.

Now is the time for leaders to commit and deliver. In choosing to protect land against further degradation, they will build community resilience against the crippling effects of drought and famine.

The side-effects of failing to act decisively with sustainable solutions are increasingly horrifying. Mass hunger, social tension, unemployment, migration, political instability and armed conflict will rise in countries where land is under pressure. We all need to embrace a strategy around prevention that secures the health and productivity of land for the well-being of present and future generations.

In reality, eradicating hunger will take longer than one minute.  Sustainable Land Management techniques require a period of time before the benefits are felt.  That’s why we need to start now.  With the help of ONE supporters, we can ensure these techniques are mainstreamed into global policy and local practice.

Luc Gnacadja

Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

About UNCCD

Established in 1994, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is the sole legally binding international agreement linking environment and development issues to the land agenda. It focuses on drylands, which cover 41% of the Earth and are in habited by over 2 billion people. Drylands account for 44% of the world’s cultivated ecosystems and have provided 30% of all the world’s cultivated plants. However, 8 of the world’s 25 biodiversity ‘hotspots’ are in the drylands and up to one fifth of the drylands have been steadily degraded since the 1980s. The Convention’s 194 Parties are dedicated to improving the living conditions of the world’s poorest 1.2 billion resident in the drylands, to maintaining and restoring the land’s productivity, and to mitigating the effects of drought.

Celebrate Blog Action Day right from your desk

Oct 15th, 2010 5:09 PM UTC
By Malaka Gharib

This post is part of our contribution to Change.org’s Blog Action Day 2010, an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers with the goal of sparking discussion and collective action. This year, more than 3,000 bloggers are writing about water, a global issue that affects all of us.

In order to celebrate Blog Action Day to the fullest, we decided to highlight some of the amazing work that our friends in the nonprofit community are doing on the topic of water and sanitation in the developing world.

Although this issue isn’t the prettiest (we’re talking sewage, diarrheal diseases and toilets, here), it’s an important one. Everyone has a right to safe drinking water — yet 884 million people do not have access to clean water and 2.6 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation.

With that being said, here are five things that you can do from your computer to keep water in mind:

1. Watch a short documentary made by award-winning journalists:
The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting takes a refreshingly candid look at the sanitation situation in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where almost 4 million people are living without basic access to clean water or toilets. We wrote about their amazing multimedia coverage and short documentaries a while back during World Water Week, but it’s worth taking another look.

2. Download a sweet poster from Blood:Water Mission and stick it on your fridge:
Blood:Water Mission, a grassroots organization founded by rock band Jars of Clay, empowers communities to work together against HIV/AIDS and water crises in Africa. Their printable posters are not only beautifully designed, but inspiring and informational. “Two weeks without your coffee, tea, milk or soda can provide people in Africa with safe water in Africa for the rest of their lives,” says the poster pictured above.

3. Grasp the gravity of the issue in less than 15 seconds:
This moving video clip by Water.org depicts a young girl in rural Africa struggling to stand … because she’s got a 44-pound container of water on her back. I guarantee that you’ll feel moved by this video in just the first five seconds.

4. Look at the water. I mean really look at it:
You can’t possibly fathom what “contaminated water” means until you actually look at it. This video from charity: water, a non-profit that brings clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations, depicts a tap that churns out mud. The narrator can hardly believe it. “This is your water?” he asks, “You’ve got to be kidding. You must be.”

5. Make the connection between hygiene and hunger
It isn’t the easiest relationship to understand, but many times, children become malnourished because of problems at home related to sanitation and hygiene. Action Against Hunger has a great Q&A on their website with a staffer on the ground who works with families to improve their health and avoid waterborne diseases.

Water is a huge issue for us here at ONE, and we’re glad that Blog Action Day gives us a another reason to talk about it. Access to clean drinking water and basic sanitation facilities could transform the lives of millions — but knowing how and why is a key part of being a smart and informed advocate for the world’s poorest people.

The power of irrigation

Jan 11th, 2010 11:14 AM UTC
By David Cole

Less than 5% of irrigable land in Africa is currently being irrigated, which means a huge loss of potential cultivation and production of food.

But as UNICEF’s Indrias Getachew explains, an innovative scheme in Ethiopia shows how simple investments can transform agricultural production. This is the kind of project that could get much more funding if donor countries make good on their promises at last year’s G8 summit to invest US$20 billion into agriculture and food security over the next 3 years.

Hear what Indrias had to say when he spoke to ONE:

Advocating for water in Sweden

Aug 28th, 2008 2:40 PM UTC
By Chris Scott

John Sauer of Water Advocates sent us his op-ed that was featured in The Local regarding World Water Week.

Finding the toilet in Stockholm

Last week a mix of water and sanitation experts gathered for World Water Weekin Stockholm, Sweden to mull over the world’s biggest public health crisis. The problem is that not enough people paid attention.

Each year over 2 million deaths could be prevented with improvements related to access to safe drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene. To put that in perspective, we have it within our grasp to prevent the equivalent deaths of 10 Asian tsunamis or 1,000 Hurricane Katrinas. Yet a major effort—like those that have been launched to address HIV/AIDS and malaria—to tackle the global drinking water and sanitation crisis remains elusive. The scope of this disconnect is baffling; water- and sanitation-related diseases (like relatively-easy-to-prevent diarrhea) kill more children each year than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and measles combined.

One reason why there hasn’t been a Herculean effort to address this global scourge is that we in the water and sanitation sector are not doing enough to influence how this issue is understood by others. We have not been proactive or coordinated enough to frame the issue to the media and the wider development community in an action-oriented “this-can-be-done” tone.

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Reporting From the World Water Forum

Mar 18th, 2008 2:35 PM UTC
By ONE Partners

ONE has partners on the ground in Turkey for the 5th World Water Forum. Our partners will be providing guest blog posts throughout the week to keep us updated on the meeting’s proceedings. Stay tuned for more in this series!

As I was quoted in the Associated Press the other day,“In America, diarrhea is bad takeout, in Chad, it’s the difference between life and death.”

I’m here at the 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul to help coordinate a journalist workshop on the health aspects of water, sanitation and hygiene. Journalists have come from as far away as Indonesia, Laos and Peru to learn about this massive, but surmountable, challenge.

We want to bring attention to this under-reported issue, as more children die of diarrhea and other water and sanitation related diseases than die of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. Meanwhile, 80% of research and development funding for diseases that disproportionately affect the poor is spent on these “big three” diseases. We aim to point out this disparity, not to take away funding from the more well-known diseases, but to see that more resources go to solving the water and sanitation crisis.

What is also unique about preventing and treating diarrhea is that affordable solutions are available now. Ceramic water filters, rope pumps, and ecosan toilets are all effective and sustainable solutions.

Sessions this week at the World Water Forum are going to focus on vast array of topics, such as new technologies, entrepreneurship and child health. The issue of poor water and sanitation in schools will also be discussed by UNICEF. An astounding 50% of schools in the developing world do not have access to water and sanitation.

PATH, WSSCC (Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council), and Water Advocates are a few of the organizers of the journalist forum. We hope that the workshop and forum will increase attention on the health aspects of the water and sanitation crisis. With 5,000 people dying each day due to dirty water, and poor sanitation and hygiene, this cannot wait.

-John Sauer, Water Advocates

Sanitizing Water, Not Facts.

Nov 21st, 2007 2:42 PM UTC
By Virginia Simmons

Yesterday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced 2008 the “Year of Sanitation” and urged the world to increase investment in providing clean water and sanitation throughout the world.

From a Tuesday Reuters article:

“Investing approximately $10 billion per year can halve the proportion of people without basic sanitation by 2015,” [the U.N. statement] said.

The U.N.’s drive for better sanitation will involve regional conferences and public campaigns to raise awareness and implement projects to improve sanitation in developing countries through public and private partnerships.

UK-based charity WaterAid said the absence of clean toilet facilities, access to safe water and efficient sanitation was directly related to the spread of diseases that killed 1.8 million children a year.

It estimated the economic cost of not investing in sanitation and clean water at $38 million a year resulting from infant deaths, lost work days and school absences due to disease.”

Read the full article here.

-Virginia Simmons