Who will foot the $80 billion to halve the number of those without basic sanitation? [Archives:2008/1140/Health]
Bobby Ramakant
How will Yemen and other world nations achieve the Millennium Development Goal, or MDG, target to reduce by half the proportion of 2.6 billion people with no access to basic sanitation by 2015?
On this year's March 22 World Water Day highlighting sanitation, the United Nations General Assembly has declared 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation with the goal of raising awareness and accelerating progress toward MDG targets to halve the number of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015.
But from where is the estimated $10 billion annual cost to achieve this MDG target by 2015 going to come? Some $80 billion will be required between 2008 and 2015 to achieve this target, which will halve the 2.6 billion people currently without access to basic sanitation. Even if this MDG target is achieved, this still leaves the other half – 1.3 billion people – without such access.
While it seems steep, this amount is less than 1 percent of the world's military spending in 2005 and one-third of the estimated global spending on bottled water – or about as much as Europeans spend on ice cream each year.
“Private corporations, including bottled water companies – which largely have demonstrated a ruthless capital-intensive approach blatantly disregarding environmental or ecological aspects and depriving local communities of access to natural resources – should foot this bill, not the public sector or the governments of developing countries,” says Dr. Sandeep Pandey, convener of India's National Alliance of People's Movements, or NAPM, and 2002 recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay award – named for the former Philippine president who served from 1953 to 1957 – for emergent leadership. Known as the Nobel Prize of Asia, the award honors individuals in Asia whose life and work are characterized by selfless service that impacts the lives of the greater many.
Aggressive marketing targeting those with the ability to pay has contributed extensively to exacerbating the gap between rich and poor communities. Not only has this jeopardized these underserved communities' basic human rights to life and dignity, it's also left the rich with a mountainous burden of lifestyle diseases to deal with.
Water is a public good, not a commodity to be bought and sold; thus, increasing corporate control of water undoubtedly is alarming. “Corporations are contributing to and then profiting from the global water crisis,” asserts Kathryn Mulvey, executive director of Corporate Accountability International (www.stopcorporateabuse.org). She further stresses that, “One of the greatest threats to people's access to water today is that corporate water use often is prioritized over people's daily use.”
The funds required to achieve MDG goals by halving the number of those without access to basic sanitation are one-third of global spending on bottled water. “If one-third of the profits from bottled water companies can help 1.3 billion people gain access to basic sanitation, not doing this and allowing bottled water companies to mint money is outrageous,” Pandey says.
As water becomes more precious, corporations such as Coca Cola, Pepsi, Nestle, Suez and Veolia increasingly are attempting to control and profit from it, while at the same time, attempting to position themselves as improving people's access to water.
As a natural right, water rights are usufructuary, meaning water can be used but not owned; thus, people have a right to life and the resources that sustain it, such as water. The necessity of water to life is why, under customary laws, the right to water has been accepted as a natural, social fact.
This is why governments and corporations can't alienate people from their water rights. On this World Water Day and beyond, not only do we need to challenge the alarming corporate control of water, but also stake a claim to financial and natural resources that rightfully should be utilized to provide basic sanitation access to all.
Bobby Ramakant is a senior journalist and a member of the Network for Accountability of Tobacco Transnationals, or NATT. He can be contacted at [email protected]
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