In Brief

Paying a high price for polluted water

The United Nations is pressing for a global action plan under the leadership of the Group of Eight (G-8) industrial countries to help resolve a growing water and sanitation crisis that causes nearly two million child deaths every year. Across much of the developing world, unclean water is an immeasurably greater threat to human security than violent conflict, according to the 2006 Human Development Report, produced by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

According to the report, released in November, 1.8 million children die each year from diarrhea that could be prevented with access to clean water and a toilet; 443 million school days are lost to water-related illnesses; and almost 50 percent of all people in developing countries are suffering at any given time from a health problem caused by a lack of water and poor sanitation. To add to these human costs, the crisis in water and sanitation holds back economic growth, with sub-Saharan Africa losing 5 percent of GDP annually-far more than the region receives in aid.

Yet, unlike wars and natural disasters, this global crisis does not galvanize concerted international action, says the report, entitled Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis.

"When it comes to water and sanitation, the world suffers from a surplus of conference activity and a deficit of credible action. The diversity of international actors has militated against the development of strong international champions for water and sanitation," says Kevin Watkins, the report's lead author.

"National governments need to draw up credible plans and strategies for tackling the crisis in water and sanitation. But we also need a Global Action Plan-with active buy-in from the G-8 countries-to focus fragmented international efforts to mobilize resources and galvanize political action by putting water and sanitation front and center on the development agenda," he says. The plan could be run by a small secretariat, along the lines of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.

UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervi¸s said that progress with water and sanitation was essential for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). "Each one of the eight MDGs is inextricably tied to the next, so if we fail on the water and sanitation goal, hope of...