Published in World Water and Environmental Engineering, 2005
As industry experts warn that the world is failing to achieve the MDG targets for water and sanitation provision, Allerd Stikker of the Ecological Management Foundation calls for a fresh approach.
To meet the United Nations Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) for global water and sanitation provision by 2015, an additional 1.5 billion people need to have access to safe drinking water and an additional 2 billion to sanitation. If the water needs of agriculture and megacities are also to be met, an additional US$100 billion annual investment in services and infrastructure will be required.
Michel Camdessus’s report Financing Water for All published in 2003, lists 15 major structural, political and cultural problems that have to be surmounted to attract the necessary funds. Although the report ends optimistically, it seems highly unrealistic to suppose that the required financial resources will become available.
With respect to actions and results, the interim report of the Millennium Project Taskforce on Water mainly repeats what has been said during the last five years in many reports on the water issue. The approach is predominantly top-down, with emphasis on global, national and local government policy. Macro investments in conventional, centralized service, infrastructure and technologies are preferred, with scant attention to non-conventional technologies and bottom-up approaches.
Read the full article from Op Zoek here in pdf.
Micro options can help bottom-up approach