[A-List] Dirty drinking water

[Mark Jones <markjones011@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

What kills 2.2 million people a year? Dirty drinking water. Now swallow this...
Water heads the list of the six biggest environmental problems facing the 
world. Here Geoffrey Lean assesses the damage
25 August 2002
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60,000 delegates, 100 world leaders, one aim: saving the planet
How to save the world in 10 days
What kills 2.2 million people a year? Dirty drinking water. Now swallow this...
Welcome to Johannesburg, the African city 'that works'
'Ask about our lives and you will not stop weeping'
10 tips for rescuing the planet (11 if you steer clear of the summit too)
Leading article: Visionary or lapdog? Your planet needs you, Mr Blair
Britain asks African leaders to turn up the heat on Mugabe
Water
What is the problem?
The greatest environmental disaster afflicting the planet is not GM foods 
or crops, the felling of tropical rainforests, proliferation of dangerous 
chemicals, or even global warming, but the scourge of dirty drinking water. 
It kills 2.2 million a year in developing countries. Most victims are children.
Forty per cent of people live in countries where water is scarce: by 2025 
this is expected to rise to 66 per cent. About 1.2 billion people do not 
have safe, clean water to drink. Twice as many do not have adequate 
sanitation. Hundreds of millions suffer repeated, enervating bouts of 
diarrhoea and other diseases ? sapping their ability to work and grow food.
Poor people ? mostly women ? walk for hours to fetch disease-ridden water. 
They trudge, on average, four miles a day carrying loads of 20kg. In 
northern Ghana women used to risk snakebites during a seven-hour trip every 
morning to collect water. The provision of handpumps has given them time 
for their families, to earn money and take part in the political process.
What could the summit do?
In a sane world leaders would ensure that everyone has clean water and 
sanitation. This would, the UN reckons, cut disease by three-quarters. Two 
years ago they agreed to halve the number of people without clean water by 
2015. Many countries want the same target for sanitation. Hitting the water 
target would cost £6bn a year; hitting the sanitation one would cost £11bn.
What will summit achieve?
It will probably reconfirm the water target. The US is blocking the 
sanitation one, but may give way under pressure. Whether either target will 
ever be met is another matter.
Corporate accountability
What is the problem?
The world's five largest companies together earn more money each year than 
the combined incomes of the 46 poorest countries. If multinationals were 
listed in the same wealth tables as countries, they would make up more than 
half of the world's top economies. They are largely beyond the control of 
national governments; they can switch production, jobs, capital ? and 
pollution ? from country to country to get the regimes that best suit them.
The Rio Earth summit in 1992 decided not to try to bring in rules to 
regulate them; in the past 10 years such controls as there were have been 
greatly weakened. The UN increasingly treats big corporations as partners: 
indeed, some progressive ones have made much of the running on sustainable 
development since Rio. Multinationals will play a key role at the summit. 
But pressure groups have made them their main target in Johannesburg.
One example close to home is British Nuclear Fuels, which is accused of 
turning the Irish Sea into the most radioactive in the world. Monsanto has 
aggressively promoted GM crops around the world. Union Carbide was 
responsible for the Bhopal disaster.
What could the summit do?
It could start the process of drawing up measures for corporate 
accountability. It could begin by adopting a set of 10 "Bhopal Principles" 
calling on corporations to adopt high standards, protect human rights, end 
bribery and other improper influence over governments, take preventative 
action to avoid pollution, and compensate victims.
What will the summit achieve?
Virtually nothing. Rich countries do not want to know about the issue. 
Developing ones fear they will lose any hope of investment if they raise it.
Agriculture
What is the problem?
Every year more than 20 billion tons of precious topsoil is blown or washed 
off the land. Seventy per cent of the drylands used for agriculture ? 
nearly a third of the world's land area ? is threatened by being turned 
into desert. More than 110 countries are affected. Most are poor, but about 
a third of the US and one-fifth of Spain are also at risk.
Desertification, as the process is called, costs the world $42bn (£28bn) a 
year. By 2020, 60 million people are expected to have left Africa's 
Sahelian region for north Africa and Europe. The amount of agricultural 
land available for each person in developing countries has declined from 
0.79 acres in the early 1960s to 0.51 acres and is expected to reach 0.39 
acres by 2030.
What could the summit do?
Eight years ago the world agreed a treaty to combat desertification. But 
most developing countries have not made implementing it a high enough 
priority, and rich ones have failed to provide the aid to make it work.
The UN estimates it would cost $24bn in extra investment to halve hunger, 
but that this would return $120bn a year in increased productivity as 
hungry people grew stronger.
What will the summit achieve?
It will almost certainly endorse a change in the rules of the Global 
Environment Facility ? the world's premier environmental aid institution ? 
to allow it to fight desertification. But there is no sign of the concerted 
drive against land degradation and hunger that is needed.
Over-consumption
What is the problem
We are already consuming 20 per cent more natural resources than the planet 
can produce each year. Most of the consumption is in the richest countries. 
The 15 per cent of the world's people who live in them are responsible for 
56 per cent of its consumption; the 40 per cent who live in the poorest 
ones account for 11 per cent. The world's economic output grew by over a 
third, from $31,000bn (£20,000bn) to $42,000bn, in the 1990s; but per 
capita incomes dropped in 80 countries. The average African now consumes 20 
per cent less than 25 years ago. The US is by far the most enthusiastic 
devourer of resources: it has 5 per cent of the global population but 
accounts for nearly a quarter of global consumption. The 1992 Rio Earth 
summit concluded that "the major cause of the continued deterioration of 
the world environment is the unsustainable pattern of consumption and 
production". But over the past decade it has only got worse.
What could the summit do?
Many studies have shown that wasteful consumption can be curbed without 
harming the quality of life. Rich countries could enjoy the same standard 
of living using a quarter of the resources they do now in the short to 
medium term, and a 10th in the longer term, leaving space for poor 
countries to develop. Leaders could adopt these targets and set up serious 
programmes to conserve energy and water and recycle waste.
What will the summit achieve?
Virtually nothing. The United States, Canada, Australia and Japan have 
refused even to allow these issues to be discussed seriously.
Energy
What is the problem?
About 2.5 billion people cannot get any form of modern energy, but rely on 
burning wood, crop wastes and animal dung for heat and cooking. This is the 
second biggest killer after dirty water. The smoke from their fires 
contains a cocktail of poisonous chemicals, which swirls around their 
homes, killing more than two million people a year ? half of them children 
under five. Taking the wood and wastes from the land reduces its fertility 
and increases erosion, but the practice is steadily increasing because a 
growing population has no other option. In rural India, for example, only a 
third of all households have access to electricity. The rest depend chiefly 
on wood, but deforestation and development are rapidly depleting supplies.
Meanwhile, 80 per of all the energy used comes from oil, gas and coal. This 
emits pollution that causes lung disease and acid rain, and is the force 
behind global warming. The world's energy consumption is expected to double 
by 2035 and treble by 2055.
What could the summit do?
Greatly increasing the use of renewable energy, almost everyone agrees, is 
the answer. A task force set up two years ago by the leaders of the G8 
nations, the world's richest, proposed measures that would bring it to 800 
million poor people by the end of the decade. Brazil has proposed that 
countries should get a 10th of their energy from renewable sources by the 
end of the decade. Endorsing these targets would be a good start.
What will summit achieve?
Virtually nothing. Opec countries have managed to persuade the rest of the 
developing nations ? against their interests ? to join them in insisting 
that no big decisions should be made.
Wildlife
What is the problem?
The world is heading for the biggest extinction since the one that wiped 
out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Mammal and bird species are 
disappearing at 100 times the natural rate. In some ecosystems ? such as 
coral reefs, wetlands and tropical rainforests ? the rate is estimated to 
be at up to 10,000 times greater. The golden lion tamarin (below) is one of 
many species endangered by the destruction of the Atlantic Forest in 
Brazil, which now covers only 7 per cent of its original one million square 
kilometres. Conservation projects have brought the tamarin's numbers up 
from the near-oblivion of 200 in 1970 to about 1,000 now.
It is too late for a fifth of the world's freshwater fish species, which 
have vanished for ever. And about three- quarters of the wild relatives of 
crops, which are vital for preserving and increasing food supplies through 
interbreeding, have been lost over the past century.
More than half of the world's wetlands have been drained; 80 per cent of 
those in Europe are now dry. About a quarter of the world's coral reefs 
have been destroyed; another quarter are threatened. An area of forest the 
size of Venezuela has been felled over the past decade. Global warming will 
make things worse by dramatically changing the climate.
Yet about 40 per cent of the world economy is based on biological processes 
and products. Drugs based on plants are worth $90bn (£59bn) a year in 
industrial countries alone. And poor people, living in rural areas of the 
Third World, depend on biodiversity for survival.
What could the summit do?
It is impossible to save everything, but much could be done by 
concentrating on 200 or so different areas in the world which are home to 
90 per cent of its species. The summit could draw up a plan for conserving 
and managing these areas, which often straddle national boundaries.
What will summit achieve?
Not a lot. There are some rather woolly proposals around for promising to 
reduce or reverse the extinction trend by 2010, but even these are hotly 
contested.

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