By Elisa DEHOVE
The water and sanitation crisis is rather an issue of access than of scarcity. The root causes are mainly poverty, power and inequality and not physical availability. The international community committed to address these issues through different global responses.
The first global commitment was adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2000 through the United Nations Millennium Declaration. This Declaration calls to find solutions to important issues such as hunger, malnutrition and disease. It is also a commitment to coordinate strategies and efforts to tackle those issues. A set of eight time-bound and measurable goals and targets called the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) were created to help track the progress.
Among this series of goals and targets, a few are attributed to improve the water supply and sanitation sector. Goal 7 promotes environmental sustainability and includes two water targets. Target 9 aims at integrating the principles of sustainable development into country policies and program and reverse the loss of environmental resources. Target 10 aims to halve by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation and integrate sanitation into water resources management strategies. Target 11 sets the objective to have achieved by 2020, a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers. Goal 4 is to reduce child mortality by reducing by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate. Increasing water and sanitation is essential to reach this goal, as water-related diseases are the leading cause of death for children under age five[1]. Finally, Goal 6 is set to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases which can also be tackled through better access to safe water and sanitation.
Another global response was formulated through the “Water for Life Decade: 2005-2015”. The primary goal was to put greater focus on water and water-related issues on the international political agenda.
In March 2012, the World Health Organization announced that the world had met the MDG target of halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, well in advance. This achievement has become a symbol of what the international community can achieve when coordination efforts. However, millions are still living without safe drinking water. So what is the next step in the water sector ? What should we be aiming for after 2015 – new targets and new commitments? This is the question that the United Nations are asking to research centres, universities, technical institutions and the civil society on the new independent global network BEYOND 2015 (http://www.beyond2015.org/). Will the platform be the symbol of 2013, the year of Water Cooperation ?