Clean Water and Sanitation as a Business
Articles,News / Sanitation, Social entrepreneur, Water
Written by: Rob Harvey
What if your next cup of water was going to make you or your children sick? Imagine being scared of your own bathroom or being forced to go outside to relieve yourself. What would it be like to walk past broken pumps and overfilled latrines every day of your life?
Nearly 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water and 2.5 billion do not have improved sanitation. The healthy and economic impacts are staggering. Around the world, dirty and diseased water leads to a cycle of sickness and poverty. Without safe water, communities struggle to teach their children, grow food, and earn a living. They can’t develop. Hope remains elusive. You can help change that by supporting programs run by organizations like Lifewater International or The Water Project. When a materially poor community or school receives a new water project, women no longer spend hours searching for a source of water. Children, especially girls, return to school. Water-borne illnesses are reduced. Hope is restored.
As our very own Barak recently posted, the United Nations declares water to be essential for full enjoyment of of life and all human rights. Yet governments struggle around the world to provide clean water and basic sanitation. There is a growing crisis. Who will help the majority world develop solutions these challenges?
This week I was talking with Mike Schneider, of GiveToWater.org. He was recapping these stats:
880 million people lack access to Clean Water. 5,000 children die every day from water related illness. 5.5 billion adult productive days are lost every year due to diarrheal diseases. 40 billion hours are lost every year due to time spent fetching water in sub-Saharan Africa. $15 – $20 can provide clean water for one person for at least 20 years.
More than 50,000 rural water points in Africa (36% of the total) are non-functional. In Sierra Leone the figure is 65% (UNICEF). A safe water source alone typically reduces water born disease by only about 25% or less (WHO). Even a short period of breakdown for a well can eliminate annual health benefits. The estimated cost of universal access to clean water is $42 billion – the estimated cost of repairing existing infrastructure is $350 billion. So the problem isn’t going to go away (WHO). In some countries 40% or more of government water and sanitation budgets are not spent – there are local resources lying unused (Wateraid).
Barak points us to pioneering work that creatively addresses the need to move beyond welfare and charity and towards true community development that fosters fully functional and enduring work. Water for People utilizes the power of the free market to address the world’s sanitation crisis. The key to sanitation as a business is to make ongoing sanitation services the goal, rather than the installation of the latrine. When sanitation services are profitable and businesses see everyone without a latrine as a potential customer, businesses—rather than development organizations—will expand latrine coverage to increase their profit margin. Thus many more people will have access to toilets than they would with typical programming.
Digging wells is the easy part. We know that solutions must last to make a long-term difference. We at The Affero Project celebrate the courageous organizations working with the enterprising poor and empowering local capacity to extend access to safe water, improved sanitation, hygiene education and the skills needed to pass these resources to future generations.
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