What Would It Take?
How much money would solve the world water crisis?
Most people are taking a serious look at the numbers within the context of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to “reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.” So most of the best numbers only address half the need, but include providing adequate sanitation for the world’s 2.5 billion who are lacking it, and we are left to wonder what the cost would be for providing only water to those 1.1 billion lacking.
The question itself is not entirely clear either. When is the “world water crisis” no longer a crisis? When we’ve met the UN’s MDG? When everybody has access to clean water? When people have clean water? Or “improved” water, which may only be a covered shallow hand-dug well? Could some non-profit sectors provide sustainable water more efficiently than the mostly governmental agencies whose data is being extrapolated to arrive at our figures? Is the number even relevant if sufficient reliable implementing agencies do not currently exist?
The World Bank offers a range of cost estimates to reach MDG goals. They estimate the cost of reaching “basic levels of coverage…in water and sanitation” to be $9 billion at the low end, and $30 billion a year for “achieving universal coverage” for water and sanitation. The same report acknowledges that the “institutional arrangements” do not exist to reach the goal in any case, and concludes that, “taking these estimates and their caveats together, we estimate that the cost… is between $5 and $21 billion.”
1.The United Nations Development Programme estimates the cost of meeting the MGD to be about $10 billion a year.” Again, that is for water and sanitation for half of those lacking. They add that the figure “…represents less than five days’ worth of global military spending and less than half what rich countries spend each year on mineral water.” The same report estimates that “universal access (to water and sanitation) would raise this figure to $20–$30 billion…” and that not addressing the problem will “…cost roughly nine times more than resolving it.
2. Another United Nations document states that “providing safe drinking water and sanitation to those lacking them requires massive investment—estimated at $14 – 30 billion per year in addition to current annual spending levels…”
3. Again, these estimates include the cost of basic sanitation. The WHO and UNICEF report that it would cost “US$11.3 billion” to achieve the MDG for “drinking water and sanitation” and one is left to wonder what the cost would be for the water portion in their estimation.
4. Again, 1.4 billion more people lack basic sanitation than lack water. So where does LWI stand? Would it take $9 billion or $30 billion? What is the number for just water without sanitation? The fact of the matter is that a $9 billion or a $30 billion check written tomorrow to the UN or to any development agency in the world would not solve the world water crisis. As many of these experts point out, what is lacking are competent, responsible implementers. It would not be hard at all for $10 or $20 billion to be misused. That is why LWI is committed to training, consulting and equipping efficient, cost-effective, replicable, sustainable water solution systems and providers. Without implementers, it doesn’t matter if the world is dreaming of the most accurate dollar amount in the world or how many studies are done.
At LWI our next $10 million will go where our last $10 million went: to training, consulting and equipping people all over the world to execute the most appropriate, cost-effective integrated water solutions there are and having them teach others to do the same.
1. Click here for a paper that summarizes the results of a World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, “Development Goals: History, Prospects and Costs,” by Shantayanan Devarajan, Margaret J. Miller, and Eric V. Swanson.
2. 2006 Human Development Report: Beyond Scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis, click here pp. 8, 14, 42.
3. International Decade for Action, Water for Life 2005-2015. Click here
4. WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation. Click here
