Programs and Events 2006
Ambassador Ware Addresses Helsinki International Rotary Club on 'Water - Who Has It and Who Doesn't?'
On 30 October, Ambassador Ware addressed a meeting of Helsinki's International Rotary Club. She spoke about her professional career in the water sector and the global inequities which exist in our access to water. She highlighted the significance of water in US foreign policy and offered several solutions for how the international community can address the most pressing challenges we face with access to water today. This was Ambassador Ware's first presentation to the Helsinki International Rotary Club.
Introduction
Thank you very much for the kind introduction. I want to thank the members of the International Rotary Club for giving me a platform to share my thoughts with you on a subject which is dear to my heart: water. I also want to thank my deputy at the Embassy, Amy Hyatt, for establishing a vital connection between our Embassy and the Rotary community. I am confident this will be the beginning of a long friendship. It is also one long known in my family where my father served as a district governor in Pennsylvania.
Before assuming the role of American Ambassador to the Republic of Finland, I worked in the private sector as the Chairman of a NYSE listed company, American Water Works, the largest water-utility holding company in the United States. I am proud to say that American Water Works supplied clean, dependable and fairly priced water to millions of people across 24 states and in three provinces in Canada.
I also served as the Honorary President of WaterAid America, an international charity which includes WaterAid UK and an Australian component. WaterAid is an international charity dedicated exclusively to helping the world’s poorest people provide their own safe domestic water, sanitation and hygiene education. In the year 2004-2005, WaterAid helped 610,000 people gain access to safe drinking water and 540,000 people gain access to basic sanitation. With projects in 17 countries, and policy work helping to influence decisions around the world, WaterAid hopes to one day realize the common dream of a world where everyone has access to clean water and effective sanitation.
WaterAid is not alone. I know that Rotary clubs around the world are engaged in water projects. The last few decades have seen a proliferation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who are taking an active and vocal lead in determining how water should be protected and shared. Among the largest charities are the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which is exploring a new learning initiative in water, sanitation, and hygiene.
I would like to discuss three major themes today. First, I will focus on the global inequities which exist in our access to water. Second, I will highlight the significance of water in U.S. foreign policy, including an illustration of one of water development successes in Tirupur, India. Finally, I will offer a number of solutions for how the international community can address the most pressing challenges we face with access to water today.
Global Inequities in Access to Water
Former Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy once said: ‘Water has become a highly precious resource. There are some places where a barrel of water costs more than a barrel of oil.’ The former Saudi Ambassador to the United States made the same point at a conference we both attended in 1999 when he commented that “here water is more valuable than my oil.”. We should be very grateful that Finland and most of the United States, for example, are blessed with access to high quality water. This may not always be the case, however. Most countries in the Near East and North Africa suffer from acute water scarcity, as do countries such as Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa, and large parts of China and India. In the Middle East and North Africa, small amounts of annual rainfall create a physical water scarcity. As a result, the region is largely dependent upon unsustainable groundwater abstractions. In sub-Saharan Africa, a high degree of precipitation variability coupled with a severe lack of necessary infrastructure have led to extreme water scarcity in many places. Even in the United States water is one of the scarcest resources in some of the fastest growing areas of the country, especially where land use is not appropriately guided. In some areas of North America and Mexico, existing water supplies are, or will be, inadequate to meet the demands for water for people, in cities, on farms, because these communities are irrigating the desert for agricultural purposes, a practice that requires high water use and can rob their “neighbors” downstream by over-consumption.
Water is a precious global commodity. It drives commerce, is fundamental for good health, and may be the single most elemental need of a community. Yet more than 1.2 billion people do not have safe water to drink; 2.6 billion lack sanitation facilities. Tragically, each year, nearly 2 million people – mostly children under five – die from preventable diarrheal diseases. The human health consequences of unsafe water and poor hygiene are severe. At any given point in time, 50 percent of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by people suffering from illnesses related to impure water or lack of hydration. An estimated 1.8 million deaths annually are caused by diarrhea linked to unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene, accounting for around 17 percent of all causes of mortality for children under five years old in developing countries.
Very poor people struggle to pay for food and water; the amount of water needed for good personal and domestic hygiene is too expensive to buy from street vendors and inevitably too far to carry in the case of distant water sources. The result? A family spends more money on water than on food. The lack of clean water controls people's times, livelihoods and quality of life. Women and children in developing countries spend hours each day walking miles to collect and retrieve water. This water is usually dirty and unsafe yet they have no alternative. Carrying heavy water containers is a debilitating task, which completely consumes a family’s time and energy. Women in Africa and Asia daily carry 20kg of water on their heads, the same weight as the average British airport luggage allowance. They cannot then do domestic or income generating work and children cannot go to school because their days are spent on this trek. Even if time permits, young women do not attend school because there are no latrines. There is an intimate link between access to water and poverty levels which we ignore at our own peril.
Sound water management is the answer – to lessen disease, improve human health, promote agricultural and industrial development, foster sustainable economic growth, and help to preserve land, coastal, and marine ecosystems. Water can be a source of tension or a promoter of cooperation, especially in the Middle East. President Arafat once approached me to see if my former company would work to address water scarcity in his region. President Suleyman Demeril, the former head of his country’s water department, also invited me and the heads of two British water companies to Istanbul and Ankara for separate visits to discuss the water needs of his people. While current global political conditions represent immense challenges, water and sanitation improvements present equally compelling opportunities to create a healthier, more prosperous and just global community.
The UN Millennium Development Goals set an ambitious agenda for improving the human condition by 2015. Since water is life sustaining, naturally all of those goals are dependent upon the access to safe and sufficient water. In effect, the progress of a country towards these goals can partly be measured by assessing that country's water situation. It is also the core of the World Bank’s mission to reduce poverty. In fact, the World Bank is the world's largest external financier of water supply and sanitation and is recognized as a lead agency in terms of sector knowledge and analytics.
Water And US Foreign Policy
President Bush has said, “Persistent poverty and oppression can lead to hopelessness and despair. And when governments fail to meet the most basic needs to their people, these failed states can become havens for terror … Development provides the resources to build hope, prosperity, and security.” Access to basic water and sanitation services, as well as the processes involved in ensuring sound management of water resources, are a key part of achieving U.S. humanitarian and foreign policy goals. Both Secretary Powell and Secretary Rice put that premise into an action plan.
Our goals?
• To increase access to safe water and sanitation;
• Improve water resource management and productivity; and
• Improve water security by strengthening cooperation on shared waters.
Most recently, the bulk of USG resources have been spent in the area of water supply and sanitation infrastructure in the two major geographic areas of activity, the Middle East and U.S. border areas. With a few exceptions, U.S. involvement in international water issues does not directly involve construction of large-scale water works or infrastructure. Rather, the USG, through its international agencies such as the Department of State, US Agency for International Development (USAID), through intermittent domestic agency participation, collaboration with NGOs, engages in activities which husband resources and aim to be sustainable. The Water for the Poor Initiative managed by the USAID, for example, has provided more than 24 million people with improved access to drinking water and more than 26 million people with access to sanitation.
A Water Revolution Fuels Industry In City In India
I would like to briefly highlight one of our many success stories. For two decades, the textile and garment industry in Tirupur, a city in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, was growing faster than anyone thought possible. By the 1990s, however, the town was running out of water, a critical input for dyeing and bleaching.
The Tirupur Exporters Association, the Tamil Nadu government, and a private company reached a deal on the first government concession to the private sector for water supply in India. But they needed to secure financing. USAID stepped in, providing a $25 million loan guarantee. The partnership then raised more than $220 million in loan and equity financing. It invested this amount in building an integrated water delivery system. You can imagine the positives: an improved water distribution network, the construction of the city's first sewerage collection system and treatment plant, and the chance to build the first low-cost sanitation facilities in slums.
Tirupur's garment industry is now creating jobs to meet surging global demand. Exports are expected to grow 30 percent in 2006 and projected to reach $2 billion by 2010. Unemployment in Tirupur is rare, and wages are well above average. Tirupur residents are receiving lower cost, high-quality drinking water daily, instead of waiting up to 10 days for poor-quality water - or paying water truckers inordinately high prices. Thanks partly to this success, more than 30 deals like Tirupur are in the pipeline throughout India.
Our Record
Over the past three years (2003-2005), the United States allocated more than $1.7 billion to support 100+ projects and programs in more than 50 developing countries throughout the world. These projects focused on increasing access to water and sanitation, watershed management, and increasing the productivity of water in industry and agriculture. Through these activities, over 24 million people received improved access to safe drinking water, and over 26 million people received access to improved sanitation.
In December 2005, President Bush signed the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act – making a priority of U.S. development assistance the goals to reduce by half the proportion of people unable to reach or afford access to safe water and the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015.
The Department of Defense is also playing a major role in the management of water resources in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Solutions
Secretary of State Rice, in consultation with USAID, has developed a strategy to strengthen U.S. efforts on water and sanitation in developing countries. How are we going to move forward?
• Governance is important. We will strengthen the role of institutions at the local, national, and regional levels to optimize the benefits from water among its potential uses and develop a supportive environment for private sector participation.
• Mobilizing Local Capital is important. We will promote sound utility management and cost recovery, and use innovative approaches (such as loan guarantees, pooled and revolving funds) to support investment by the private sector.
• Infrastructure Investment is important. Investing in both large and small-scale infrastructure to increase access to basic services and improve water management is vital.
• The Protection of Public Health is a necessity. We will advance improved hygiene activities including the most suitable disinfection method, safe water storage, hand washing, and household sanitation.
• We will foster Science and Technology Cooperation by advancing the state-of-art knowledge in areas related to water management including pollution prevention, satellite remote sensing, global information systems, and modeling.
The global inequities in access to water present the international community with a multitude of challenges. We need to answer these challenges to safeguard our most precious national resource. After all, access to clean water is a fundamental right. The beliefs of the 2005 Stockholm Water Prize Winner, Ms Sunita Narain, are very pertinent: ‘Humanity must realize, policy-makers and public alike, that water management which involves communities and households needs to become the greatest cooperative enterprise in the world.’ We all have a role to play in this endeavor. I urge each of you as citizens and as human beings to remember this each time that you drink from a glass of clean, clear water.
Thank you.