Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis
- "Not having access" to water and sanitation is a polite euphemism for a form of deprivation that threatens life, destroy opportunity and undermines human dignity.
- Ensuring that every person has access to at least 20 liters of clean water each day is a minimum requirement for respecting the human right to water.
- The scarcity at the heart of the global water crisis is rooted in power, poverty and inequality, not in physical availability.
- Water and sanitation are among the most preventive medicines available to governments to reduce infectious disease.
- Land and water are two key assets on which poor people depend for their livelihoods.
- Across much of the developing world, unclean water is an immeasurably greater threat to human security than violent conflict.
- While one part of the world sustains designer bottled-water market that generates no tangible health benefits, another part suffers acute public health risks because people have to drink water from drains or from lakes and rivers.
- Unclean water and poor sanitation have claimed more lives over the past century than any other cause.
- Poor people get less access to clean water and pay more for it.
Water scarcity can be physical, economic or institutional, and-like water itself-it can fluctuate over time and space. - Water policy reform should be seen as an integral part of national poverty reduction strategies.
