Campaigning for water and sanitation
We’re not done on water and sanitation yet! There’s still a few days until World Toilet Day on Wednesday and some more time to sign the letter to Gordon Brown and Douglas Alexander pushing for international action on these issues. Today’s blog is from Steve Cockburn, international campaign coordinator for End Water Poverty, who writes on where we are now and how advocacy and civil society can make a difference.
It was all the way at the end of June that I last wrote a blog for the Lancet Student on the issue of water and sanitation. Then we were just days away from the G8 Summit in Japan, where leaders were to discuss measures to drive progress on water and sanitation - as well as eating their 24 course meals and enjoying outrageously technologically extravagent toilets (which include seat warmers, fake flush sounds and musical accompaniments).
So where are we now as students across the country take action as part of Lancet Student Water and Sanitation week?
Well as always it’s a mixed picture - some real steps forward, some genuine progress, but nothing yet that comes anywhere close to effectively tackling a crisis that kills 5,000 children every day and holds back efforts to achieve universal primary education, eradicate poverty and promote gender equality.
The G8 Summit itself was a bit of a damp squib. With attention on a climate change deal, the food crisis and Zimbabwe’s electoral malaise, sanitation campaigners (!) were left rueing a missed opportunity as leaders ultimately failed to deliver a breakthrough agreement.
What they did do was set up a group to take the issue forward in 2009 - a useful step to keep the issue on the agenda, a crucial window of opportunity for campaigners, but ultimately delaying serious action for another year (with millions of lives lost in the meantime).
Yet even though the G8 did not deliver, it did reinforce a sense of momentum in the international community, and contributed to amplifying the wake up call that is slowly - painfully slowly - beginning to be heard more and more.
And this was amplified at the UN High-Level Meeting on the Millennium Development Goals, where Heads of State from all over the world met to discuss measures (or perhaps ways of avoiding measures) to accelerate development efforts.
As part of the meeting the Governments of the UK and Netherlands announced their support for a ‘global framework of action on water and sanitation’, including many of the things that the End Water Poverty campaign has been calling for in terms of international bodies to drive progress and support for national-level plans to meet the MDG targets.
The announcement was a big step forward for the campaign, and testament to the campaigning efforts around the world. It followed just hours after End Water Poverty presented a global petition of over 960,000 people to the Dutch Prime Minister Jan Balkenende.
But of course it remains much too little. With just the support of 2 countries so far, and very little new money invested, the UK-Dutch plan will not end the sanitation crisis, nor come close. Yet with a rejuvenated international effort, with more countries signing up in support, and more money invested we could make serious headway in tackling a real health scandal.
So it is a real challenge for campaigners to make this happen - and a real opportunity ahead of us in 2009. Which is why I am delighted to see that medical students are becoming so active in this cause - the global campaign really needs your support.
Not only do we need to press the case that you health and sanitation are inspearable, but also in a challenging economic climate that investing in sanitation pays - the UN estimates that every $1 invested can reap a $9 economic return. It’s essential for health, for life, for dignity and for development efforts across the board.
And we have to challenge complacency and indifference. At the UN meeting in September, Gordon Brown made an appeal to member states to act on poverty, arguing that “our greatest enemy is not war or inequality or any single ideology or a financial crisis; it is too much indifference. Indifference in the face of sole-destroying poverty, indifference in the face of catastrophic threats to our planet.”
These sentiments are, in my view, absolutely right. But we - and the Prime Minsiter - need to extend it further to shake off the indifference and neglect shown to one of the world’s great health crises.
Good luck campaigning!
Links:
End Water Poverty website: http://www.endwaterpoverty.org/
End Water Poverty blog from the UN High-Level Meeting on the MDGs: http://www.endwaterpoverty.org/news__events/128.asp
End Water Poverty blog from the G8 Summit:
http://www.endwaterpoverty.org/news__events/122.asp