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Bristan 6''(150mm) Luxury Rub Clean Shower Rose
A global water crisis is looming. More than a billion people worldwide lack access to clean and safe water. Some 12 million people die annually as a result, and millions more are struck by diseases associated with the lack of sanitary water. Last year, more people likely died from lack of water than from armed conflicts.
Today is World Water Day and the launch of the United Nation's international water decade, aimed at promoting the UN Millennium Goal of halving the number of people without access to clean, safe water. This is not the first time the UN has made bombastic declarations about water for everyone. It did so in 1977, when governments of member states promised to provide their populations with water. In fact the first international water decade actually took place in the 1980s, to little practical effect.
There may be a solution to what had been an insoluble problem. In recent years, a small number of developing country governments have turned to the private sector for help and have introduced market-oriented reforms in the water sector. Overall, the results have been encouraging.
The reforms have had limited scope—97 percent of all water distribution, after all, is still in government hands—but millions of new households in such diverse locations as Argentina, Cambodia, Guinea, Morocco, and the Philippines have been connected to water networks as a result of private investment. In developing countries with private investment in water infrastructure, 80 percent of the population now has access to an improved water source. Countries that don't allow private investment in water distribution have lagged behind their entrepreneurial rivals.
The attempts at privatization have met vociferous resistance. A coalition of non-governmental organizations, trade unions for public employees, and international organizations such as the United Nations have done all they can to limit the role of the market and the business community. And they have had some success. The pace of privatization has slowed down, and the World Bank, one of the major advocates of privatization, has gone on the defensive. Global water companies are less and less inclined to invest in developing countries, for fear that their efforts may be nationalized.