Life is Healthy

Clean Water Is A Human Right

Clean water is a human right
Kevin Watkins / International Herald Tribune
Published: November 10, 2006

NAIROBI: Vivian Neyamba, aged six months, just became another grim statistic in the world's most lethal and least reported humanitarian disaster. She lost her life not to a drought, a flood or a violent conflict, but to a killer that claims the lives of 500 children across the world each day - diarrhea caused by a global crisis in water and sanitation.

I have been following these issues for years. But standing outside the tiny corrugated iron shack in the sprawling slum of Kibera in Nairobi, where Vivian Neyamba lived her short life, I got a heartbreaking glimpse into what it actually means to live without clean water and basic sanitation.

In a slum of more than half a million people, the largest informal settlement in Africa, almost no one has a tap in their home. At dawn, armies of women and young girls line up with buckets to buy water at roadside standpipes from private vendors. On a bad day, they have to wait more than an hour, or go without.

You can smell the sanitation crisis in the air. Kibera is a toilet-free zone. Lacking any alternative, people defecate into plastic bags which are thrown into ditches. Raw sewage is everywhere. It is in the noxious black liquid that floods through people's homes when it rains, in the refuse heaps that children play in, and in the dusty lanes that pass for streets.

It is also in the water that people drink. Fractured pipes carrying water from the mains to the standpipes suck in raw sewage. "That is why our children get sick," says Margaret Olewoch, a birth attendant who has lived in Kibera for 20 years, pointing to a leaking pipe. "The water here is dangerous."

Not everyone in southern Nairobi faces a daily water crisis. Cross Ngang Road, which marks the northern perimeter of the slum, and you enter a different water world. Here the water sprinklers of the Royal Nairobi Golf Club work overtime to keep the greens in a condition to which the city's business elite and diplomatic corps are accustomed.

Back on the other side of Ngang Road, water kills children. Typhoid and dysentery are rampant, with child death rates running at almost four times the average for Nairobi. The slums of Kibera are a microcosm of one of the greatest development challenges of the 21st century. More than a billion people today lack clean water. About 2.6 billion - half of the developing world's population - lack access to sanitation.

These twin deficits inflict enormous human, social and economic costs. Unclean water is the second biggest killer of children, claiming more than two million lives annually. Diseases caused by water keep countless millions more children out of school, reinforce poverty, and act as a brake on economic growth. They cost African countries about 5 percent of their gross domestic product - equivalent to what the region receives in aid. Under the Millennium Development Goals, governments have pledged to halve by 2015 the proportion of people without access to water and sanitation. But at the rate we are going, this crucial goal will be missed.

The governance of water markets is at the heart of the problem. All too often, the poorer you are, the more you pay. Municipal water utilities provide cheap water, usually heavily subsidized, to industry and high-income suburbs, while people living in slums rely on a complex web of intermediaries such as tanker-truck operators and water vendors.

You can see the results in Nairobi. People living in the slums of Kibera pay five times more for their water than the Royal Nairobi Golf Club. In fact, they pay more per liter than people living in New York or London. From Manila, to Mumbai and Jamaica, the same story applies in slums across the world. So what can be done to tackle the global crisis in water and sanitation?

Continued at the link above.
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The Human Right To Water
Very comprehensive report from seven years ago that is still relevant today.

My comments:

Access to resources that sustain life and maintain health are a human right under international law. Water is a resource that sustains life from the time of being a fetus in the womb. Without water there would be no food to sustain us, nor to provide us with safe and adequate sanitation facilities that guard against diseases that cause illness and death.

I believe for any community or country to deny such a right to its people is a human rights abuse that should be punishable under that law. Of course however, there are groups that do not wish for water to be declared a universal human right. Those governments that use water as a political weapon or as a way to divert it to richer areas are only two groups of people as well as corporations that would be prone to oversight and fines for violating the human rights of indigenous people on the lands they take water from to make a profit.

They will claim water should not be declared a human right as to avert wars, but in essence it is the quality, lack of and scarcity of water resulting from higher prices, lower quality, lack of moral will in bringing sensible water management and education to underdeveloped countries, diversion, privitization, dams, and environmental policies that cause drought and deforestation that actually lead to the wars. People can and have always come to agreements among themselves. It is only when governments and other entities with ulterior motives get in between for their own benefit that you see problems begin.

World Water Forum Did Not Declare Clean Water To Be A Human Right

Look to the WORLD BANK to also see why this declaration will not happen. The World Bank actually pushes for privitization of water behind their compassionate facade.

World Bank And WTO/ Corporate Control Of Water/Dr. Vandana Shiva

There are thousands of Vivian Neyambas in this world, and they all die early senseless deaths that could be prevented if their fellow humans had the slightest bit of morality above the insensitivity and ignorance that prevails in a world gone mad with greed. What price do you place on a human life?

The bath mat's location is, of course, top secret. It is like when a pair of rare eagles nest together – the public is not allowed to know exactly where in case some lunatic steals the eggs. It has been the same ever since school – one person has to spoil it for all the rest. Though I imagine that an omelette made out of eagles' eggs would be very tasty.

I fear that I have already given too much away about the bath mat's location though, and each morning I dread finding a note attached to the bath mat that reads something like “Bathmatwatch Sucks! (What about doing more stuff like your clever satires on government policies and organised religion? They were great and acted as much better calling cards for your writing.)”

I saw Se7en again the other night, and what would be even more chilling is if, like at the scene of the second murder (Greed), one morning I found that the bath mat had simply been rotated by 180°. I might not notice till I got back home and compared the photo with the previous day's and saw that the dog was standing on its head. (It is a dog, not a mouse.) I would then have no choice but to go back and look at the back of the bath mat, where there would be a message written in fingerprints that read “I am in your flat! (And what about doing more stuff about how your obsessive nature causes minor disagreements with your girlfriend? Those were really funny. This bath mat stuff is getting old.)” Admittedly, my stalker would have to have used quite a small finger.

But what if I have two stalkers, working independently of each other? Or, indeed, any even number of stalkers who all rotate the bath mat by 180° between me taking a photograph each day? I would be oblivious to their existence, and could only hope that they would get into an argument about who gets to stab me that culminated in them all stabbing each other to death simultaneously.

This is why I must be careful.

Water Clash Evoked By Climate Talks
Water Clash Warning Evoked by Kenya Climate Talks
KENYA: November 14, 2006

NAIROBI - Global climate change talks in Nairobi this week may be nowhere more relevant than a nearby settlement where water shortages a year ago sparked clashes which saw 25 people speared, clubbed or chopped to death.

Masai herdsmen and settled farmers say the rains have changed on the flat plains that spread uninterrupted between distant mountains in Kenya's Rift Valley. And a year ago drought lit the touch paper to old rivalries over who owns what land, triggering a pitched battle between two sides wielding machetes, arrows, spears and clubs.

"It's the first time water was the cause," said Zacharia Igeria, chief administrator in the 50,000-strong community of the Maai Mahiu region some 50 km (30 miles) from Nairobi.
Drought last year shrank the river Ewasu Kidong, which is Masai for "water jug", to exceptionally low levels, Igeria said.

Water and pasture shortages in the past three years have decimated Masai cattle herds by four-fifths, the herdsmen say. The dwindling of the vital local river coupled with farmers' plans to divert its waters to irrigate cash crops sparked the conflict 12 months ago, Igeria said.
Disrupted rain cycles are the type of weather changes many scientists predict will become more frequent as a result of climate change, as mankind releases heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.

Deforestation has also been blamed for more frequent droughts in Africa. Elders of the local Masai had never heard of global warming nor the UN climate change conference less than two hour's drive away in Nairobi, but wanted to give a message to the 70-plus environment ministers descending on the capital.

"We're not educated, we're not aware of climate change," local Masai elder William Sayo told Reuters and local journalists. "We need help from you to explain how we can live according to the climate. Come and teach us about what is happening."

More at the link.
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The bolded sentence above is exactly the crux of this problem worldwide. Ignorance about the real effects of climate change and the inability to or lack of will to get this information to people who need it and to teach them how to mitigate it is simply unacceptable. People should not have to die to get water. We should not be killing each other for it. We have what we need to provide water to EVERYONE IN THIS WORLD. What we need to do is take it upon ourselves to become educators.

I think that like the Peace Corps, we need a Sustainability Corps that travels the world to offer education, tools, and hope to people in areas of the world like Kenya in order to assist them in taking action to protect and conserve their natural resources. And we must also take into account that for many in this world water is a sacred fluid, and not having rain is seen as a sign from God. They cannot understand the scientific facts behind climate change, nor do they have many of the skills and tools necessary to harvest rainwater that they may get. And I ask , why not?

It is unconscienable that people of this world should thirst for knowledge as well as water and not have it given to them, especially regarding a situation that is a matter of life and death.

See:
African Conservation Foundation

Water Scarcity Major Crisis Facing Africa

With all the billions of dollars worth of weight loss products and services being pushed at us it's easy to overlook the growing market for making life more comfortable for obese people.

There are some people who have gotten fed up with being uncomfortable in a world outfitted for average-sized people and have gone out and started businesses which focus on easing the daily lives of those who are overweight.

Business 2.0 had a very interesting article about this a few months back.

As an example of large corporations paying attention, Toyota has recently added three inches to the width of the seats available on their RAV4 car model (shown above). Many other large corporations are also starting to pay heed. But the most interesting stories are about the people who have personally started a business to help overweight people be more comfortable in their daily lives.

Tim Barry is one entrepreneur who took matters in his own hands. He was upset and embarrassed about flying with extra sized seat-belt extensions, especially when the airlines ran out and didn't have enough on board. He started selling seat-belt extensions online and has done extraordinarily well with it. Now he's expanding his products and also sells extra strength coat hangers, high-capacity scales, and extra-large plush bath towels. So far he has only two employees, but his sales will be over $1 million this year. And his only marketing costs are online ads with Google adwords.

He says the demand is there and the market is wide-open.

(You might want to open this in another tab/window.)

And did bare feet in recent times
Walk upon this old bath mat blue?
And has the rain of shower or bath
Now been replaced by morning dew?
And did the naked and the wet
Stand forth on this absorbent weave?
And is where dampened bodies dried
Among the fallen autumn leaves?

Bring me my towel; And now my pants;
Bring me my talc (my feet perspire);
Bring me my Lynx deodorant!
Bring me my dressing gown of fire!
I will not cease my Bathmatwatch,
Nor shall the words of doubters scotch,
Till we have somewhere warm to stand
In every bathroom in the land.

The bath mat has undergone possibly the largest single day's movement – a massive shift to the right and a straightening back against the wall, leaving it clear of the left-hand paving slab for the first time. It is fitting that this seismic shift has happened today as there has been a lot of debate in the comments boxes about whether the bath mat is actually a bath mat or not. I am a rational person with a scientific background, so I am happy to consider the possibilities with an open mind:

1. It is a bath mat. I am the only person here to have seen it “in the flesh” so you’ll have to take my word for it, but it really does look like a bath mat. Er, that’s about all I have, but people have done more with less. Is it too small to be a bath mat? I don’t know – how big are your feet?

2. It is a doormat. No doormat is this colour or made of this material. It’s definitely the colour you’d see in a bathroom. And it’s not next to a door (there is a perfectly adequate doormat several yards up the path, next to the door – the clue’s in the name, guys), and nobody seems to be wiping their feet on it. If it had been used as a doormat in the past it would surely be much dirtier.

3. It is a carpet offcut. Zoom in and you’ll see that it’s not an offcut as it has finished edges and rounded corners. This theory is a non-starter.

4. It is a “carpet square”. Again, zoom in and you’ll see that it’s not any kind of carpet tile or offcut. And as for it being square, yesterday’s photos dispel that myth. But could it be a carpet sample?

To those who still say that it is just a piece of carpet, I say “What is a bath mat, if not a piece of carpet?” Can any of you prove that this “piece of carpet” has not been used as a bath mat?

I’m not going to suggest that the “carpet camp” Doubting Thomases be rounded up and burnt at the stake. That would probably be “politically incorrect”, even though they are heretics and clearly wrong. Instead, I will just challenge their beliefs with humour and satire – perhaps a scatological musical starring a chat show host, or some badly-drawn cartoons. Or maybe a book entitled The Kashan-ic Verses. I don’t think that any of these would cause any problems.

Ultimately, it is like the Turin Shroud. (But with the face of a dog, not Jesus. Or a mouse.) I can’t afford to get it carbon-dated or anything, but I could look on the back to see if there is a label that says something like “bath mat” or “carpet sample – light blue sculptured”.

But wouldn’t you rather have faith?

There has been some discussion recently as to whether the bath mat is actually a bath mat at all. I will write at more length about this tomorrow (so long as it is still there, of course), but I would first like to just dispel the myth (some might say “heresy”) that it is a “carpet square”.

Exhibit ‘A’:


Exhibit ‘B’:


As you can see, the bath mat is clearly rectangular, not square.

And yes, that is the same 30cm (12") ruler in each photograph. Answering the question “What are you doing outside my house?” would have been bad enough, without having to face a supplementary query of “And why do you have two rulers which look superficially identical, but on closer inspection differ in length by the ratio necessary to make this carpet square look like a rectangular bath mat?”