14148: Minsky: Voordouw:13 Dec 02: Haiti lags the world in new Water Poverty Index--article by CERN, Barbados (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: "tminsky@ix.netcom.com" <tminsky@ix.netcom.com>


Subj: Voordouw: Article by CERN, Barbados, 13 Dec 02: Haiti lags the world
in new Water Poverty Index


Haiti lags the world in new Water Poverty Index (1100 words):

by Julius Gittens, CERN


BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, December 13, (CERN) – Haiti’s daily struggle to
provide safe water for all its drinking, industrial and farming needs has
just got the worst kind of notice – it ranks dead last in the world as
the
most water-poor of 147 nations, according to a new scale developed by
international researchers.

But the team is hoping that with its Water Poverty Index, the rich nations
will sit up and take notice, connect the dots and give the poorest of
Caribbean Community nations and other developing countries the help they
need
to help water drive development.

And with the index there’s enough guilt to go around, too. It singles out
some of the richest nations for being among the greatest abusers of
humanity’
s most precious resource.

In measuring how efficiently a country uses water, the United States ranked
lowest overall in the use category for “wasteful or inefficient water use
practices”. By contrast, Guyana ranks in the top five of countries having
efficient levels of water use for domestic, agricultural and industrial
purposes and the direct contribution of water to economic growth is
relatively high.

"The links between poverty, social deprivation, environmental integrity,
water availability and health become clearer in the (index), enabling
policy
makers and stakeholders to identify where problems exist and the
appropriate
measures to deal with their causes," says Dr. Caroline Sullivan, who led
the
team of researchers developing the Water Poverty Index at the Centre for
Ecology & Hydrology in Wallingford, England.

Caricom can take some comfort from the fact that four member states are
among
30 nations worldwide making the best use of water for development, with two
countries in the top ten.

Guyana, at number five, and Suriname, in sixth place, ranked highest on the
new Water Poverty Index which rates countries’ progress by analysing five
factors: water resources, access, capacity, use and the environment. Each
of
the five categories carries a maximum of 20 points, potentially leading to
a
full mark of 100 points.

Haiti is ranked lowest overall with a score of 35 and the researchers
suggest
the index can be used to leverage more developed assistance aimed at
improving infrastructure.

Belize and Barbados rank above the United States and Japan on the Water
Poverty Index, at 26th and 27th respectively. Trinidad and Tobago ranks
67th
and Jamaica is 73rd, just behind Pakistan and Egypt and immediately ahead
of
Mexico and the Republic of Congo.

The researchers say Guyana and Suriname, the two CARICOM nations on the
South
American continent, come out “surprisingly” high as developing
countries
because they have small populations compared with abundant water resources
while maintaining good access to safe water and sanitation and relatively
good health and education services. At positions five and six respectively,
they are just behind some of the most developed nations, with Finland at
number one, followed by Canada, Iceland and Norway.

But Haiti finds itself in a “particularly disastrous” situation on the
environment score of the index which measures the ecological sustainability
of water, said the research team.

The team says that in Haiti, a lack of fuel and the inability of most
Haitians to afford it force people to strip mountain-side forests for
firewood. “This leads to soil erosion, increased flood runoffs and
discharged
recharge of groundwater aquifers,” says the research team. “As a
consequence, rivers dry up during long periods without rain, and the
groundwater resources are also disappearing. As one of the poorest
countries
in the world, Haitians do not have the means to build physical storage
infrastructure.”

In the resources category, Guyana and Suriname are the two Caribbean
countries among the top five water-rich nations. The resources score
measures
the volume of water resources per person that a country can draw upon. The
bottom five are all in the Middle East, from Israel to Jordan.

Barbados is among 21 countries scoring highest in terms of access to safe
water along with the world’s most developed nations, including Canada,
the
United States, Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland. These countries
achieved this rating, said the researchers, because of their economic
capacity to provide safe water and sanitation to their entire populations
for
drinking, industry and farming.

The five lowest countries in the access category are among the least
developed nations and are all in Africa: Eritrea, Chad, Ethiopia, Malawi
and
Rwanda. “Besides poor levels of access to safe domestic water and
sanitation,
these countries also need irrigation for food production, but the demand is
not being met properly,” the researchers add.

The researchers say that in measuring a country’s capacity, they were
looking
at a country’s ability to buy, manage and lobby for improved water,
education
and health.

“The international Water Poverty Index demonstrates that it is not the
amount
of water resources available that determine poverty levels in a country but
the effectiveness of how you use those resources,” says Dr. Sullivan.

She points to the contrasting cases of Haiti and the Dominican Republic as
examples of how the use of water affects a nation’s water and poverty
situation.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispaniola and have
roughly the same amount of water available to them but Haiti ranks last
overall at 147th while the Dominican Republic ranks 64th.

The researchers say the disparity lies in the two countries differing
levels
of access to the island’s water resources but they also point to a tale
of
two nations on one island with markedly different levels of development.

“Haiti’s resources are less well developed, with less infrastructure,
and
the people of the Dominican Republic have significantly better access to
water than those in Haiti,” Dr. Sullivan says.

But she adds that the Dominican Republic scored higher in the capacity
component of the index, “indicating a healthy, well-educated population
with
a reasonable financial base”. Haiti scores lowest in water use and the
environment aspects of the index, “reflecting the much lower level of
development in the country than in the Dominican Republic”.

Most African nations occupy the lowest end of the water scale but Haiti
ranks
dead last, behind some of the world’s poorest nations: Niger, Ethiopia,
Eritrea, Malawi, Djibouti and Chad.

But the bad news doesn’t get it any better. The France-based World Water
Council, another partner in the research on the Water Poverty Index,
predicts
that by 2025, one in three of the world’s people, living in 50 countries,
will face water shortages. Two years ago, the figure was put at one in five
world-wide, living in 30 countries.

Any hope of positive action may come from the World Water Forum, to be held
in Japan next March when the issues raised by the index are to be
discussed.
Next year, the United Nations marks International Year of Freshwater.

(CERN)

Julius Gittens is programme director of CERN - Caribbean Environmental
Reporters Network (www.cernnet.net).

========================================================

Expert:

Dr. Vincent Sweeney [former president of the Caribbean Water and Wastewater
Association (CWWA)]
Executive Director
Caribbean Environmental Health Institute (CEHI)
St Lucia.
Telephone: 758-452-2501

Harry Philippeaux
Environmental Engineer
Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO)
Barbados.
Telephone: 246-426-3860

Websites:
http://www.unesco.org/water/iyfw2/ - Official site of the International
Year
of Freshwater 2003.
http://www.nerc-wallingford.ac.uk/research/WPI - the Water Poverty Index
explained.


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