Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health
Chairman Donald M. Payne
Briefing/Hearing: Africa's Water Crisis and the U.S. Response
(Briefing title: Africa's Water Crisis and the 2006 UNDP Human Development Report)
Opening Statement
May 16, 2007, 2:30pm, RHOB 2172
Good afternoon and thank you for joining the Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health. We will begin with a special briefing on the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) 2006 Human Development Report. This report discusses the global water crisis and the relationship between access to safe water and achieving broader human development and security goals. The briefing will be followed by a hearing on Africa's water crisis and the U.S. response.
The subject of today's hearing is tasteless, odorless, and colorless. Or at least, it should be. It is a naturally occurring compound, which we in the West often take for granted. Civilization flourished around it, yet it is the source of conflict and disease and the cause of many thousands of deaths each day. We are talking about water.
More people die due to lack of water globally than due to armed conflicts. This is a global crisis.
The U.S. is fortunate to have one of the best supplies of drinking water in the world and, per capita, Americans consume most of the world's water. Some have predicted that water will become the next oil. It is more precious now than ever in our history.
In contrast, more than half of the developing world's population lacks access to sanitation and 1.1 billion people lack access to improved drinking water. The water crisis leads directly to deepening poverty and it undermines development. More than half of all people in the developing world suffer from one or more water-borne diseases leading to more deaths than Malaria and HIV/AIDS. The rural poor have less access to water than those living in urban areas.
The lack of clean water claims the lives of 4,900 children every day, 440 children in Uganda each week, and 250,000 children in Ethiopia each year.
Africa is one of the most water-impoverished regions where the access to safe drinking water increased by 7% between 1990 and 2004, yet since then, the total number of people without access to improved drinking water sources actually increased by 60 million.
Africa's water supply is dwindling because of desertification, population growth, uneven distribution of rainfall, diminishing natural humidity due to climate change, depletion of groundwater, and pollution of surface and groundwater sources. Together these factors are contributing to environment-related security problems and the limited capacity of African governments to reduce poverty.
The relationship between water and conflict is rapidly growing as countries compete for critical water sources. There have been warnings that the next generation of wars will be over water. Cooperation has been moving forward in the case of the Nile river basin dispute between Egypt, DRC, Burundi, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. There is no doubt that more and more regions will be threatened by lack of water particularly as populations continue to grow, as current fresh water sources are degraded, and as environmental and climatologic conditions change.
Part of our hearing today is therefore to review U.S. water programs especially through the Water for the Poor Act and other programs. I want to thank Congressman Blumenauer for his leadership in confronting this issue and introducing the ''Water for the Poor Act of 2005''. It was signed into law by President Bush on November 30, 2005 and amends the Foreign Assistance Act to make increasing access to safe water and sanitation a major purpose of United States foreign assistance efforts. Mr. Blumenauer, I look forward to your testimony today.
I have many concerns about the implementation of this Act. A huge proportion of the resources goes to disaster relief war-torn regions of Iraq and Afghanistan. While the focus in Iraq is on large infrastructure projects, in Africa it is concentrated on digging wells and technologies for water treatment. We did not pass the Water for the War Act. We passed the Water for the Poor Act.
On top of that, the President's request for Fiscal Year 2008 suggests a cut in water programs for Sub-Saharan Africa. We will not meet the Millennium Development Goal of cutting in half the number of people without access to safe drinking water and sanitation by 2015 at the rate we are going. Africa's water crisis demands immediate action and drastically increased resources from the US and all donor nations.
This global crisis poses a threat to our own national security, to global development, and to all of humanity.
In our briefing we are honored to have Ms. Cecilia Ugaz from the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Program and Ambassador Ali Representative of the African Union to the U.S.
This will be followed by three distinguished panels before us today starting with Representative Blumenauer, Ms. Claudia McMurray, Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs of the U.S. Department of State and Walter North, Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Africa of USAID; topped off by two water experts from the NGO water community Peter Lochery from Care and Malcolm Morris from Millennium Water Alliance. I look forward to hearing from our distinguished experts and witnesses.
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