Relevance for Development and Poverty Reduction

Water is the source of life

A girl is drinking water out of a public sink.

Not to be taken for granted: safe water from the tap. Source: KfW Photo Archive / photothek.net

Despite huge advances since 1990, approximately one billion people around the world still have to live without sufficient drinking water, and more than 2.7 billion people do not have access to adequate basic sanitation facilities. Worst affected is the poor population in fast-growing areas on the outskirts of cities and in rural settlements. Development in these areas is frequently neglected. The challenge is to find supply solutions that are affordable to poor households, accepted by them, and work permanently.

As a result of high population growth rapid urbanisation, industrial development and the expansion of irrigated agriculture water is becoming increasingly scarce in many places. In most cases this has predominantly negative consequences for soil and water courses (groundwater, rivers, and lakes). The depletion of water resources leads to lower groundwater levels and, in coastal regions, to increasing salinisation of groundwater. It also results in shortfalls in the ecologically essential minimum runoff, causing problems such as lakes drying out or deltas silting up.

Climate Change Intensifies Conflicts Over Water Use

Only a fraction of the world's industrial and household wastewater is purified and fed back into the water cycle. By far the largest part flows untreated into water courses and results in serious and sometimes irreversible contamination of water resources. Moreover, surface water and groundwater can become heavily polluted by the use of fertilisers and pesticides in agriculture. Only cost-intensive reprocessing can make the water usable again.

It is no accident that the Latin-derived word "rival" originally meant "someone who lives by a river", but today describes a competitor or an opponent. There has always been competition between water users - in countless different situations. The growing scarcity of water intensifies the conflicts over the various claims on its use even further. The two deepest divides are between agricultural irrigation and the supply of drinking water on the one hand, and the urban and rural water supply on the other. Disputes between regions and between states also add to the problems. Over 250 of the world's water catchments are shared by more than two states and over 40 per cent of the world's population live on or by rivers, lakes and groundwater sources that span boundaries. Large-scale headwater schemes, such as irrigation and hydropower projects, directly affect the amount of water available to people living along the lower courses.

Global climate change will further exacerbate the situation in arid regions. The increasing incidence of extreme events - extreme droughts or floods - can be disastrous for the economies affected. They have a particularly negative impact on the lives of the poorest of the poor, who often live in the most endangered areas or have the fewest resources to counteract these problems.

Further Information

Last updated: July 2011