SAFE WATER
LONDON, 1884
Water worlds: Four women’s stories through time and place There are countless catch-22s when it comes to H₂O, but what are the fundamental facts? Do we have a human right to safe water? What are the track records of governments over the years? In this infographic we sketch the stories of four women across four worlds: From ancient Rome to Victorian England to modern-day Bolivia and Kenya. We then take a deep dive into the links between water and shelter with an expert author of the United Nations World Water Development Report 2023 .
In the East End a mother named Eliza marveled at the convenience of having running water in her home. No longer did she need to worry about the health risks of contaminated water. Her children could wash their hands before meals and the entire family could enjoy the luxury of warm baths after a
long day of study or work. The introduction of clean water not only
Illustration from Pears Soap advert, London News , 1888; https:// commons.wikimedia.org
improved hygiene but also brought a sense of dignity and comfort to average families like hers.
ROME, 24 BCE
Among the one million citizens of Rome was a young woman named Livia, who lived in a modest insula , or apartment block, in the bustling Subura district beside the Roman Forum. Each morning, Livia would awaken to the sounds of her neighbors and the smell of the bakeries below her window. However, her daily routine depended on the aqueducts that brought water to her home. The arrival of fresh water transformed her life. She could fill her clay amphorae with clean water for cooking, bathing and cleaning without the arduous task of fetching it from the Tiber River.
Nidhi Nagabhatla
Painting by Hector Leroux (1829-1900); https://commons. wikimedia.org
Nidhi Nagabhatla is Program Lead (Nature, Climate and Health) at the United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS) in Belgium. A systems analyst and sustainability science specialist, she holds a PhD from the Indian Space Research Organization (awarded by the University of Pune, India). knowledge). What we found was that for big slums like in Nairobi, it’s really challenging to manage water quality. If it’s an informal settlement, the government won’t support any permanent mechanical structure for water quality management. OFQ : That’s surely a problem all over the world. Where else have you seen this? NN: For another research project in Bolivia, first with UNU-INWEH and then with UNU-CRIS, we found most wastewater management handled by the informal sector, especially in big cities like La Paz. One problem is that the capital is dealing with multiple
Nidhi Nagabhatla, United Nations University, Belgium
OPEC Fund Quarterly : How is housing and urbanization tied to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 – Clean Water & Sanitation? Nidhi Nagabhatla: SDG 6 is a benchmark to measure what is needed to ensure our human right to water (essentially, safe drinking water and modern sanitation). For some cities that’s a challenge on many levels, which is only getting more complicated with the rise of rural-urban migration on the one hand and urban expansion on the other. In many cities, infrastructure for water delivery is already exhausted. Systems designed to handle up to a doubling of populations are now failing to deliver basic provisioning services, especially to slums and other informal settlements not recognized by governments. These are often home to refugees, internally displaced persons or people who have fallen into debt. The 2018 edition of the World Water Development Report focused on the
costing and pricing of water delivery services. Our assessment noted how much poor and vulnerable people are paying to get even limited supplies of water for drinking, bathing and other household needs. For some it was between 5 and 50 percent more than rich households because the latter are on the grid. In the slums around Nairobi, for example, people have to buy water from informal tankers or private vendors. Sometimes that means people have to buy bottled water (not luxury mineral water!) – which can cost up to 50 times more than similar quality water from a municipal supply. As a part of UN-Water, the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU- INWEH) contributed to this global report, weighing up innovations that boost water recycling in slums and interventions that help communities do some purification by themselves (especially using local and traditional
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