By Kemal Dervis and Trevor Manuel

In the 1970s, the Club of Rome and others warned of coming dire scarcities of food, oil and other essentials, the seemingly inexorable consequence of rising demand for limited resources.

More recently, we have heard forecasts of inevitable future "water wars," predictions rooted in fears that there is simply not enough fresh water to meet the needs of an expanding and quickly urbanizing global population.

The concern is understandable: There are now more than 1 billion people with no regular access to clean water for drinking, bathing, cooking or basic sanitation. And the consequences are already appallingly evident: An estimated 2 million children die annually because their families don't have potable water or functioning toilets.

Yet a rational analysis of the water problem shows that there is no objective reason financial, logistical or geographical why the poor cannot be provided with enough clean water to meet their basic human needs. As we have seen with staple grains and hydrocarbons, the supply and delivery of crucial goods is the result of many variables, some inherently unpredictable, from shifting market incentives and technological innovation to public investment and policy frameworks. And sometimes the missing ingredient is political will.
 
In Cape Town last Thursday, the United Nations Development Program launched a pioneering study that debunks many of the myths of the worldwide water crisis among them the inevitability of cross-border conflict and suggests many practical solutions.

The central argument of the newly released 2006 Human Development Report, "Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis," is that access to a safe and affordable water supply should be considered a basic human right. Governments can and should recognize this right by ensuring that all citizens have access to a minimum of 20 liters of clean water per day, and that those who cannot afford to pay get it for free.

Unquestionably, many parts of the planet are faced with acute water shortages, a problem which is being exacerbated by global warming. Whether it is water or the broader problem of global warming, the challenge is fundamentally not one of aggregate resources, but rather one of the priorities of political leaders, nationally and internationally.

One of the targets of the Millennium Development Goals is to halve the proportion of people in the world without access to safe drinking water by 2015. If we continue with business as usual, 234 million people will miss that basic water target.

All too often, water pricing operates on the perverse principle that the poorer you are, the more it costs. Urban slum residents pay some of the world's highest prices for water. The poorest households of El Salvador, Nicaragua and Jamaica devote more than 10 percent of their income to water; in the United Kingdom, by contrast, spending more than 3 percent of family earnings on water bills is considered an economic hardship.

Too much of the policy discussion on water delivery has been dominated by a dead-end debate on privatization versus State ownership. This is a false choice: There is a wide range of rational financial and policy approaches for securing clean water supplies, with most relying on some combination of public and private sector involvement. The real challenge is how to get potable water to those who can least afford to pay.

Households hooked up directly to municipal water pipes typically get the cheapest water. The poor have to go through a web of intermediaries tanker truck operators, vendors and other water suppliers to purchase their water supplies. Every step they are forced to take away from the water source adds to the price.

In South Africa, the basic policy framework for a solution is now in place. Access to water was one of the defining racial divides during apartheid. In the post-apartheid period, the adoption of a rights-based approach to water supply created a legitimate sense of entitlement among citizens, empowering communities to hold local governments, private utilities and the national government to account.

The government used its regulatory powers to require all municipalities to provide a basic minimum of 25 liters per day free of charge to each household, with the target of achieving free basic water for all by 2008, with no household more than 200 meters from a water source. The task is not yet complete, but South Africa's citizens rightly expect the government to keep its promises.

The remote provincial towns and the burgeoning mega cities of the developing world all need major investments in water utilities. This will be costly, and in many cases impossible without financial help. But the ultimate price of a failure to invest in clean water supplies in healthcare costs, lost productivity, and ultimately, human lives far outweighs the expense of spending what is necessary now.

The emerging industrial powerhouses of the 19th century faced the same problem. Infant mortality rates in New York and London were similar then to levels seen in the developing world today and for the same basic reasons. Those cities invested massively in public water utilities that rapidly reduced gastrointestinal disease and built a foundation for economic growth and a rising quality of life. It can be done.

The 2006 Human Development Report urges every developing country to prepare a national plan to accelerate progress in water and sanitation, with ambitious targets backed with at least 1 percent of GDP, and clear strategies for overcoming inequalities. Currently, national public spending on public water supplies is typically less than 0.5 percent of GDP.

The report also calls for a Global Action Plan under G8 leadership to put water and sanitation problems front and centre on the world development agenda. The authors make a persuasive case for an additional US$3.4 billion to US$4 billion in annual international aid for water and sanitation assistance that should be considered an overdue investment, with enormous long-term returns in health and productivity and basic quality of life.

Each of the eight Millennium Development Goals is inextricably tied to the next, so if we fail in the water and sanitation goal, hope of reaching the other seven also rapidly fades. We have a collective responsibility to succeed. On both practical and ethical grounds, it is difficult to imagine a better investment in the health and well-being of the world's poor.

Kemal Dervis is UNDP Administrator, and Trevor Manuel is South African Finance Minister.

(China Daily November 14, 2006)