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from the I-would-like-to-be-able-to-drink-to-that dept.
New research has found that in 15 major cities in the global south, almost half of all households lack access to piped utility water, affecting more than 50 million people. Access is lowest in the cities of sub-Saharan Africa, where only 22% of households receive piped water.
The research also found that of those households that did have access, the majority received intermittent service. In the city of Karachi in Pakistan, the city's population of 15 million people received an average piped water supply of only three days a week, for less than three hours.
These new findings add to data from the World Resources Institute's (WRI) Aqueduct tool, which recently found that by 2030, 45 cities with populations over 3 million could experience high water stress. The research, detailed in the Unaffordable and Undrinkable: Rethinking Urban Water Access in the Global South report shows that even in some places where water sources are available, water is not reaching many residents. Some cities, like Dar es Salaam, have relatively abundant supplies, yet daily access to clean, reliable and affordable water continues to be problematic for many residents.
"Decades of increasing the private sector's role in water provision has not adequately improved access, especially for the urban under-served," said Diana Mitlin, lead author, professor of global urbanism at The Global Development Institute at The University of Manchester. "Water is a human right and a social good, and cities need to prioritize it as such."
Analysis in the report showed that alternatives to piped water, like buying from private providers that truck water in from elsewhere, can cost up to 25% of monthly household income and is 52 times more expensive than public tap water.
Global indicators used for the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals have largely underestimated this urban water crisis because they do not take into account affordability, intermittency or quality of water. UNICEF and the World Health Organization reported in 2015 that more than 90% of the world's population used improved drinking water sources. But "improved" encompasses such a wide variety of sources, such as public taps, boreholes or wells that it fails to reflect the reality for individuals and families in today's rapidly growing cities.
The question of whether water is affordable is not measured and while efforts have been made to increase water coverage, public authorities have paid little attention to affordability issues.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 15 2019, @05:40PM (3 children)
Shitholes can't get their shit together to make basic utilities to work? Well they are shitholes after all...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 15 2019, @06:20PM
Not surprised by this predictable skreed. I guess some people just like dragging the world down with their miserly, uh, "observations."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 15 2019, @07:34PM (1 child)
Said shitholes including certain private developments like the trailer park my in-laws retired to. Base water fee: $50 per month, usage fee on the order of $25 per thousand gallons. They under-built the source and sewage treatment plant, nobody wants to pony up the one-time fee to do the upgrade, so instead they're encouraging people to piss out the window to save water so the old plant can limp along for a few more years, and hoping that the increased fees might some day pay for the upgrade (current projections look like: somewhere between 20 years and never before the project is funded by usage fees...)
Water supply and treatment by central systems is fabulously expensive, if you're not paying for it with sales tax, property tax, or other "invisible" money that people don't get irate about paying.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Thursday August 15 2019, @11:50PM
The caveat of the "20 year" plan is that by the time they collect the money and interest in 20 years to pay for it at today's guesstimate, the new guesstimate will be 6 times higher...
A place I lived in during high school had a similar problem and plan, 40 years on, it's still 20 years in the future. Sort of like AI and Nuclear Fusion power plants.
So yeah, never becomes the honest answer.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.