Blog 1: Africa's Water Crisis

This article written by Michel Camdessus, special to CNN and member of the UN Secretary’s Generals advisory board, is about the lack of clean water available to about 40 percent of the African population. Camdessus explains that water reserves have recently been discovered under some of Africa’s larger deserts; however this discovery will not do much to beat the issue. The issue runs deep and the article explains how it has caused a vast number of problems in the aspects of poverty, disease, and hunger. Studies show that the issue runs so deep that it has been noted that an estimated 750,000 African children (5 and under) die every year as a result of the lack of clean water. This issue additionally affects the rate of school attendance for African children, especially the girls. This is due to the fact that the responsibility of the water supply within the household is seen as a woman's job. Furthermore the least wealthy and poverty stricken cities such as Nairobi and Lagos are charged more for their water than the richer areas which pushes the issue of social inequality. The article details five priorities that need to be met in order to aid Africa in the quest for a sufficient and clean water supply. These priorities include first to recognize water as a human right. Furthermore they include making Africa’s food security a priority, managing water resources, building government relationships, and lastly to find new ways to get money for water reforms. Thankfully steps towards this process have been taken. In 2010 access to clean water was finally recognized as a basic human right by the United Nations. Although this is a major step it is not enough and the article recognizes that a lot still needs to be done to beat this issue.

In my opinion this article was vastly upsetting and shocking. The fact that up until 2010 water was not recognized as a “fundamental human right” is ridiculous. Every human being deserves to have access to water, it’s a necessity without which we would cease to exist as a human race. I completely agree with the article when it stresses the point that as we worry about issues of obesity here in the United States most of the world barely has access to water let alone food; being obese isn’t even a feasible possibility. Most of the conditions of water access are more than unfair. For example the opportunity to access water for the poor is almost non-existant as compared to the rich.  Furthermore a lot of countries have more than enough water while in other areas around the world hundreds of thousands of children die every year from the lack of water. Additionally the issue of gender inequality is apparent here, as girls receive less of an education since it’s their responsibility to find water that is more often than not unavailable. Needless to say it is quite apparent that the issue of inequality runs deep in this article.

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/23/how-to-beat-africas-water-crisis/?iref=allsearch