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August 31, 2006
Oxfam GB says all the world needs now is public services
Oxfam GB, Great Britain's leading development, relief, and campaigning organization, has released a report that says that going to school, seeing a doctor and running water are taken for granted by most people in the west but for millions of poor in the developing world, these public services are vital in transforming their lives.
World wide, 4,000 children a day die needlessly from dirty water, while 100 million children - mostly girls - miss out on an education.
According to the report, government action and flexible aid could mean that within a generation every child in the world could be in school and everyone could have safe water, but rich nations and international agencies such as the World Bank are failing to meet this reachable goal.
The report recommends that along with training and retaining workers, governments in developing countries must abolish fees for basic education and healthcare, and subsidize water for the poor, as reported by The Guardian Unlimited.
Posted by Stephen Betheil at 09:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 21, 2006
Water Shortages Affect One-Third of World Population
A new report, released today at World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden, said that fully one-third of all people in the world face some form of water shortage now; not in 2025 as previously predicted.
The report, called the Comprehensive Assessment of Water said that while seventy-four percent of all freshwater used goes to agriculture, industry uses eighteen percent, and communities use only eight percent.
Sixty-five percent of all freshwater is held in soil, the result of rain, while thirty-five percent is in rivers and lakes and in aquifers deep underground.
World demand for food is expected to almost double by 2050 as population grows which means farmers will need to do more than ever to use water productively, as reported by the Voice of America News (VOA).
Posted by Stephen Betheil at 06:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 09, 2006
Jay-Z takes up the water crises with the U.N.
Shawn Carter aka Jay-Z, the president of Def Jam Records, and a rap artist himself, has joined with MTV and the United Nations to get children involved in the worldwide water crises. He cited statistics that 1.1 billion people live without clean drinking water and 2.6 billion lack proper sanitation.
When Jay-Z had visited Africa on his concert tour he witnessed first hand the water crises. "As I started looking around and looking at ways that I could become helpful, it started at the first thing -- water, something as simple as water," he said at a news conference at U.N. headquarters. "It took very little, very little to see these numbers."
MTV film crews will follow the rapper on his worldwide tour, which begins Sept. 9. "The Diary of Jay-Z: Water for Life" will feature first-person accounts of meetings with people around the world who lack water, MTV President Christina Norman said, as reported by the Associated Press and published by The Chicago Tribune.
Posted by Stephen Betheil at 06:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack