Man’s right to water

ACCORDING to a report of the World Bank on ‘Pakistan Strategic Country Environmental Assessment,’ there is no system to regularly monitor drinking water quality, in terms of neither the source of supply nor its purpose for the user. As the report has pointed out, despite the enormous size of the Indus Basin System, per capita water availability has shrunk from 5,000 gallons in 1951 to 1,100. Already too close now to internationally recognised scarcity rate, frightening are the future prospects, in the light of projections for the year 2025, when per capita water availability may sink to as low as 700 gallons. In actuality, nullahs and storm water drains take untreated sewage into streams, rivers, and irrigation canals, also carrying bacteriological and other forms of contamination. Worse, some 2000 million gallons of sewage discharged into surface water bodies is directly used for drinking for want of regular monitoring. As for effective treatment of collected sewage it is stated to be no more than 10 percent. Again, while National Environmental Quality Standards (NEQS) are intended to regulate the discharge of industrial effluents to surface water, due to lack of strong monitoring and enforcement mechanism, compliance happens to be very low.
In Lahore three out of some 100 industries are using hazardous chemicals for treating their wastewater. Be it Karachi, or other industrial cities, such as Faisalabad or Lahore, for want, or critical shortage, of effluent treatment plants prospects of ensuring availability of quality drinking water ‘at the tap’ remain grim. Whatever relief could be had from regulation and monitoring at local level remains obscure too. The reason for this should not be too far to seek. Needless to point out, local authorities have very little capacity for operation and control of their waste systems. As such, poor water quality often goes unnoticed until outbreak of water-related illnesses. Ironically, while the advent of the 21st century has opened a whole new vista of advancement of science and technology, year after year around the world 3-5 billion cases of diarrhoea result in about three million deaths. Especially in South Asia, some 260 million inhabitants lack basic health facilities, 337 million do not have access to safe drinking water and 830 million are without rudimentary sanitation. In so far as Pakistan is concerned, less than 30 percent people have access to safe drinking water, though nearly 40 percent of diseases are water borne.
However, this is not to say that the world has remained apathetic to the predicament of the suffering humanity due to mismanagement of water. The Fourth World Water Forum ended in Mexico last year, with a declaration setting a key role for local governments to play in providing water to desperately dry communities. Although decentralisation of water supply management was its central theme, with a marked focus on transparency and more funds to improve clean water access, the declaration left much to be desired. It did underline the “important role that legislators and local authorities have in a number of countries to develop sustained access to water and sewage services.” But, perhaps, it would have better if it had declared a universal right to the precious resource of which two thirds of humanity fear uncertain supplies. Short of that, overwhelmed as the ministers were by the urge to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015 toward the end of the discussions, they could not but punctuate their ideas with hope to help form a global strategy, with a view to improving water distribution, and to eradicating waste. As such, a day earlier, they had called for a global campaign to ensure survival to the majority of the world’s people at risk from inadequate or unsafe water supplies.
 

Brown’s retreat

BRITISH Prime Minister Gordon Brown has put an end to all speculations about another general election only 17 months after Labour secured a record third term in government under former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Many pundits had predicted that Brown would decide to go to the people on Nov. 1. Ever since the Labour Party’s annual conference two weeks ago, there had been rising speculation that Brown would seek to emerge completely from the shadow of Blair by seeking his personal mandate from the voters. Yet until now, from Gordon Brown there was no comment. The new premier has just completed his first 100 days in the top job after 10 years running the Treasury. He has faced and weathered a series of challenges including terror attacks in London and Glasgow and the outbreaks of foot and mouth and blue tongue diseases among UK farm stock. Though he absolutely lacks the charisma of his intense and plausible predecessor, Brown has set out his political ground as a dour, no-nonsense leader who looks to the core values of his youth. He makes much of his being the child of a Scottish preacher. In comparison with the Blair decade, the Brown administration has promised to be less flashy and more focused on reality than presentation.
Yet in the very speculation that was unleashed about a possible election — something that could not have happened without Brown’s approval — there was evidence the media-manipulative Blair days have not gone away. When the rumors began, the opposition Conservative Party under its young leader David Cameron was languishing far behind in the opinion polls. A fourth Socialist victory seemed inevitable. But Labour’s lead over the Tories has been slashed in the wake of Cameron’s impressive personal performance at the Conservative conference last week, when he gave an over-long but impassioned speech entirely without notes. Cameron had a point when he accused Brown of “great weakness and indecision” Saturday by failing to call the snap election. Brown had built himself a dilemma. If he decided against an election this autumn, he would be charged with political cowardice. If he went ahead, his opponents would accuse him of acting before bad news starts to hit the economy, over which he had charge for ten years. Unrest among many government workers — postmen are currently on strike — is growing. The recent banking liquidity crisis and run on Northern Rock has rattled investors large and small. The economy could be in trouble. Brown’s iron chancellor reputation may be starting to rust.

—Arab News