Linking water to human health and poverty

Water of adequate quality is fundamental for human health, food production, the ecological condition of rivers and wetlands and, ultimately, poverty reduction. However, water is a finite and often vulnerable resource currently undergoing escalating demand. Population pressure on water resources is exponentially increasing and, at present, in Asia alone, over 2 billion people do not have access to adequate sanitation, and around 700 million do not have access to safe drinking water (Gleick 2000). Globally, over ten thousand people, mainly children, die each day from water-related disease (Postel 1998). Conflict over water is increasing, both within and between countries. For example, in the Australian-Pacific region, competing demands for water creates trans-boundary tension, often threatening both security and stability. The UN Millennium Development Goals related to “ensuring environmental sustainability” aim to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water. Despite the importance of water for economic, human health, poverty alleviation and environmental outcomes, funding of water projects is often ad hoc and consequently ill-targeted. It has remained difficult to determine which countries should receive foreign ai