permaculture

[Jim <ashevillecurrencyproject@gmail.com>]

Oftentimes, UN people tend to think inside the box.
Recently, the New Internationalist, a magazine devoted to grassroots 
global development, had a whole issue devoted to permaculture.

Any thoughts on how composting toilets fit into the picture below? 
Should we think about how to recycle human waste into fertilizer, or 
build expensive water treatment plants? Is it as simple as that when 
many of the 2.6 billion live in slums?
-- Jim
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» content <http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node>


 2.6 Billion Wait in Line for Toilets

Fri, 2007-08-17 02:28

By Thalif Deen, UN Bureau Chief, Inter Press Service

*Stocholm, 17 August, (IPS):* There are more than 2.6 billion people, 
roughly 42 percent of the world's population, waiting in line for 
toilets that just do not exist. That's a reality, says the United 
Nations, which will launch the "International Year of Sanitation", come 
November.

"No private toilets, no public toilets, no toilets anywhere," chimes in 
the London-based non-governmental organization End Water Poverty, 
following a survey of some of the world's poorest nations in Asia, 
Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

The organization, whose global campaign calls for "water and sanitation 
for all", declares: "The international effort on sanitation and water is 
in disarray."

Why do sanitation and water remain low priorities? "A lack of political 
will to push through changes that benefit the poorest and the most 
vulnerable people in the world."

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) points out that more than one billion 
people worldwide have gained access to improved sanitation over the past 
14 years. Still, an estimated 2.6 billion people, including 980 million 
children, have lagged behind.

"Children are especially vulnerable to diseases caused by lack of proper 
sanitation," says UNICEF executive director Ann Veneman. "Poor 
sanitation and hygiene and unsafe water claim the lives of an estimated 
over 1.5 million children under the age of five every year."

At any one time, half of the world's hospital beds are occupied by 
patients suffering from water-borne diseases, according to the 
Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO).

And in sub-Saharan Africa, a baby's chance of dying from diarrhoea is 
almost 520 times that of a baby born in Europe or the United States.

At the World Water Week conference in the Swedish capital, Anders 
Berntell, executive director of the Stockholm International Water 
Institute, cited WHO statistics indicating that in 38 of the 46 African 
countries more children under the age of five die from diarrhoea than 
HIV/AIDS.

"Still, HIV/AIDS gets much more attention internationally than 
diarrhoea, caused by inadequate sanitation and lacking hygiene," headded.

Berntell said "we still don't manage to get this message across, and I 
think we need to turn to ourselves, to critically analyze how we 
canimprove in getting acceptance for what we know are facts."

In a publication titled "Water for Life Decade, 2005-2015", the United 
Nations has reinforced the grim facts and statistics relating to water 
and sanitation.

"Lack of safe water and adequate sanitation is the world's single 
largest cause of illness," it says, and "can spread such diseases as 
diarrhoea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, hepatitis, polio, trachoma and 
tapeworms -- many of which can be fatal to people in the developingworld."

And there are other water-associated diseases, such as malaria and 
filariasis, that affect vast populations worldwide. Malaria alone kills 
more than one million people every year.

The UN warns that increased urbanization is also placing an enormous 
strain on existing water and sanitation infrastructure.

"Urban centres in developing countries have grown rapidly without 
adequate infrastructure planning, resulting in million of immigrants who 
have little access to safe sanitation or water supplies. This puts the 
entire population at risk, causing serious environmental damage."

Among a laundry list of "what needs to be done", the world body is 
calling for increased investments in sanitation infrastructure such as 
latrines and toilets in homes and in every school.

The UN is also calling the participation of women in the planning and 
designing of water and sanitation facilities -- looking at both issues 
from gender perspectives.

Other recommendations include: programmes on water, sanitation 
andhygiene education in every school; effective and sustained advocacy 
on water, sanitation and hygiene at all levels; and making water and 
sanitation a priority in disaster-response planning.

Anticipating a crisis, the 192-member UN General Assembly decided in 
2006 to designate 2008 the "International Year of Sanitation", to begin 
in November.

To coincide with the launch, the World Toilet Association in South Korea 
is holding an international conference, Nov. 21-25, to focus 
specifically on the global shortage of toilets and sanitary facilities.

Sim Jae-Duck, a member of the South Korean National Assembly and 
chairman of the organizing committee for the upcoming Seoul conference, 
told IPS that an "appalling 40 percent of the world population is living 
without toilets or proper sanitation, causing enormous losses of human 
life due to the spread of disease."

It is unfortunate, he said, that there is yet no international 
organization specifically interested in problems relating to sanitation.

"We plan to set up such an organisation," he said, perhaps with the 
collaboration of several countries that are expected to participate in 
the conference, including China, Japan, Russia, Britain, United States, 
Brazil, Turkey and South Africa.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is confident that the International 
Year of Sanitation will shift the focus onto one of the most neglected 
health issues of our times: the lack of proper sanitation.

"Let us make this a remarkable year of global sanitation achievement, 
one that generates real, positive changes for the millions, or even 
billions of people, who do not yet enjoy this basic ingredient of human 
welfare," he told a preparatory meeting in May.

"Access to sanitation is a fundamental issue of human dignity and human 
rights, and also of economic development and environmental protection," 
he argued.

Around the world, he said, "about two out of every five of our fellow 
human beings lack access to sanitation services... This is simply 
unacceptable."

- Inter Press Service (IPS) News Agency -