PRESS RELEASE
For more information or to RSVP, please contact:
Carol Miller at +1-202-306-0130
or [email protected]
Water Action Groups Call for Integrated Approaches
Expert Panel Urges Integrated Approaches to Reach Core Millennium
Development Goals
Note to Editors: Speakers are available for interviews upon request, please contact
[email protected]. The event will be livestreamed at www.aspeninstitute.org/live and
video, photos and a blog will be available here. Read a policy brief on the population/climate
connection and on population growth, reproductive health and sustainable development. Follow
us at @GLCRHresolve.
WASHINGTON, DC (18 April 2012) – Water is humanity‟s most essential need, yet one third of
our planet‟s population lacks access to safe water, spreading disease and conflict. Limited
access, stark inequities in distribution and consumption, ongoing climate change and population
growth are making scarce resources like food and water scarcer, and pushing families to join
the rush of migration into thirsty mega-cities, and increasing the need for new approaches to
sustainable water solutions.
Why has population been left out of the conversation, when access to safe water has such an
impact on – and is affected by – where people live and how many of them live there? At a panel
organized and hosted by The Aspen Institute today, leaders in water, conservation, population
and women‟s reproductive rights explored how these interlinked issues of women, water,
population, and poverty play out on the ground in Ethiopia and South Sudan, and how they have
a multiplier effect on improving health and conserving resources. The panel pointed to strategic
collaboration as the key to the promise of sustainable solutions to the world‟s water scarcity.
“It is meaningless if you work without improving the human element. When you integrate, you
get better results,” said panelist Shewaye Deribe, Project Coordinator of the Ethio-Wetlands
and Natural Resource Association (EWNRA), which works with communities to restore the
watershed, create alternative livelihoods, strengthen health systems, and improve reproductive
health. “Water is too complicated an issue to address from a single sector.”
The panel of leaders – who are deeply involved in water, from digging wells, to brokering
partnerships, to restoring wetlands – explored the impact of population dynamics on water.
Issues touched upon included scarcity and distribution – the role of the government and
privatization – and explored links between health and sanitation, gender equality and access to
water.
Salva Dut, Founder and President of Water for South Sudan and a former “Lost Boy” of Sudan,
opened the discussion with a brief video of how he came to found Water for South Sudan. Inc.,
which identifies and drills borehole wells in South Sudan's remote villages. Without wells, Salva
explained, “the whole village migrates in the dry season to look for water. While they are
travelling, it‟s difficult to be stable, and they get diseases from stagnant water, like guinea worm.
Now with the well there, they have stability; the village settles in one place. They are able to
build schools, markets, health clinics, and other businesses follow. The women and girls who
travelled to collect water now have time to go to school, women have time to do other things.”
Still, Salva acknowledged that South Sudan needs more than wells: “Now, even though we
have taught 130 communities how to manage their 130 new wells, this is not a solution for the
future. It meets the immediate need for fresh water, but if the wells we are drilling now are
refillable contained aquifers. As climate change comes in now, the aquifers will begin to
deplete.”
The issues around adequate supplies and distribution of water are complex. Panelist Laurie
Mazur, Director of the Population Justice Project, has written, “If any resource poses a serious
limit to growth on human numbers and appetites, it would have to be water. The planet‟s supply
of freshwater is fixed, and there is no substitute for its life-giving qualities.”
“Still, a general water crisis is not inevitable,” says Mazur. “It is true that people are placing
unsupportable stress on freshwater supplies in many areas, while climate change threatens the
quantity and reliability of those supplies. And population dynamics, especially growth and
migration, contribute to the problem, but a broad range of supply and demand-side solutions are
available and implementing those solutions could relieve – and avert – tremendous human
suffering.”
Human numbers are growing most rapidly where water is scarce. The World Bank‟s Water and
Development report identified 45 “water poor” countries that are both physically short on water
and economically impoverished. Those countries have an average fertility rate of 4.8 children
per woman – nearly twice the world average – and their populations are expected to double by
2050.
As Shewaye pointed out, “Many women have many children because there‟s a good chance
they will die. We must work to build confidence that there will be safe water and food, so their
children can be healthy. Then, when you educate about contraception, they will take action.”
Empowering women and their partners to determine the timing and spacing of their children will
help communities be more adaptable to scarce resources and to the effects of climate change,
he explained, and where family planning is accessible, population growth rates – and therefore
their impact on the environment – slow to sustainable levels.
In other words, added moderator Peggy Clark, Vice President, Policy Programs at The Aspen
Institute, “Millions of women who want to have fewer children do not have access to the
information and services to plan their families, and as water grows scarcer, meeting unmet need
for family planning is a key tool that cannot be overlooked in working towards access to safe
water.”
“Today, 2.5 billion people don‟t have access to basic sanitation, such as a toilet; and over 700
million lack clean water,” said Jaehyang So, Manager of the World Bank‟s Water and Sanitation
Program (WSP). “Such enormous numbers require efforts on a massive scale. We have to ask
ourselves what innovation, such as from other sectors and atypical partners, can countries
apply to bring about a more rapid transformation.”
Peggy Clark closed, “As „water wars‟ become the new „oil wars,‟ we must not leave the
population factor out of our efforts to address water scarcity. Women and families all over the
world want families they can support. Let‟s turn to integrated approaches that fully address all of
the human dimensions of water security.”
The “7 Billion: Conversations that Matter” roundtable series marks the fact that this past
October, the world reached the watermark of a population of seven billion. The series,
organized by The Aspen Institute, brings thought leaders together from diverse sectors to
explore key relationships between population, food security, reproductive health, the
environment, health, and development overall in a provocative and informative conversation.
###
Panelist Biographies
Mr. Salva Dut is Founder and President of Water for South Sudan, Inc. He was one of the “Lost
Boys of Sudan” who fled the war-torn southern regions of Sudan, then Africa‟s largest country,
in the mid 1980's. The “Lost Boys” were among the millions who fled or died during Sudan‟s
twenty–one year civil war which ended in 2005. Salva was resettled as a refugee in Rochester,
NY in 1996. He became a US citizen and eventually studied International Development. Salva
and a volunteer board of directors founded Water for South Sudan in 2003 and began drilling
wells in 2005. Salva relocated to the new country of South Sudan in 2011 and directs drilling
operations for Water for South Sudan, Inc., which has drilled 126 wells in South Sudan as of
March 2012.
Ms. Jaehyang So is Manager of the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), a multi-donor
partnership administered by the World Bank to support poor people in obtaining affordable,
safe, and sustainable access to water and sanitation services. Under Ms. So‟s leadership, WSP
designed and is implementing a results based program in its 24 focus countries and globally.
Ms. So has a background in urban service delivery, utilities and corporate restructuring, and
public-private partnerships. Ms. So has focused on improving the performance of service
providers, utilities, and local governments in the World Bank‟s programs in Eastern and Central
Europe, East Asia and South Asia. Immediately prior to joining WSP, Ms. So was the Lead
Infrastructure Specialist in the South Asia Regional Infrastructure Department working primarily
on Bangladesh and Pakistan on urban water and sanitation sector programs.
Mr. Shewaye Deribe Woldeyohannes is a Project Coordinator for Ethio-Wetlands and Natural
Resource Association (EWNRA). He has served since 1985 as an instructor of biology,
environmentalist and wetland and biodiversity specialist in Ethiopia‟s Ministry of Education,
Federal Environmental Protection Authority and EWNRA, respectively. He is a leader in
environment and environmental management. Shewaye specializes in integrated wetland –
watershed management and Population-Health-Environment (PHE) integration efforts. He
completed grade 12 with a diploma in general agriculture in 1980, graduated from Addis Ababa
University Natural Science Faculty with a Bachelors of Science degree in Biology in 1984 and
with a Masters in Science in Plant Ecology/Botanical Sciences. He is part of the group striving to
minimize the pressures of ever increasing human population, environmental degradation and
climate change on freshwater and its sources (wetland and forest ecosystems) on sustainable
bases. Born in 1960, Shewaye grew up with two sisters and his parents.
Laurie Mazur is Director of the Population Justice Project. Laurie is an independent writer and
consultant specializing in population, environment, and sexual and reproductive health and
rights issues. Her clients have included the Environmental Grantmakers Association, the Pew
Global Stewardship Initiative, the Rockefeller Foundation, Communications Consortium Media
Center, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Ford Foundation. She is the editor of A
Pivotal Moment: Population, Justice & The Environmental Challenge (Island Press, 2009). She
is also the editor of Beyond the Numbers: A Reader on Population, Consumption and the
Environment (Island Press, 1994), a contributed volume that explored and articulated the Cairo
consensus. With Michael Jacobson, she co-authored Marketing Madness: A Survival Guide to a
Consumer Society (Westview Press, 1995), an indictment of excesses in advertising and
marketing. Mazur founded and, for several years, directed the Funders Network on Population,
Reproductive Health and Rights, an association of grantmakers that seeks to improve
communication, foster collaboration, increase resources and enhance the overall effectiveness
of grantmakers in this field.
Ms. Peggy Clark is the Vice President of Policy Programs and the Executive Director of Aspen
Global Health and Development at The Aspen Institute. As Vice President of Policy Programs,
Peggy provides strategic oversight and guidance to the Institute‟s 26 policy programs. As
Executive Director of Aspen Global Health and Development, Peggy leads programs promoting
breakthrough approaches to global development including the Health Worker Migration Initiative
and its high level Council which led the adoption of the historic WHO Global Code of Practice;
The Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health and IDEA initiatives, working with
policymakers and development practitioners to assert the centrality of reproductive health to
development overall; and the TransFarm Africa Initiative, which is pioneering new approaches
to transformative agricultural development and trade in Africa.