The growing water crisis for billions threatens global progress on everything from poverty to hunger to green growth. Yet no one is stepping up to deliver and coordinate the funding needed to avoid a catastrophic future. Jo Trevor sets out the urgent need for smart water financing – which is the focus of an Oxfam event at this week’s Marmalade Festival in Oxford.
The climate crisis is driving a global water crisis. Within five years, it is estimated that global freshwater demand will exceed supply by 40%. Already, 4 billion people experience severe water scarcity for at least one month a year and 1.8 billion people live in households without water supplies.
And that water scarcity is particularly hitting those communities who have contributed the least to climate change. In areas of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, for instance, droughts followed by flash floods devastate crops and livestock. Many of these same regions also experience conflict and displacement, both themselves also fuelled by the climate crisis.
Looking across the globe, water is of course essential to ending poverty and all other aspects of the economy – including agriculture, industry and green growth – but it is also fundamental to everything from health, to girls’ education, to women’s safety, to family wellbeing, to disease prevention.
Mind the gap: the missing finance for the water we all rely on
Yet there is very little finance for something so vital to all our interests. For instance, only 3-4 percent of global climate finance is reserved for eastern, southern and western Africa, regions that bear the brunt of water and food insecurity,
We all need clean water, yet no one is stepping up to fund that need properly. Water security, it seems, is at once everybody’s and nobody’s problem.
So far, aid or the public purse has shouldered the burden of water security, but that will not be enough to meet critical needs. To achieve water security, smart investment is essential: without a shift in how we finance and protect water, the effects on livelihoods, industry, education and health will be catastrophic.
Adaptation is possible but remains out of reach for too many
Organisations and businesses cannot completely reverse water insecurity, but they can adapt and support adaptation.
Advances in technology to recycle and conserve water show promise. However, these still remain inaccessible and unaffordable for people living in the most water-stressed parts of the world. That means without collective action in financing, adaptation will remain a pipedream.
Sharing of water beyond national boundaries also needs to adapt to water insecurity, which demands better international dialogue and coordination.
Smart financing of water is in all our interests
Without a shift in financing the world will struggle to achieve economic growth, green technology, human welfare and poverty eradication. Smart financing for water security is not altruistic: it is essential to ensure climate mitigation and protect a resource that underpins all of our lives and ambitions.
In fact, not financing water security is no longer an option: water insecurity is inflicting huge costs on communities. A partial estimate of the scale of global economic losses related to water insecurity includes US$260bn per year from inadequate water supply and sanitation and $120bn per year from urban property flood damages.
We need collective and smart action right now
The only way to meet this global challenge is to as finance water security for all. Alongside this, we need policy action to address spiralling global inequality, which itself is partly a product of water insecurity.
At Oxfam, we work with communities to address both immediate water needs and to build longer term resilience and adaptation to the changing climate. We are urging governments, international players, businesses and stakeholders to join us in identifying and building solutions to plug the huge global water finance gap. Want to contribute to this debate in person? If you are in the UK, we are hosting an event at the Skoll World Forum Marmalade fringe this week on “Water Security Mind the Gap” bringing together experts, which you can sign up for here.
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Join Oxfam’s Jo Trevor at the “Water Security: Mind the Gap” event this Friday (4th April) at the Marmalade Festival in Oxford, which is a fringe series around the Skoll World Forum