For World Water Week Louise Medland reflects on the stark global inequalities in access to water and sanitation, and outlines some of the Oxfam programmes which are improving services for the poorest. ‘Equal access to sufficient safe and affordable water, and adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene, can mean the difference between prosperity and poverty, well-being and ill-health, and even …
Under pressure: building resilience into water systems
With global water resources increasingly stretched, how do we ensure that building resilience into water systems in not an afterthought? This is the question we put to the audience at the recent Resilient Solutions Symposium hosted by Oxfam and the Oxford University Department for International Development. We kicked off by hearing from three speakers on the complex environmental challenges and …
Help! My toilet is sinking!
Louise Medland, Carol Brady and Jessica Fullwood-Thomas examine the long term effects of annual flooding and waterlogging on people’s lives in Bangladesh. Heavy rainfall during July and August in 2011 caused severe flooding in southern districts of Bangladesh, particularly Satkhira, Jessore, Khulna and Cox’s Bazar. Close to 90% of the population were temporarily displaced from their homes and were forced …