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Changing Lives: Rural Water Schemes in Sri Lanka 'A film captures rural communities' feats in increasing water supply coverage, improving hygiene, and fostering greater unity.'

Clean water and sanitation are not only about hygiene and disease; they're about dignity, too.… [E]veryone, and that means ALL the people in the world, has the right to a healthy life and a life with dignity. In other words: everyone has the right to sanitation.' Prince Willem Alexander of the Netherlands, Chair of the UN Secretary General Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation. 2.5 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. Tellingly, the Millennium Development Goal sanitation target, to halve by 2015 the proportion of people living without access to sanitation, remains the most off-track of all the MDG targets. The impact of a lack of sanitation on health, education and economic growth is profound. Every day, at least 5,000 children under the age of five die due to diarrhea, a disease directly related to poor sanitation. Lack of adequate sanitation in schools is a critical barrier to school attendance, particularly for girls. The resulting economic cost to individuals and to governments of ill-health and under-education is at least nine times greater than the cost of addressing this problem. Full paper in PDF format (1.53MB); Number of pages:

'Conflict is an unavoidable aspect of human social systems. Given the central importance of water resources to all human communities, it is natural that conflicts arise with regard to access, allocation, development and management of the resource.'

'This paper argues that understanding the link between global capitalist crisis macrodynamics and water commodification trends requires a discussion of the crucial intervening public management strategy, namely the decentralisation of service delivery functions without decentralisation of sufficient resources. The crucial linkage between these processes emanates from core multilateral institutions, like the UN.'

'The objective of the Sindh Education Sector Reform Project for Pakistan is to increase school participation, reduce gender and rural/urban disparities in schooling outcomes, increase retention and transition, and improve quality. The key potential environmental and safety issues related to the program include: (i) liquid and solid wastes generated during school construction and operation; (ii) lack of adequate measures, both at the design and construction stages, to address the schools´ vulnerabilities to natural disasters (both in new and rehabilitated schools); (iii) drinking water contamination and lack of adequate sanitation facilities; (iv) lack of education programs for children in personal hygiene and safety procedures during emergencies; (v) lack of low-cost renewable power systems in schools located in off-grid areas, resulting in an inadequate learning environment for children (excessive heat and poor lightning), and preventing the use of low-cost water decontamination techniques; and (vi) land acquisition issues.

'This issue of Capacity.Org looks at the capacities that need to be developed in order for the water and sanitation MDGs targets for 2015 to be achievable. The main focus is on capacity needs at the intermediate and local levels, but links between macro-level policy making and local-level implementation are also addressed.'

'The note proposes a methodology for assessing the accountability framework of an urban water supply and sanitation (WSS) sector that it defines as the set of actors, mandates, contractual arrangements between actors, and instruments used by actors to implement their mandates.'

'This issue of Capacity.Org looks at the capacities that need to be developed in order for the water and sanitation MDGs targets for 2015 to be achievable. The main focus is on capacity needs at the intermediate and local levels, but links between macro-level policy making and local-level implementation are also addressed.'

by Ben Block on April 2, 2009 As leaders of the world's 20 largest economies gathered in London this week, international financial institutions announced that the world economy would likely deteriorate more in 2009 than was previously feared. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development predicted that economic activity would shrink 2.7 percent; the World Bank projected a slightly more optimistic contraction of 1.7 percent. To gain perspective about today's many interrelated sustainability issues, Worldwatch staff writer Ben Block pulled aside Björn Stigson, president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), for an interview this week at a U.S. National Academies of Science climate change summit. Stigson has overseen the global coalition of some 200 leading corporations since 1995. How do you expect the ongoing recession to affect sustainable business efforts, such as reducing pollution, water consumption, and energy use? Are businesses turning away from corporate responsibility? The question I get from around the world is: Has sustainable development fallen off the table given there is a recession? My response is the opposite. What has happened is that sustainable development has come to a tipping point, in my view, and that the focus on the strategic aspect on sustainable development, climate change, and so on - that focus is even stronger than before. It's stronger in companies, and it's stronger in governments. The recession is not really a barrier or a blockage.

WAPI to indicate when SODIS has reached appropriate temperature. $6

'This paper summarises the events of a workshop on institutional collaboration in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The workshop was held in Pakistan in March 2009, and discussed the participatory research in livelihoods that two Norwegian organisations conducted in Afghanistan. The paper states that this work has great potential for contributing further toward capacity and institution building in Afghanistan in several rural development sectors, including water and sanitation (WATSAN).

Applied research on arsenic in Bangladesh 'Arsenic contamination in groundwater is a serious public health problem in Bangladesh and currently the majority of the World's patients suffering chronic arsenic poisoning are to be found here. The World Health Organization is playing its normative role to address arsenic-related health problems in Bangladesh and is providing technical assistance to the government in terms of capacity building, development of training materials, and research which has been well received and appreciated by the health sector.'