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On Water Day, a chat with Marla |

Welcome to the inaugural Humanosphere podcast, featuring a look at recent news highlights in global health, aid and development as well as a guest interview. This week we look at water, briefly review the Gates Foundation’s push for a better condom, explore the legitimacy of TOMS Shoes’ sales pitch and ponder the Obama Administration’s latest attempt to convince people it actually has a global health policy agenda. Produced by Ansel Herz.

Featured Guest: Today is International Water Day and so we’re talking to Marla Smith-Nilson, director of Water 1st International. We ask if these annual concern days actually do anything, why so many water projects still fail and if we are making progress in making sure everyone has access to clean water.

Humanosphere Inaugural PodcastAn exciting audio documentary Download

FILED UNDER: Basics, Podcasts, International Water Day, Marla Smith-Nilson, podcast, water

January 21, 2013 | 11:20 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Two very different views on charity:water |

: Scott Harrison

You’ve probably heard of charity:water, one of the more successful philanthropic organizations out there working to help bring clean and safe water to poor communities around the world.

The reason you’ve probably heard about charity:water is because the media, in general, are enamored with the founder — his story of personal redemption and his compelling fund-raising strategy that some say represents a revolutionary new way to pursue humanitarian goals.

A recent story in Wired, Scott Harrison’s mission to solve Africa’s water problem, is a good example.

There are many successful water charities working in the developing world. But it is the way that charity:water has gone about fundraising that makes it notable — and that has attracted active and enthusiastic support from the tech world’s leading founders, from Spotify’s Daniel Ek to Square’s Jack Dorsey.

“Scott is awesome,” says Daniel Ek, Spotify founder and now long-term donor to charity:water. “He runs charity:water like a great startup. He understands virality and evangelism better than most folks in the industry. He’s disrupted the whole charity model.”

Others like Marla Smith-Nilson of Water 1st International say Harrison’s approach — though clearly a massive (and awesome) success when it comes to messaging — is actually just a hipper, newer and web-based variation on a well-worn theme in the history of philanthropic fund-raising.

The problem, Smith-Nilson says, is that raising money and getting everyone enthused doesn’t necessarily translate into long-term improvements. It may actually undermine sustainable progress. Read her post.

Truthout recently went even farther, with an investigative report The problem with charity:water:

Charity: water is widely praised for its innovative approach to raising money to provide safe, clean drinking water for people in developing nations. But questions about its impact and methods remain.

It’s bit of a ramble, the Truthout piece, but it does make some fairly disturbing points.

First, charity:water raised something like $27 million last year but cannot tell donors how many of its water projects are still working (water projects have high failure rates).
Secondly, charity:water’s ‘innovative’ dual bank accounts (one for funding water projects, one for operations) make it difficult to know where a lot of the money actually goes.
Finally, the simple messaging — $20 per person gets them clean drinking water — promotes a simple fix mindset that is both a bit misleading and undermines the increased recognition within the humanitarian water sector of the need for systemic, infrastructure changes if people are to get reliable access to clean water.

Read these two pieces for two very different views on charity:water. And then read the guest post by Smith-Nilson.

The concerns raised are not unique to charity:water, or even to just the water sector of the humanitarian community. But it’s easier to see when done in high-profile.

FILED UNDER: Basics, charity:water, Marla Smith-Nilson, Scott Harrison, Truthout, water, Water 1st International, Wired

January 21, 2013 | 11:18 AM | By Tom Paulson |

The problem of cheap water (fixes) |

: Water pump, Mali

Guest Post: Improving access to clean water is one of the most important, and popular, efforts in the humanitarian sphere. Depending upon whose estimates you use, anywhere from one-sixth to one-third of humanity lacks reliable access to safe, clean drinking water.

Many organizations like the popular group charity:water raise funds for their efforts by successfully marketing the idea of of a simple, cheap fix – “Just $20 can provide a person with clean water.”

In this guest post, Marla Smith-Nilson of Seattle-based Water 1^st International explains why it’s not so simple and that cheap fixes are as prone to creating headaches as cheap beer.

See accompanying post Two very different views of charity:water

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By Marla Smith-Nilson

When I was in college, my group of nerdy engineering friends decided to apply our technical expertise to analyze beer cost-effectiveness – to see how little we could pay for drinkable beer.

We tested the usual low-budget beers, starting with Budweiser and Pabst, eventually moving to lesser-known beers (in Tucson, in the 1980s, that meant Yuengling and Schaefer beer). We concluded after extensive data analysis and empirical analysis (at the expense of sobriety, and sometimes our digestive tract) that anything cheaper than a $2 six-pack was not worth drinking.

Perhaps you’ve tried the same test with, say, generic brand toilet paper or by purchasing a Yugo car. My son recently had a similar experience with a certain brand of $5 pizza, which I discovered when he and his friends were using the slices as Frisbees instead of eating them.

At some point you conclude that it’s just not worth saving any more money. I believe the same is true with water projects in poor countries.

Over the past few years I’ve seen fundraising pitches from other organizations with claims like “it only costs $20 per person” to provide clean water or save a life. Charity:water is not the first organization to use this marketing tool, but they are probably the most well-known (and most successful). These are very effective pitches. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of the fund-raising pitch does not necessarily translate into actually providing people with reliable access to clean, safe drinking water. In fact, promoting such a simplistic message may do harm.

Truth-out ran an interesting piece recently questioning the impact of charity:water’s projects. Some may legitimately defend charity:water, pointing to all they have done to raise awareness of the water issue via social media. I give them credit for that. But the ultimate question is, or should be anyway, if this strategy works to get water to those people who need it most in the most effective and sustainable manner. On that score, the jury is out. Here’s why:

$20 per person doesn’t buy convenience.

Organizations operating in the water field are not using a common definition of the term “access” to clean water.

On a recent visit to Ethiopia, I talked with women waiting in a 2-hour long line in Tutekunche, Oromia, to collect water.

This project meets the common definition of “improved water source” – a sealed water catchment chamber built to protect a pristine spring source. But the quantity of source water was insufficient for the size of the community, especially in the dry season, and the completed project was not conveniently located for all users. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, charitable fund-raising, charity:water, water, Water 1st International

October 23, 2012 | 11:27 AM | By Tom Paulson |

A visual (and disturbing) look at how little potable water on Earth |

From Reuters:

Just how scarce is potable water on Earth? We learn in school that more than two-thirds of the planet is covered in water. But that figure is deceptive because it refers to just surface area, and describes only the total quantity of undrinkable salt-water.

Here’s a depiction from the U.S. Geological Survey that gives us a more accurate view of how much drinking water we have to work with on the Blue Planet. Note that the big bubble is all water on Earth, salt and freshwater, and the tiny bubble of blue represents all fresh water. The tiny spec you can hardly see? That’s the amount of drinking water available to us.

Precious stuff, water.

USGS

FILED UNDER: Basics, Science, water

April 13, 2012 | 9:19 AM | By Guest |

NPR feature: Port-au-Prince is a city of millions and no sewer system |

John W. Poole / NPR

A makeshift latrine hangs over the water at the edge of Cite de Dieu, a slum in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Port-au-Prince is about the size of Chicago. But it doesn’t have a sewer system. It’s one of the largest cities in the world without one.

That’s a big problem, but never more so than during a time of cholera.

Since cholera was introduced into Haiti 18 months ago – most likely by United Nations peacekeeping troops from Nepal, where the disease is endemic – more than a half-million people have gotten sick and at least 7,050 have died.

Public health authorities say cholera will stay in the environment for a long time, because Haiti has the worst sanitation in this hemisphere.

It’s hard for Americans to imagine what this means.

The cumulative sewage of 3 million people flows through open ditches. It mixes with ubiquitous piles of garbage. Each night an all-but-invisible army of workers called bayakou descend into man-sized holes with buckets to remove human waste from septic pits and latrines, then dump it into the canals that cut through the city.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Haiti, water

April 11, 2012 | 10:30 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Crosscut: Local angles on the global water crisis |

Seattle’s online magazine Crosscut has two articles today that take a local look at the global water crisis.

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By Collin Tong How Seattle helps with the world water challenge

Mike Urban, mikeurbanart.com

Woman collecting water, Nigeria

Water is something most people in the Puget Sound region take for granted. Yet in many developing nations, access to clean water and effective sanitation can spell the difference between life and death.

Unbeknownst to many, the Seattle-Puget Sound area is home to a cadre of nongovernmental organizations and government agencies engaged in projects abroad to assist the more than 783 million people who live without access to clean water in some of the poorest regions in the world. The local support for water and sanitation ranges from intensive nonprofit efforts in remote villages to major international undertakings and occasional consultations by government officials with colleagues in other nations.

Access to water is critical to good nutrition, a reality recognized by the World Water Day events here and elsewhere last month organized around the theme of water and food security. More than 70 percent of the water used globally goes towards agriculture.

One seventh of the world’s population, nearly one billion people, suffers from chronic hunger. Over 3,000 children die everyday from lack of clean water. Food production is dependent upon sufficient available water, which in turn requires reducing water pollution and promoting effective sanitation systems. Read more at Crosscut.

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By Marsha Baskin A Thirsty World has lessons for Puget Sound

Water runs our world yet we take it completely for granted. In his mind-opening new narrative, The Big Thirst, journalist Charles Fishman takes readers on a fascinating journey from the moons of Saturn to the hotels of Las Vegas.

The golden age of abundant, free and safe water is over, says Fishman. The problem is most people in the developed world don’t know it. While he was in Seattle earlier this month, Fishman took time for an interview. An excerpt:

Baskin: Much has been written about the global water crisis. In The Big Thirst you prefer to talk about thousands of water crises happening all over the world. Some are from drought, others from climate turmoil, still others from insufficient water systems. Why did you take this approach?

Fishman: I think talking about the global water crisis actually has the opposite impact of what water people hope it will do. I think people have too many global crises. There’s a global economic crisis and a global climate crisis, a global health crisis. If you add another crisis people will throw up their hands and say I’m already waking up at 4:30 in the morning to deal with the crises I’ve got, I can’t handle another one. But also it’s not really true…. Read more at Crosscut

FILED UNDER: Basics, Crosscut, water

March 22, 2012 | 11:30 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Worrying trends on World Water Day |

Today is World Water Day. The gist of it is that population growth, climate change, poverty, and inefficiencies waste a lot of it.

The U.S. intelligence community today issued a report warning that water shortages worldwide threaten to provoke conflict and even that terrorist groups can be expected to target water supplies. As the AP reports:

Drought, floods and a lack of fresh water may cause significant global instability and conflict in the coming decades, as developing countries scramble to meet demand from exploding populations while dealing with the effects of climate change, U.S. intelligence agencies said in a report released Thursday.

The LA Times reprinted this World Health Organization map showing the percentage of people in each country with access to an improved source of drinking water, such as a household connection or protected well, as of 2010. In some parts of Africa, less than half of people have access to safe drinking water. Blue is good, warm colors are not:

WHO

Population estimates of access to clean, safe water

The United States, not surprisingly, uses a lot of water. The average American consumer uses about five times as much as the average resident of DR Congo. Here’s an online calculator to let you estimate your own water usage.

FILED UNDER: Basics, water

March 6, 2012 | 11:08 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Global safe drinking water goal achieved |

Mike Urban, mikeurbanart.com

Borehole water supply, Nigeria

Amid all the dire reports that seem to indicate the world is going to heck in a handbasket, here’s some good news:

The United Nations children’s agency, otherwise known as UNICEF, reports that 89 percent of the world’s population now has access to safe drinking water. As the Washington Post said:

The water target was one of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals to reduce global poverty that government leaders, nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations have been working to achieve, with varying success.

This is cause for celebration, The Guardian notes, yet this milestone should not deflect attention from the fact that many hundreds of millions more — nearly a billion people — still lack access to clean and safe drinking. And, as also noted by The Guardian, about 2.5 billion don’t have proper sanitation which puts them at risk of many diseases and of contaminating their local water resources.

It should be noted that much of the progress achieved over the past decade has been due to improved living conditions in China and India, and that many parts of the world are still in desperate need of safe water and sanitation. Reuters quotes the head of the UN:

“Some regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, are lagging behind,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in the report. “Many rural dwellers and the poor often miss out on improvements to drinking water and sanitation. Reducing these disparities must be a priority.”