Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-11-Speech-3-456"
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"Madam President, Commissioner, I would repeat the words spoken in this House several years ago, on 13 March 2006, by Eija-Riitta Korhola. She described the situation with regard to access to clean water as follows: ‘The figures are alarming: 3 900 children die every day because of a lack of clean water. One fifth of the world’s population, some 1.1 billion people, suffer from a lack of clean water. More than 40%, meanwhile, are without proper water and sewage services.’
Three years have passed since that statement and what has happened? What has happened is that the global scenario is worryingly exactly the same, which cannot fail to be cause for concern. We are now facing a serious crisis in basic sanitation that involves us all. I would point out that this problem particularly affects the poorest and least developed regions of the world, not least sub-Saharan Africa. This continues to be the area most affected by a lack of water quality, particularly in rural areas and in the slums that surround the major cities. However, the problem is vast. I have here with me a UNICEF brochure which dates from 2001. However, in the main, its statements still hold true and are striking. What does it tell us? It tells us that these 1 billion people are spread throughout virtually the whole world. These 1 billion people have no access to clean water: 4% in the Middle East and North Africa, 4% in Central and Eastern Europe, 19% in South Asia, 25% in sub-Saharan Africa, and 42% in East Africa and the Pacific. If we look at the figures within each of these areas, it is the regions of East Africa and the Pacific, and sub-Saharan Africa which present alarming numbers, with 24% and 43% of the respective populations still not having, at the beginning of the decade in 2000, any access to clean and safe water.
It is vital to remember the health complications, some of them fatal, which stem from this lack of water, and how these impact on the development and progress of the populations deprived of this essential good in terms of both quality and quantity, and also the border tensions caused by access to water and how these risk becoming more acute if nothing is done to prevent them.
The European Union, as a global player and as a contributor
to the world effort to tackle this problem, cannot excuse itself from taking part in the major debates on this issue. I welcome the reports that the Commissioner has made to us in this House. I therefore also welcome the holding of and the European participation in this 5
World Water Forum. This will provide another opportunity for all the main players to debate the issue objectively and to prepare a clear approach to this problem. I cannot do other than support this effort, as the whole Committee on Development has also done in the sense of promoting subsidiarity. Furthermore, as there are many responsibilities in this respect at local level, I also support the other concerns of our committee. Ladies and gentlemen, water is a good which is essential to life, to the life of each one of us and to the life of humankind."@en1
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