2008 : U.N.'s International Year for Sanitation

2008 is the U.N.'s International Year of Sanitation. So, there is renewed focus on Sanitation by UN. However, the expansion of world population is making it hard for UN to reach it's MDG goals on Sanitation within 2015.The U.N. set a millennium goal of halving the proportion of people with no access to sanitation -- even simple latrines rather than sewers -- by 2015 from 40 per cent of humanity or 2.6 billion people now.A 2007 scorecard showed the sanitation goal was likely to be missed by 600 million people worldwide on current trends.U.N. estimates show it would cost only about $10 billion a year to reach the 2015 sanitation target. And every dollar spent on sanitation creates spin-offs worth $7 on average, largely because of less disease.A 2006 U.N. Human Development Report said rich donor nations gave about 5 per cent of total overseas aid, or between $3-4 billion a year, to water and sanitation. Excluding big investments in Iraq, the recent trend was down. Though many donors view water investments as too risky, partly because of problems of accountable financing, it said, adding that sanitation progress since the 1970s had been "glacial",Goldman Sachs sees prospects for growth in the water sector -- from drinking water to processing waste.

Many firms stand to benefit from a focus on water and sanitation.In rich nations such as the United States, upgrading water and wastewater infrastructure should bring 4-5 per cent growth and in markets such as China, new infrastructure should mean 10-15 per cent growth over 5-10 years, it said in a December 2007 report. It is expect in long term that the global water sector to surge towards a global water oligopoly, where the market for water equipment and services will be dominated by a few multi-industry companies, including General Electric, ITT Industries, Danaher and Siemens," it said.


In most part of the world still now water is not an important political agenda . Yet the supply of water is important for human life . That's why it is important exploit new innovative ways of handling waste water by planting plants and soil bacteria that feeds on waste, to cut water born disease for the rural poor. The waste water can be recycled and used as a fertilizer also, as it is done by building an artificial wetland at a jail in Mombasa, Kenya, to process sewage from 4,000 inmates that now flows untreated into a creek, or ponds in South Africa where algae purify waste and are then used as fertilizer. Infact , for sanitation it is more intelligent decision to bring the nature on the side, on building sanitation solutions.

The OECD said that more than five billion people -- or 67 per cent of the world's population -- are expected to be without a connection to public sewerage in 2030.That is up by 1.1 billion from 2000, when 71 per cent of a smaller world population had no connection.
About 1.1 billion people lack drinking water -- another millennium goal is to halve that proportion by 2015. The World needs to be in war-front to address water related problems.