Asia's Water Situation A "Human Tragedy": ADB

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) Tuesday described as "a major human Tragedy" Asia's water situation and urged Asian governments to take the improvement of the situation as one of their highest priorities.

In its 1999 Annual Report, the Manila-based bank said that some 830 million people in developing Asia and the Pacific do not have safe drinking water, and more than 2 billion people lack sanitation facilities.

"In ADB's DMCs (developing member countries), an estimated 737 million people in rural areas and 93 million in urban areas still have no access to safe drinking water," it said in the report's theme chapter "Water in the 21st Century."

The bank said that access to sanitation is denied to 1.74 billion people in rural areas and 298 million in urban areas. "This is a major human tragedy; provision of such services to all people should be one of the highest priorities of all governments," the bank said.

The bank said that while water pollution is the region's most serious environmental problem, water scarcity will soon affect food security in some parts of the region, which could lead to a heightening tension between countries sharing the water resources of international rivers.

Many Asian cities, where 56 percent of the population will live by 2025, are ill equipped to provide their growing population the safe water and sanitation they need, and up to one in four in the region lacks formal sanitation, the bank said.

It said the poor are most prone to disease caused by unsafe drinking water and inadequate sanitation.

"Almost 250 million cases of water-borne disease--and 10 million deaths-- are reported worldwide each year," the bank said. The bank said its water projects promote integrated water resource management and it also encourage private sector water initiatives through direct financial support.

At the policy level, the ADB said, it helps governments develop master plans for the management of critical resources.



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