Palestine: Thirst for Justice

A campaign called “Thirsting for Justice” was launched the 22th of March, World Water Day which calls on European governments to put pressure on Israel to respect international law and Palestinian right access to water and sanitation.

Behind this campaign launched, is the Emergency Water Sanitation and Hygiene group (EWASH), a coalition of 30 leading humanitarian organizations, including Oxfam.

“Israel policies and practices limit Palestinians’ access to the water they are entitled to under international law” says Ziyaad Lunat. He remarks that under the Oslo Accords Israel controls all sources of fresh water in the West Bank whereas Palestinians are only allowed to take 20 percent of the “estimated potential” of the Mountain Aquifer underneath the West Bank and Israel extracts the balance. As a result, “Palestinians in the West Bank are forced to purchase over half of their water from Israel” and “Israel takes this water from the Mountain Aquifer over which Palestinians have rights to an equitable share”, say the spokesman for EWASH to PNN.

According to the Thirsting for Justice Campaign, in Gaza 90 to 95 percent of the Coastal Aquifer, the only one source of fresh water available for its inhabitants, is contaminated due to over extraction and sewage contamination, making it unfit for human consumption. For Ziyaad Lunat “the restrictions imposed by Israel as part of its ongoing blockade make the rehabilitation of the aquifer and the search for alternatives extremely difficult”.

The campaign itself targets the European governments and citizens. “They do have a stake in the situation here because they fund a lot of the projects that have been destroyed by the Israeli army.” Ziyaad Lunat also says: “We hope there will be a change in attitudes and behaviours.  EU member states have closer ties with Israel and they are in a strong position to affect change”.

Related news:

• The Remarkable Miracle Continues to Happen, 18 April 2011
• Palestinian Detainees Go on Hunger Strike Marking Prisoner’s Day, 17 April 2011

Source: Palestine News Network, Ziyaad Lunat: Palestinian People Thirst for Justice, 14 April 2011

Yemen: World Bank-administered project helps expand access to water supply

The World Bank, acting as administrator for the Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid (GPOBA), has approved a grant for US$5 million for a scheme to expand access to water supply for poor households living in peri-urban areas of Yemen that are not currently served by the water network.

Around 210,000 people are expected to benefit from the scheme, including 38,000 people in the first phase of the project which will target low-income neighborhoods in Sana’a City, Ibb City, Dham-ar Governorate, and Hajah Governorate.

Only 56 percent of the urban population has access to piped water and many poor households living in peri-urban areas have to buy water from private tanker operators, who typically charge ten times more than the price of piped water from public suppliers. As part of its reform of the water sector, the Government has created Local Water and Wastewater Corporations and introduced policies to increase coverage for the poor, but many peri-urban areas still lack access to improved water services and the local corporations are unable to meet all the demands. Partnerships with the local private sector are now being explored to address the service gap.

Under the GPOBA scheme, private operators will be selected competitively, based on the lowest subsidy needed. The output-based approach will transfer operational and financial risk to the private operators by disbursing subsidies only after the agreed outputs have been delivered and verified. These outputs include building or rehabilitating water supply systems (wells, pumps, and storage), installing domestic connections, and delivering water supply for a period of three months. The beneficiary households will only have to pay 50 percent of the connection fee and will have an option to pay part of the amount in installments.

The Project Management Unit of the urban component of the multi-donor Water Sector Support Program, which is supported by the governments of Yemen, the Netherlands, and Germany, and the World Bank, will coordinate the tender process and manage the GPOBA funds.

GPOBA is drawing on funds from the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) for this project. The scheme is also leveraging US$9.1 million from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) and US$2 million from the Government of Yemen.

The Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid (GPOBA) is a global partnership program established in 2003 and administered by the World Bank. GPOBA’s portfolio includes 29 OBA subsidy schemes for a total of US$114.3 million in funding.

Source: GPOBA, 12 Apr 2010

Azerbaijan: ADB to Extend $600 Million Urban Services Investment Program

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will extend up to $600 million in loans to Azerbaijan for water and sanitation improvements in towns that have suffered from decades of neglect and underinvestment in infrastructure.

The Board of Directors today approved a multitranche financing facility that will release loans periodically to support the Government of Azerbaijan’s Water Supply and Sanitation Investment Program. The Government has earmarked up to $200 million for the 8-year investment program, with ADB financing up to $600 million from its ordinary capital resources. In the first tranche, ADB will provide a $75 million loan.

Azerbaijan’s water and sanitation system is over 50 years old, and has fallen into decline following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the country’s independence in 1991. Services in many secondary towns are bad, with poor piped water quality, broken or clogged sewage pipes, and wastewater discharged directly into waterways. Water purchased from private vendors to augment supply is expensive, imposing a burden on the poor.

The investment program will improve the quality and coverage of water and sanitation for about 500,000 people in secondary towns and semi-urban areas outside the capital Baku. The multitranche financing facility establishes the foundation for an 8-year partnership between ADB and the government. The first tranche funds will reconstruct and build water and sewage infrastructure, expand the planning, technical and financial management capabilities of oversight agencies, and set up project management offices in the towns of Goychay and Nakhchivan. Subsequent tranches will carry out similar activities in other towns.

Introducing water meters will in turn improve the financial viability of the service providers and support conservation.

The Government of Azerbaijan is providing $25 million. The Azersu Joint Stock Company will act as the executing agency for all project activities except those in Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, where the State Amelioration and Water Management Agency will be the executing agency.

Source: ADB, 23 Sep 2009

Yemen: Water crisis threatens swelling population

Some residents [in the Yemeni capital Sanaa (pop. 2 million)] receive piped city water only once every nine days and others get none at all. The sinking water table means the municipality can now operate only 80 of its 180 wells, said Naji Abu Hatim, a Yemeni expert at the World Bank. [In February 2009, the World Bank approved a US$ 90 million grant for the Water Sector Support Project for Yemen, which is being co-funded by Germany and The Netherlands].

Boys fill up their a jerry cans with water from a public tap in Sanaa August 27, 2009. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah (Yemen Environment Society)

“People don’t believe the magnitude of the problem. They see a little cloud and say, ‘oh, God is still there, he can give us water’,” he added. “But water is Yemen’s number one problem.”

That might seem a startling claim given that the country is also grappling with a tribal revolt in the north, violent unrest in the south, al Qaeda militancy and widespread poverty.

But water shortages in the southern city of Aden are already fuelling violence. One person was shot dead and three were wounded, two of them police, during water protests on Aug. 24 [2009].

And fast-depleting aquifers make Yemen’s plight the starkest in a desperately water-scarce region. Local disputes over water rights may turn violent, especially in tribal areas. Competition for supplies between cities and the countryside may sharpen.

“Yemen’s water share per capita is under 100 cubic metres a year, compared to the water poverty line of 1,000 cubic metres,” said Hosny Khordagui, Cairo-based head of the U.N. Development Programme’s water governance programme in Arab countries.

[...] Unlike wealthy Gulf oil states, Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, is ill-placed to fill the gap between supply and demand with desalination. [...] Desalinating seawater and pumping it 2,000 metres uphill to the inland capital would be hugely expensive. Water could be transferred to Sanaa from another basin, but this might spark conflict with nearby provinces that are also parched.

[...] Water scarcity is forcing many poorer villagers to sell up and move to Yemen’s cities, where few have the skills to thrive, even though they are expected to send money home to relatives. From the 1970s, Yemenis turned swiftly from rain-fed farming to irrigation using water pumped from new tube wells, encouraged by the government and foreign donors keen to expand production.

“Finally they found irrigated agriculture was unsustainable because of the depletion of groundwater,” Abu Hatim said.

Agriculture sucks up more than 90 percent of water used and a third of that goes to irrigate fields of qat, a mild narcotic intrinsic to the daily social life of most Yemenis. Mismanagement of water resources is one reason why Yemen’s plight is worse than that of neighbours such as Oman, argues Jac van der Gun, director of the International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre in The Netherlands.

[Y]emen’s northern highlands have been suffering a two-year drought. “The rains this year have been poor and late,” said Ramon Scoble, a water expert for the German development agency GTZ who works in Amran province, just north of the capital.

[...] The government, backed by foreign donors, began applying a comprehensive strategy for water resources, irrigation, water supply, the environment and capacity building in 2005. But experts describe implementation as patchy. The World Bank’s Abu Hatim said the programme was a palliative measure.
“It will not solve the problems, only alleviate them to buy time. The catastrophe is coming, but we don’t know when.”

Source: Alistair Lyon, Reuters, 30 Aug 2009:

Yemen: new plan envisages more effective rainwater harvesting

A senior official at Yemen’s Ministry of Water and Environment (MWE) has said a plan has been drafted to boost the country’s water resources and make water for drinking and irrigation more readily available.

Hussein al-Junaid, deputy water and environment minister, who is also an engineer, said the plan is designed to ensure effective management of water resources and rainwater harvesting through the building of water barriers, small dams, concrete tanks in valleys, and water harvesting systems in or on houses.

By 2010, the plan would analyse data on climate change and the impact on water resources, wetlands, Yemen’s coastline that stretches over 2,200km, archipelagos and islands. It would also improve climate change surveillance and rainfall monitoring by providing stations with modern technology and trained workers.

Entitled A Road Map to Harvesting Rainwater in Yemen, the plan does not require highly-advanced techniques or technologies, the deputy minister said.

[...] The plan aims to gather and harvest 70 percent of rainwater by 2012 in Sanaa and use that to feed the Sanaa basin and provide drinking and irrigation water to the city. [O]ther parts of the country would collect 40 percent of the rainwater by 2020 for the same purpose.

The plan also envisages gathering and harvesting 100 percent of the rainwater in Sanaa city by 2020, and in other areas like Taiz city in the south, and big valleys such as Hassan, Tuban and Bana, by 2030.

See also: Wikipedia – Water supply and sanitation in Yemen

Source: IRIN,17 Jul 2008

Yemen: Reforming the Urban Water Supply and Sanitation (UWSS) Sector

Gerhager, B. and Sahooly, A. (2009). Reforming the urban water supply and sanitation (UWSS) sector in Yemen. International journal of water resources development ; vol. 25, no. 1 ; p. 29-46. DOI: 10.1080/07900620802573668

Abstract
In the early 1990s, Yemen suffered from low service coverage and national tariffs that were too low to cover public expenditure, as well as an inadequate level of service provided by the centralized National Water and Sanitation Authority. In 1996, a reform study recommended that the UWSS sector should embrace a policy of decentralization, corporatization, commercialization, the separation of service delivery and regulatory functions, as well as public-private partnerships. The government approved this reform agenda as a Council of Ministers Decree in 1997. Awareness campaigns and consensus-building among stakeholders and political leaders and local demand supported the reform process. Currently, 95% of the total urban population related to utility towns is attended by independent utilities.

Contact: Team Leader: Eng. Anwer Sahooly, Technical Secretariat (TS)/ Reform of the Institutional Framework in the Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Sector, Ministry of Water and Environment (MWE), tel.: +967-1-425342/3,
mobile: +967-733212820, techsec [at] y.net.ye

Web site:  Yemeni-German Technical Cooperation – Water Sector Program

Iraq: DFID-funded water plant opens in Southern Iraq

A new water filtration unit that will provide daily drinking water for up to half a million more people in Basra was opened [on 31 July 2008] by the Deputy Consul-General at the British Consulate, Fionna Gibb.

The project in Az Zubayr, which cost £1.25 million, was co-funded by DFID and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). It is one of the final projects of DFID’s £42 million Iraq Infrastructure Services Programme which is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Read more: DFID, 31 Jul 2008