There is no more vital resource for man than water. However, access to this valuable commodity is highly uneven today.
According to the United Nations (UN), a quarter of humanity today does not have access to a safe water source.
And it’s certainly the world’s poorest population that suffers the most. Access to water is almost always determined by economic capacity.
The richer a country is, the more its population has access to water. In underdeveloped countries, the richest populations have more water than the poorest; and urban rather than rural.
But this does not happen everywhere. There is one country in particular that is considered an example of not having to be rich to provide equal water to the entire population.
See below how Paraguay, surrounded by Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia, guarantees universal access to water for its population, with a more equitable distribution than its wealthier neighbors in the region.
‘Management issue’
Part of the problem of access to water has to do with the fact that water is a scarce commodity.
Although our planet contains more water than land, more than 97% is salt water and is unfit for human consumption or irrigation.
And two-thirds of that 3% freshwater is either frozen in glaciers or in ice.
This means that the planet’s roughly 8 billion people depend on very few sources of non-saline surface water (lakes, swamps and rivers, which represent less than 1% of total fresh water) or groundwater, which is our main source.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “Groundwater provides half of all water used by households worldwide, a quarter of all water used for irrigated agriculture, and one-third of the water needed for industry”.
However, equipment and investments are needed to utilize this underground resource in its location, and a distribution network has to be established to bring it to the houses.
Therefore, the human factor is essential to explain existing inequalities in access to water.
“The current global water crisis is primarily a governance issue, not resource availability,” said Luis Felipe López-Calva, United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean.
“Water is a basic service and a human right that States must guarantee to all citizens equally, regardless of where they live in the region or how much they pay for the service.”
“In Latin America and the Caribbean, as in most parts of the world, access to water is very unequal,” says López-Calva.
However, he stressed that “these inequalities are not inevitable”, citing Paraguay as an example.
He noted that Latin America’s 15th largest economy has “near universal coverage of access to safe drinking water.”
But Paraguay goes further, he said. Compared to other Latin American countries such as Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, which also guarantee a basic service for almost all of its population, the country stands out as a country that distributes water more evenly.
“There is less than a 2 percent difference in access to water in Paraguay between rural and urban areas, or between the richest and poorest groups,” said the UNDP official.
This makes it the country with the most equitable access to water in the region.
And not just in the region. Paraguay was also recognized by the NGO Water Aid as one of the countries that increased the distribution of water to rural areas the most in the world.
At the beginning of the 21st century, about half of those living in these areas had access to resources, the figure has more than doubled today.
According to the latest figures compiled in 2020 by the WHO/Unicef Joint Monitoring Program for water supply, sanitation and hygiene, 99.6% of Paraguayans have access to water, a Water Aid spokesperson told BBC News Mundo. little “basic access”.
Origin
The agency’s director, engineer Sara López, says the Paraguayan model was born in 1972 with the establishment of Paraguay’s National Environmental Sanitation Service (Senasa), which aimed to guarantee access to drinking water in the country.
Senasa was established in a community format that decentralized water management based on the figure of Sanitation Councils.
These organizations receive technical assistance and training from Senasa.
“These are community organizations created by the inhabitants of each region, and they are the ones who operate and maintain the water systems,” López told BBC Mundo.
The engineer estimates that 4,000 Sanitation Councils operate in Paraguay, whether in small towns or large cities, providing populations of up to 50,000 people.
The groups responsible for water management in each region are recognized by the Ministry of Public Health.
And this is certainly another feature of the way access to water works in Paraguay: According to Sara López, it is the Ministry of Health that oversees the distribution of the source, after all, access to a safe water source is a matter of “prevention.” “.
how do they work
López explained that the councils consist of only five people: a president, a vice-president, a secretary, a treasurer, and a member elected by the Constituent Assembly.
“They don’t get a salary or allowance and are replaced every five years,” he said.
However, the council operates “as a commercial enterprise, hiring operators, managers, technicians and plumbers”, among others.
These professionals receive a salary derived from fees charged for water use.
“There is a base rate for what is consumed per month, between 12,000 and 15,000 liters per month. And those who use more pay more,” he said.
“Water is cheap in Paraguay,” comments López, as it averages $3 (R$15) for 12,000 liters.
How is water obtained?
“A well of about 150 meters is drilled and the water is pumped into an elevated tank from where it is distributed by gravity. No further pumping is needed,” he says.
“The system is easy to operate and maintain,” he says, explaining that the municipalities themselves manage the water system.
Walter Godoy, Senasa’s project assistant, explained to BBC News Mundo that 82% of the work was funded by the State and the rest by communities.
“In Indigenous communities, the State funds 100% of the work,” he added.
UNDP’s López-Calva says the progress in Paraguay is “not the result of a spike in the amount of water available in the country, but the result of deliberate investments in improving water governance”.
Sara López acknowledges that in the Chaco region “we are not reaching the poorest populations, at least sustainably, because we came, but we have to come back after a while”.
“This is the outstanding question that we need to put more effort into.”
source: Noticias
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