Clinton Global Initiative / Water Commitments

Greetings from the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City. Those of you who are familiar with the CGI model know that it revolves around commitments - people and organizations making commitments, financial and otherwise, to be part of the solution to global development challenges. A number of commitments related to safe water and sanitation were featured this year. Here are a couple:

From friends at P&G:

Today at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City, former US President Bill Clinton and P&G CEO and Chairman Bob McDonald, announced P&G’s new commitment to scale-up the Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program to provide 2 billion liters of clean drinking water every year in order to save one life every hour in the developing world. P&G is issuing the attached media release today to announce this new commitment. Importantly, later this week we will recognize several of our partners in providing safe drinking water. Last year, P&G recognized CARE. PSI, and World Vision at the Clinton Global Initiative. This year we are recognizing:


• U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): partnered with the P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program in a collaboration that led to the development of the PUR packets, in addition to ongoing research to improve program implementation including a recent study showing that safe drinking water in schools reduced absenteeism.

• Save the Children: partnered with the P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program to provide clean drinking water to school children and those in need in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan, Somalia, south Sudan, and Uganda.
 
And from Coca Cola:
 

A $3.75-million grant from the Coca-Cola Company to start eight water projects in Morocco, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and other African countries that have large Muslim populations. The grant is part of a $7.5-milion project that is also being supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.N. Development Program.

Turning Coffee into Water

Thanks to a wee bit of lobbying (it was actually a very easy sell), the Clinton Global Initiative organized a breakfast/coffee table discussion on Safe Drinking Water which I had the pleasure of moderating today.

As I was tasked with reporting back to the appropriate authorities at CGI, my careful note-taking has revealed some compelling ideas from the table:

1) First of all, the suggestion was made to encourage the Clinton Global Initiative to better prioritize the global safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene issue throughout all of the tracks (Global Health, Poverty Alleviation, Education and Energy/Climate Change for 2007 - tbd for 2008). Water is everywhere, but is rarely addressed directly and specifically (with an increasing number of exceptions like P&G’s PUR commitment, WaterHealth International’s commitment with Dow). The availability of water and sanitation will make all other sustainable development efforts, regardless of who funds them, more successful initially and more sustainable over the long run.

2) There needs to an increased advocacy effort to raise awareness of safe drinking water and sanitation as a major public health challenge, both in the developed and developing world. In particular, this awareness-raising needs to focus on the solutions to water and sanitation challenges, not just attest to the gravity of the problem. One participant focused specifically on ways to broadcast the water, sanitation and health message throughout the developing world, and getting those governments to better prioritize the issue in their own budgets. One useful precedent is the International Network to Promote Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage. Use such a tool to raise public awareness of the safe water issue throughout the world, use it to educate policymakers, use it to urge corporations, civic organizations, faith communities and private givers to focus on the opportunity to address the cause of development challenges, not just on the symptoms.

3) There is a bottleneck in delivering health-related products and services across the board. Think bednets, vaccines, pharmaceuticals. Also think safe drinking water, latrines, hygiene promotion programs. Although a debate emerged around the issue, the table’s thinking was that there is a reasonable amount of new, innovative and sustainable ideas in the water and health sector, and what is now needed are innovative ways of scaling those doable solutions up, out and over. One example was raised of using village health shops on a grand scale around the world to promote not just bars of soap but hygiene promotion messages. And the option of bolting on microfranchised water purification systems to such village health shops was discussed, as well as using these shops as a foundation from which to deliver social marketing techniques aimed at increasing the number of people with access to improved sanitation systems (e.g. pit latrines). And how about Trainers Without Borders to deal with some of the lack of institutional capacity to grow the sector?

4) Behind every commitment at CGI this year, and there have already been a LOT, there is an exceptional narrative story that if told eloquently and broadly will result not only in progress in the water sector, but additional such commitments at next year’s CGI.

More soon. However, a quick news flash: Bill Clinton announced in a press conference this morning that CGI intends to expand to Asia this year (they are shooting for a meeting in Hong Kong). One might consider lobbying CGI Hong Kong to make sure that the 700 million Indians without improved sanitation are represented, and that the 23% of Chinese (300 million!) without safe drinking water are well-represented in Hong Kong.

Clinton Global Initiative Part 1: Water, water, nowhere

Sorry for the gap in posts – have been on the road a lot lately, including a couple of very interesting visits to water development groups in Guatemala – check out Agua del Pueblo here or google them to find out more about their work for those of you interested in Guatemala. They are primarily funded by a bilateral relationship with the Spanish government now, but looking to diversify and expand their work with water, sanitation and hygiene promotion.

I’m blogging today from right in the middle of the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative, waiting patiently for a direct mention of water, sanitation, hygiene, diarrhea, cholera, or anything… Throw me a bone people! There has been a great deal of optimistic, inspiring discussion in the plenary and breakouts so far from 52+ current and former heads of state and probably 1000 other people, representing 600+ commitments, tens of millions of lives impacted or saved, in over 100 countries.

Five significant commitments have been made public so far, the most interesting of which is the “Global Campaign to Reduce Maternal and Child Deaths in Poor Countries” launched by Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg with others.

Finally, a discussion early this afternoon in the Global Health session about Prime Minister Stoltenberg’s commitment elicited an interesting remark from CARE’s President and CEO Helene Gayle. She suggested that in order to meet the goals laid out by the Prime Minister, it is necessary to take a broader approach to child and maternal health, and focus on the causes of that mortality and morbidity – and she mentioned safe water and sanitation specifically.

More to come.

PS Off to question Jane Goodall about the nexus of biodiversity conservation (viz. great apes) and homo sapiens need for safe drinking water. See earlier related post here.

PPS Best quote ever: Development is about much more than safe water, but never about less.