Position: Qatar by Caitlin Mitchell Committee: Health and Human Services Issue: Clean Drinking water

Throughout the world there is a growing problem with water quality and quantity. As the planets population skyrockets, both of these standards are going down. As a result, anywhere from 884 million to more than a billion people in the world do not have access to a safe water source. Thousands die worldwide every day because they contract water borne diseases such as Cholera, Hepatitis A, Diarrhea, typhoid, dysentery, and many, many more. Most of these problems are easily preventable if people had safe water to drink in underdeveloped areas.

For instance, in India more than 25% of its population is living below the poverty level. They have insufficient food, clothing and sanitary sources, especially clean water to drink and wash in. As a result, 21% of the communicable diseases spread are water borne, according to the World Bank. This same occurs in many other countries, like El Salvador, where much of the infrastructure was destroyed after a 12-year civil war. Also, places like Ethiopia and Kenya, droughts have been so severe that there is already too little water, and what is there is unclean and unsafe. Another country with trouble providing water for their citizens is Singapore. They are running out of water and have been forced to import it from Malaysia. For several years, they have been spending millions of dollars to provide clean water for their people, it has not been creating significant results. Singapore, like many other countries, wants international support with preserving and purifying water. Qatar agrees with the effort that has been made to try and regulate water and to provide them to underdeveloped areas. Qatar was said to expect an estimated population of 620,000 in 1995, and is now estimated to grow to 1,000,000 in 2020. Qatar is dedicated to the movement for clean water seeing as they have already taken measures to create procedures, plans, and policies needed to be established and to ensure that there is potable underground water that they can distribute to their people. They have also enacted legislation in their country regarding ensuring the cleanliness and quality of food and

water, as well as the environmental impact assessment for new development projects (this includes development projects including those of power plants and high voltage substations). However, the agricultural sector relies basically on irrigation and its development will require vast amounts of water and put further demands on an already highly depleted unrenewable natural water resources. Qatar cannot afford to provide to the agricultural sector seeing as Qatar is in part of the Northern Desert Belt. Our country already has to work at stretching water resources for the population let alone having to provide for a sector that needs water to grow crops to feed the population.

Qatar has passed legislation in order to try and create cleaner water and more of it in our country. However, what the UN needs to do is follow Qatars example and pass legislation as well. Currently the United Nations has only millennium goals in relation to things like Ending world poverty and hunger, child mortality, and maternal mortality. What the United Nations should start looking into is creating millennium goals in relation to water quality and distribution. World cooperation would be close behind it as well as Qatar.

http://www.un.org/esa/earthsummit/qatar-cp.htm#chap10 http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/maternal.shtml