Introduction Someone once said that having access to clean water is a right, not a luxury.

Because my partner and I agree with this statement, we stand firmly resolved that the United States Federal Government should substantially increase the healthcare assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa. CONTENTION 1: HARMS A. 45% AFRICAS POPULATION LACKS ACCESS TO CLEAN WATER Debt Aids Trade Africa Organization, October 2007. Clean Water and Africa http://www.data.org/issues/development_2006_waterBriefing.html Currently over one billion people lack access to a basic supply of clean water. More than a quarter of these people (311 million) live in sub-Saharan Africa, which means that roughly 45% of Africas population lacks access to clean water (UNICEF). B. MILLIONS OF CHILDREN DIE FROM DIARRHEA ANNUALLY Peoples Daily Online, October 8, 2005. Over two million die of diarrhea annually in Nigeria: UNICEF http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200510/08/eng20051008_213122.html Some 2.2 million people lost their lives to diarrhea annually in Nigeria, a high-ranking official of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said here Friday. Theresa Pamma, water and environmental sanitation officer of UNICEF Country Office in Nigeria that every year she witnessed over four million cases of diarrhea in the West African country. C. 4 OUT OF 10 PEOPLE RELY ON DIRTY WATER FOR SUSTENANCE BBC News, June 9, 2005. Dirty Water: Guide to Poverty in Africa http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4070000/newsid_4077500/4077532.stm Getting to clean drinking water is still a problem for hundreds of millions of people in Africa. Fetching water, which is usually done by women and children, can involve lots of long journeys on foot. Carrying water takes up to 40 billion hours a year - time which could be spent at work or at school. Experts say that more than four out of 10 people still have to rely on water that could make them ill or kill them.

CONTENTION 2: INHERENCY A. SODIS HAS ONLY BEEN DISTRIBUTED IN SMALL PARTS OF AFRICA The Swiss Federal Institute for Environmental Science and Technology, August 7, 2007. http://www.sodis.ch/ Since 1995, SANDEC is engaged in providing information, technical support and advice to local institutions in developing countries for the worldwide promotion and dissemination of the Solar Water Disinfection Process, SODIS. In the last 4 years we have been coordinating the promotion and dissemination of SODIS in about 20 countries, including Latin America, East Asia, and East Africa. B. AFRICA IS NOT A U.S. PRIORITY The Council of Foreign Relations, September 10, 2007. The Candidates on U.S. Policy toward Africa http://www.cfr.org/publication/14166/ Aside from the crisis in Darfur, Africa has been largely neglected in foreign policy discussions during the 2008 presidential race. With U.S. attention focused on the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, Chinas emergence, Iran, and other Middle East concerns, Africa is not a U.S. priority.

Plan Plank 1: Mandates A. The United States Federal Government will provide $220 million to USAID to buy plastic water bottles, distribute the bottles, and inform the local citizens about the Solar Water Disinfection water purification method. Fifteen new bottles will be distributed biyearly to each family living in the parts of Sub-Saharan Africa lying in the latitudinal region of 15 degrees south to 35 degrees south. The used bottles will be collected at the time that new bottles are distributed. The used bottles will be recycled in the United States. Plank 2: Funding Normal Means

Plank 3: Enforcement The U.S. Federal Government Plank 4: Intent The Affirmative Team reserves the right to clarify the intent of the plan at any point in the round CONTENTION 3: SOLVENCY A. SODIS IS EFFECTIVE IN DROPPING DIARRHEA RATES Hamilton, Janna. May 8, 2005 Sun-Baked Bottled Could Help Treat Millions Cambodia Morning News. Project coordinator Ryan Sinclair, 31, spent the past year in Rovieng trial testing Sodis with approximately 1,200 people in four villages, and the results were positive. Of the 225 households that used Sodis, diarrhea rates dropped from 21 percent to 2 percent in a six-month period. Another commune of 295 households, who were not using Sodis, was monitored for comparison; there was no change in their diarrhea rates over the six months. B. SODIS EFFECTIVE IN ELIMINATING WATER-BORNE PATHOGENS American Plastics Association, June 2007. Plastics Can Help Make Safe Drinking Water Available Worldwide. http://www.americanplasticscouncil.org/benefits/in_your_life/pop/power_plastics_june01 .html Solar Water Disinfection, requires only sunlight, empty plastic soft drink bottles and a black surface. Invented by the Swiss in 1991, it was tested in Columbia, Bolivia, Togo, Burkina Faso, Indonesia, Thailand and China where it was found to be highly effective in eliminating water-borne pathogens such as cholera.

CONTENTION 4: ADVANTAGES ADVANTAGE 1: Education A. WOMEN AND CHILDREN SPEND MANY HOURS IN SEARCH OF CLEAN WATER Womens Earth Alliance; August 2007, Help African Women Bring Clean Water to Their Communities http://www.bringlight.com/projects/show/87 Throughout history, women have played a central role as stewards of water. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), women are most often the collectors, users and managers of water in the household as well as farmers of crops. Women and children provide nearly all the water for the household in rural areas. In urban areas, women are often in charge of accessing clean water and ensuring sanitation for their families. Women hold the knowledge around quality, location, reliability and storage of local water resources. When water sources are contaminated or unavailable, women and children can be hit the hardest. They may be required to expend more labor collecting, storing, and protecting their water source, which can leave them with little or no time for other activities, like getting an education. The UN estimates that in some parts of Africa, women and children spend eight hours a day collecting water. B. FINDING WATER KEEPS GIRLS OUT OF CLASSROOMS McConnell, Kathryn, Washington File Staff Writer; 20 September 2006; Initiative Aims to Help Millions in Africa Access Clean Water http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfileenglish&y=2006&m=September&x=20060920141330AKllennoCcM0.2921564 Bush said access to clean water is essential to both health and education. Without clean water, she said, people suffering from HIV and AIDS cannot take needed medications safely and their weak immune systems are exposed to water-borne illnesses. Also, waterrelated illnesses keep children from attending school. In particular, the daily task of finding clean water for households, usually assigned to women and girls, keeps girls out of classrooms.

C. SODIS IS COMPLETED AT THE HOUSEHOLD LEVEL Advanced Purification Engineering Corps; September 10th 2007. What is Solar Water Disinfection http://www.freedrinkingwater.com/water_quality/quality1/1explain-solar-water-disinfection.htm Solar Water Disinfection is used at the household level and thus is the responsibility of the individual user. It is simple in application, relies on locally available resources, plastic bottles, and sunlight, a renewable energy source. D. EDUCATION ESSENTIAL FOR ERADICATING POVERTY United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization; April 25, 2004; Why is Education Important http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.phpURL_ID=28703&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html Education is essential for economic development and eradicating poverty. It allows people to be more productive, to play a greater role in economic life, and to earn a better living. For example, an adult with a primary education earns twice as much as an adult without any schooling. In addition, In Niger, the incidence of poverty is 70 per cent in households headed by adults with no education, compared to 56 per cent for households headed by adults whove been to primary school.

ADVANTAGE 2: Economy A. WATER-BORNE ILLNESSES KILL CHILDREN Chritian Is More Humanitarian Organization, July 2007. Improving Water and Sanitation in Africa http://christianityismore.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/improvingwater-sanitation-in-africa/ Improper sanitation pollutes water and causes many of the water-borne illnesses. Waterborne illnesses are one of the top causes for infant mortality and killers of children under five. B. SODIS PROVIDES CLEAN WATER AND MAKES PEOPLE HEALTHIER Wijk, Christina van; December 2003; HIV/AIDS and water supply, sanitation, and hygiene http://www.lboro.ac.uk/well/resources/fact-sheets/fact-sheets-htm/hiv-aids.htm Where households have no safe water, or the supply is intermittent and breakdowns are long, SODIS, or solar disinfection of less safe water, is suitable for household use. A transparent container such as a plastic bottle is filled with water from a nearby source

with a lower water quality and closed. The caretaker places the container in strong sunlight. This will kill most bacteria when the water is exposed for a period of 4-6 hours in full sunlight, or an entire day when the sky is overcast. C. HEALTHY POPULATION KEY TO ECONOMIC HEALTH Nyamute, Michael (Business Analyst for the with the Standard Group); August 2007; http://www.goodnewsdaily.com/show_story.php?ID=1254 The link between the health of a population and the economic health of the same population has not been given due attention. And although the tide is turning, it is still not unusual to find that those who make financial decisions on allocation of funds to health think of it only as a good thing, but may not grasp the importance of investing in a healthy population to stimulate or protect economic growth. That health is the asset that people value most highly does not always translate into better budgetary allocations. In macroeconomic terms, if we were to measure welfare more broadly than income or consumption, poor health is a deprivation that is part of the poverty and should, therefore, be tackled as such. In a simple sense, health is wealth. The Nobel Economics laureate Amartya Sen has defined poverty as capability deprivation a person lacks the substantive freedoms to lead the kind of life he or she has reason to value. It is in this context that the Human Development Index reflects achievements in the most basic human capabilities leading to a long life, being knowledgeable and enjoying a decent standard of living that can be represented as health, education and income which are, indeed, the three pillars of human development.

ADVANTAGE 3: Environment A. ONLY 23.1% OF PET BOTTLES WERE RECYCLED IN THE US IN 2005 The Association of Post-Consumers Plastic Recyclers, November 30th, 2006; http://www.plasticsrecycling.org/article.asp?id=28 The National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR) and the Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers (APR) today announced a Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) recycling rate of 23.1% and a collected volume of 1.170 billion pounds for PET post consumer containers in the United States for the year ended December 31, 2005.

B. PLASTIC GARBAGE WASTES HARM MARINE ECOSYSTEMS Hayden, Thomas, writer for the U.S. News and World Report. 4th November 2002. Trashing the Oceans http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Trashing-OceansPlastic4nov02.htm

Most plastic bags end up in landfills, part of the millions of tons of plastic garbage Americans dump each year. But whether jettisoned illegally by ships at sea, washed out from land during storms, or, as in the case of the chalupa bags, accidentally lost overboard from containerships, countless tons of plastic refuse end up drifting on the high seas. Many Americans know about the hazard posed by six-pack rings, the plastic yokes that can grasp a seagull or otters neck as tightly as they do a soda can. But researchers are finding that plastic litter doesnt just strangle wildlife or spoil the view. Plastic is not just an aesthetic problem, says marine biologist David Barnes of the British Antarctic Survey. It can actually change entire ecosystems. C.MARINE ECOSYSTEMS ARE IMPORTANT FOR HEALTH OF ENVIRONMENTS U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; September 20, 2007; Marine Ecosystems http://www.epa.gov/bioiweb1/aquatic/marine.html Marine ecosystems are very important in to the overall health of both marine and terrestrial environments. According to the World Resources Center, coastal habitats alone account for approximately 1/3 of all marine biological productivity, and estuarine ecosystems (i.e., salt marshes, seagrasses, mangrove forests) are among the most productive regions on the planet. In addition, other marine ecosystems such as coral reefs, provide food and shelter to the highest levels of marine diversity in the world.