In observance of World Water Day 2016, IHC member WaterAid released a report this week highlighting the disproportionate cost that the poor often must pay in order to access safe and consistent water.
While it is often assumed that the world's extreme poor lack formal water sources because they can't afford the luxury, through a series of case studies, the report shows that in fact the poorest often pay far more than their wealthier neighbors who are connected to formal or municipal or other formal water sources.
Many of the case studies are from cities, including: Maputo, Mozambique; Lusaka, Zambia; and Phenom Penh, Cambodia. The report calls on governments and donors to adopt an integrated approach that supports access to water and sanitation for the poor who need it most by embedding it within other necessary interventions.
HC supports this approach, while at the same time advocating for water and sanitation to be incorporated into an integrated, city-wide development approach that crosses sectors and communities and finds synergies among them. Adequate water and sanitation, together with security of tenure, durable structure and appropriate density are the five dimensions that the UN uses to define adequate housing.
Read the full report
here.
