Working group on water follows advocacy gains with call for larger U.S. role

Some participants at a recent meeting of the Religious Working Group on Water.

Photo: T. Dirar/CWS

August 13, 2007

The U.S. government must exercise global leadership to ensure safe, affordable water for all, according to several churches and faith-based organizations.

In a statement released last month, the Religious Working Group on Water said “governments have a duty to ensure that all individuals have affordable, equitable access to water and that no one because of financial constraints is cut off from sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic use.”

Representatives from a broad range of faith-based organizations, institutions, communities and agencies, including Church World Service and several CWS member denominations, take part in the Washington, D.C.-based working group. Group participants advocate for U.S. policy makers to work to ensure universal, sustainable access to sufficient, safe, physically accessible and affordable water and sanitation.

Formed in October 2006, the Working Group has been part of a successful advocacy effort to fund the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act by the U.S. Congress. Recently, appropriations committees in both the House of Representatives and the Senate approved $300 million in international development assistance for clean water and sanitation projects.

Senate language mandated that the funding go “only” to implement the Water for the Poor Act. If accepted by the House in conference committee, the Act will help ensure funding for long-term, sustainable development and poverty alleviation in the countries where it is most needed.

While the United States can and should provide substantially more, the $300 million figure represents a significant increase over past amounts.

Working Group participants believe that water is a gift from God to be preserved and shared for the benefit of all people and the wider creation. The group supports the reduction by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015, a key target of one of the Millennium Development Goals.

In addition to advocating for Congressional funding for safe, affordable drinking water and sanitation, many Working Group participants seek to e nsure that international financial institutions such as the World Bank respects the right of countries to democratically determine their own water policies on a country-by-country basis and do not impose lending conditions that pre-empt such country decisions, for example, by requiring water privatization or similar policies.

Many Working Group participants also oppose irresponsible practices of extractive industries that pollute clean water sources and drain scarce water resources for profit. And they support the human right to water, which entitles everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible water for personal and domestic uses.

The Working Group on Water is chaired by Martin Shupack, CWS Associate Director for Public Policy. For more information about it, please contact him at .