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2B people don't have safe drinking water: what does this mean for them?

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Re: 2B people don't have safe drinking water: what does this mean for them?

#31

Post by squigz »

hiddencost wrote: post #9
docdeek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a lot, even if it is a long term project. UNICEF reports that, "Between 2000 and 2022, 2.1 billion people gained access to safely managed drinking water and the number of people lacking at least basic drinking water services decreased from 1.2 billion to 703 million.” [O] That’s not everyone but in about 20 years 2 billion more people got access to safely managed drinking water, and the amount of people who lac…

Sadly with the end of USAID a lot of this progress will be lost.

I don't think it will be "lost" - and I don't think UNICEF will stop their work even if the US doesn't give them anything; there are still plenty of other governments/organizations donating money

Re: 2B people don't have safe drinking water: what does this mean for them?

#32

Post by makeitdouble »

sofixa wrote: post #24
makeitdouble wrote: post #8

This a truly big problem that has been going surfaced for decades, and I honestly have become split... On one side, France in particular, but many other "developed" nations as well have stepped in to build the infrastructure and provide clean water to places where it was problematic. Only to monopolize water distribution one way or the other, resulting in people not able to afford the water at the end, while losing t…

> On one side, France in particular, but many other "developed" nations as well have stepped in to build the infrastructure and provide clean water to places where it was problematic. > Only to monopolize water distribution one way or the other, resulting in people not able to afford the water at the end, while losing their previous precarious access to dirty but natural sources as well. > Nestle, Danone are the post…

For Danone it's more of a growing ambition. They've depleted water sources in France at multiple times and have declared aiming for more engagement on the African market for the next decades [0]. Their involvement is more in partnership with Veolia which holds the main contracts [1], so I should have put Veolia forward for more clarity, but I see Danone as just not being good enough at this game to be shunned at the bigger players' level.

> nor France itself (private companies, Swiss or French, aren't "France")

These companies aren't existing in a vacuum, and the French government will protect these interests when shit hits the fan. Veolia in particular is basically a private arm managing a critical field that should be government managed in any other setting.

It would be like saying that Lockheed Martin is a private company that doesn't involve the USA, when the government will bend over backward to protect these interests.

[0] https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2016/02/23/danone-pr...

[1] https://www.veoliawatertech.com/fr/ressources/articles/danon...

Re: 2B people don't have safe drinking water: what does this mean for them?

#33

Post by mslansn »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #20
makeitdouble wrote: post #8

This a truly big problem that has been going surfaced for decades, and I honestly have become split... On one side, France in particular, but many other "developed" nations as well have stepped in to build the infrastructure and provide clean water to places where it was problematic. Only to monopolize water distribution one way or the other, resulting in people not able to afford the water at the end, while losing t…

> Then there is China, and they need to be willing to dance. They need to dance no matter what, let's be real. Be that for the Chinese government, be that for whichever government, be it hearing out some religious org proselytizing at them, be it enduring stupid and infantilizing designs like those water wells that were powered by a children's spinning playground thing, it really isn't that shocking that these places…

They need to dance because they don’t have the intelligence and diligence to do things themselves. It’s not really anybody else’s fault. Beggars can’t be choosers.

Re: 2B people don't have safe drinking water: what does this mean for them?

#34

Post by makeitdouble »

lclc wrote: post #12
makeitdouble wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "solution" from the perspective of the leading countries: https://themuslimvibe.com/muslim-current-affairs-news/heres-...

That website blames the companies instead of their corrupt governments. It's always easier to blame the evil Westerners than to actually fix the problem. Bad vibe.

It takes two to tango.

I'm not disagreeing, but corruption requires a corrupting company as well, and if we're going the moral route, bribing to get the upper hand on a captive population fits the "evil" definition.

Then again and again, western countries don't really need a more developed third world, and they won't bend over backward to create more competition for themselves. So supporting corrupt regimes has very few downsides from a G20 country for instance.

Banana republics are the most simple example of that, but it doesn't need to be that blatant.

Re: 2B people don't have safe drinking water: what does this mean for them?

#35

Post by colechristensen »

makeitdouble wrote: post #8

This a truly big problem that has been going surfaced for decades, and I honestly have become split... On one side, France in particular, but many other "developed" nations as well have stepped in to build the infrastructure and provide clean water to places where it was problematic. Only to monopolize water distribution one way or the other, resulting in people not able to afford the water at the end, while losing t…

>Has anyone more than small scale feel good stories or "promising advancements". Do we have things that really improved at scale in the last ten or twenty years ?

Yes, things are improving all the time. There are all sorts of organizations recording various metrics of quality of life kinds of things and the trends across the board are upwards, it's just very easy to live in a bubble and have no idea how things actually are across the world.

https://epi.yale.edu/epi-results/2020/component/h2o

https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/country-insights#/ranks

Re: 2B people don't have safe drinking water: what does this mean for them?

#37

Post by geodel »

pluto_modadic wrote: post #25
londons_explore wrote: post #7

We also need to think about uses of water. Water is used for drinking (~2 liters/day)... Contamination here really matters. Waker is used for cooking (~20 liters per day). Contamination here matters somewhat, since some forms of pollutants will be rendered harmless by cooking. Water is used for washing (~200 liters per day). Contamination here matters a little too, because washing water can touch something which gets…

"far cheaper than providing large amounts" that doesn't factor in the cost of plumbing an entire town with 3 sets. remember photos of the tangle of wires when DC vs AC fought? It's more expensive especially for a suburb of single family homes to plumb in sewers and water mains (long distances for low flows), vs plumbing in duplexes and apartments. having a secondary water system (e.g., purple pipes / grey water), for…

It is about bottom 2 billion not having safe drinking water. They are surely not having suburban homes with 3 sets of pipes. Its a one water pump + some filtration/cleaning mechanism for few thousand people who come there and collect it type situation.

Re: 2B people don't have safe drinking water: what does this mean for them?

#38

Post by sandworm101 »

londons_explore wrote: post #23
sandworm101 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isnt thay simple. As i kid we had non-potable water in the pipes. (Middle east) It was recycled water heavy on chlorine, safe for washing but not drinkable. Pressure was never the issue. We drank from a "sweetwater" tap, which also fed the hot water tank and the dishwasher. Using safe potable water to flush toilets is silly. Splitting drinking from other uses is far more efficient.

> Splitting drinking from other uses is far more efficient. This isn't universally true. Pipework (laying+maintaining), collection and storage is generally the expensive bit of any water system. The actual purification is fairly cheap. That means having two sets of pipes to every house (one for drinking water, one for mid-grade water) usually costs more than just one set of pipes and having all water drinkable. Thats…

That isnt how it is always done. In not-dry countries, the non-potable water is generally collected locally. It is filtered rainwater from cisterns, not piped public water from afar.

Re: 2B people don't have safe drinking water: what does this mean for them?

#39

Post by KingMob »

londons_explore wrote: post #16

Most of these people are not cut off from the world. You will find a coca-cola bottle in the same village! The solution is to tell them why clean water matters , and provide them a cheap way of making dirty water pretty clean . Ie. a water filter. The cheapest water filters, costing perhaps $10 and able to filter a family drinking water supply for years, will still eliminate most concerning contamination in water. Th…

> tell them why clean water matters

Wow, that's patronizing.

Most people without access to clean water are NOT tribes who have never contacted the outside world before. They're people in places with bad infrastructure, poverty, corruption, Nestle lobbying, etc.

Re: 2B people don't have safe drinking water: what does this mean for them?

#40

Post by sophacles »

sofixa wrote: post #24
makeitdouble wrote: post #8

This a truly big problem that has been going surfaced for decades, and I honestly have become split... On one side, France in particular, but many other "developed" nations as well have stepped in to build the infrastructure and provide clean water to places where it was problematic. Only to monopolize water distribution one way or the other, resulting in people not able to afford the water at the end, while losing t…

> On one side, France in particular, but many other "developed" nations as well have stepped in to build the infrastructure and provide clean water to places where it was problematic. > Only to monopolize water distribution one way or the other, resulting in people not able to afford the water at the end, while losing their previous precarious access to dirty but natural sources as well. > Nestle, Danone are the post…

Governments go to bat for their companies all the time. Via diplomacy, war, etc. Have you ever heard the justification for US bombs being dropped... 90% of the time its "to protect US interests", aka the US companies' ability to do business there. Trade deals exist to make it easier for one nation's businesses to profit in another nation. Foreign aid is similar - it's a nation paying it's own businesses for stuff to be delivered to another country... a nice combination of marketing, subsidy and to some extent "the first one's free kid".

Trying to separate the government of a nation and it's businesses is not so simple as "a government did it" or "a company did it".

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