premise: Water stress and scarcity Water stress and scarcity occur when there is an imbalance between the availability of water and the demand for water. When we hear people talking about water stress and scarcity, we often think of drought but this is only one of several causes. Alex Karpov, a representative from the WHO explains some of the other issues that also impact the availability of fresh water, The deterioration of ground water and surface water quality, competition for water between different segments of society, for example, between agricultural, industrial, and domestic users, and even social and financial barriers, are all causes of water stress and scarcity today. While approximately three quarters of the earth are covered with water only a small proportion of it is available as fresh water. Of the available fresh water supplies, nearly 70% is withdrawn and used for irrigation to produce food, and the demand just keep growing. Although there is currently no global scarcity of water, more and more regions of the world are chronically short of water. At present, 1.1 billion people have little choice but to use potentially harmful sources of water, and 2.6 billion people, which is around half the developing world, lack access to adequate sanitation. As Kathie Coles, an executive from the charity World of Water, describes, the situation will deteriorate. Over the next 20 years, an estimated 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with an absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population may be under pressure conditions. This situation will only worsen, as rapidly growing urban areas place heavy pressure on water supplies. Of course, there have been different initiatives put into place around the world to help with water stress and scarcity. With larger scale projects, such as the construction of piper water systems, remain important objectives of many development agencies, a shortage of time and finances will leave hundreds of millions of people without access to safe water in the foreseeable future. Georgina Ronaldson, a spokesperson for the World Bank, recently announced a way to deal with the current difficulties. To help developing countries, various concerned organisations have developed the Safe Water System (SWS), which is an adaptable and flexible intervention that employs scientific methods appropriate for the developing world. The SWS has been criticised in various corners as being too amateurish, but Ronaldson continues to justify the approach. The use of relevant technologies is important, an in many places around the world, water provision efforts suffer from a lack of technical knowledge to effectively manage or adapt a system to a communitys changing needs. The SWS is a community-based, integrative approach to improving health and quality of life through increased access to improve water, sanitation and hygiene. Darren Stanford, a water quality engineer, explains the important three step methodology. The first is an assessment of water delivery system from catchment to consumer. The second is implementing appropriate interventions, which can include protection of source waters, improvements to the water deliver systems, introduction of SWS, improved sanitation and hygiene education. The third is the evaluation of the impact of the intervention of the health and quality of life of the consumers. One example of how poor water access can affect local populations is the problems of guinea worms in remote parts of Africa. This is a preventable parasitic infection that affects poor communities that lack safe drinking water. The infection is transmitted to people who drink water containing copepods (tiny water fleas) that are infected with the larvae of guinea worms. Once ingested these larvae take up to one year to grow into adult worms; the female worms then emerge from the skin anywhere on the body. Will Goodman, a doctor with WHO, says that this can affect communities in different ways. The emergence of the adult female worm can be very painful, slow and disabling and prevents people from working in their fields, tending their animals, going to school, and caring for their families. Currently many organisations are helping the last nine endemic countries (all in Sub-Saharan Africa) to eradicate guinea worm. Since the Guinea Worm Eradication programme began, the incidence of guinea worm has declined from 1.5 million cases per year in 20 endemic countries to 25,018 reported cases in 2008 from the nine remaining endemic countries. The eradication efforts make use of simple intervention for providing safe drinking water including using cloth filters and pipe filters to strain the infected copepods from water, applying chemicals to the water supplies to kill the larvae, and preventing infected people from entering and contaminating the water supplies, as the worms emerge from their skins. Providing borehole wells and other supplies of water in endemic village is another important component of the eradication efforts. The provision of borehole well is one of the principal aims of SWS. Many existing dug wells in communities only pierce the topsoil, do not reach deep enough and are therefore readily affected by drought or by the natural declines from summer to autumn in the water table. SWS borehole wells can pierce the bedrock and access a deeper aquifer with water that is not affected by surface drought. These are also unaffected by guinea worm infestation and water is much safer for human consumption.
hypothesis: The SWS has been appreciated worldwide.