By Samantha Magick
Earlier this month the world learnt of the plight of Banabans, who had been living without fresh water for a year according to residents.
A social media post from an overseas-based Banaban gave a stark insight into the dire water shortages, and rallied support for the island’s estimated 12,000 inhabitants. Within days the Kiribati government dispatched bottled water, a desalination plant, water tanks and cement to repair existing but damaged water tanks.
One elder, Roubena Ritata told Pacnews it is a long-standing problem. “This water crisis goes back years and yet we do not have a permanent solution. While we are thankful, we are calling for an ambitious rehabilitation plan for Banaba which has been devastated by 80 years of mining.”
Yet the water shortages on Banaba are far from an isolated situation. Approximately 45% of all Pacific Islanders live without access to basic drinking water facilities, and approximately 70% don’t have access to basic sanitation. That’s the highest rate (as a proportion of population) of any region in the world. Some Pacific Islanders are living on close to the SPHERE standard, the minimum required fresh water needed for human survival, or what would fill a large biscuit bucket, per person per day.
Access to clean water and sanitation is Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 6, which aims to achieve (a)universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all, (b)adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and an end to open defecation, (c)improved water quality, (d)substantially increased water-use efficiency, and (e)protection and restoration of water-related ecosystems, amongst other aspirations.
However a United Nations/UN Water update report released this month stated the world is not on track to meet this goal. Similarly, the Asian Water Development Outlook 2020 report raises concerns on several fronts. It states eight Pacific ADB members are still in the ‘nascent’ stage when it comes to economic water security (i.e. water to sustainably satisfy economic growth), and that the Pacific is lagging when it comes to urban water security.
“Some countries perform well (e.g. Palau and the Cook Islands)” the report states. “But other countries score rather low. The Pacific lags behind other regions in Asia, mainly due to the geographic location and limited financial means. Of particular concern is the low water security in Papua New Guinea and Federated States of Micronesia.”
The report says while the Pacific is scoring well in terms of environmental water security and shows resilience in water-related disaster security, “Progress during 2013-2020 is somewhat disappointing. Priority actions for governance improvement in the Pacific are financing, managing trade-offs and monitoring and evaluation.”
David Hebblethwaite, the Water Security and Governance Coordinator at the Pacific Community (SPC) says while the numbers are alarming in terms of Pacific Islanders’ access to water and sanitation, our region faces many other complex and complicating issues.
“We are the most disaster impacted region in the world and 75% of our disasters are hydro-meteorological disasters, they’re related to water in some way,” he says.
“The water cycle in our small island communities is really small,” he continues. “We’re talking harvesting rainwater, and of course that can go in and out of drought really quickly, but also using groundwater that is so easily impacted by land use.
“So even the countries that against the SDG goals are doing pretty well compared to some of the other Pacific Island countries, they still have some really significant challenges going forward.”
At the end of 2019, just months before the coronavirus pandemic was declared, a Pacific High-Level Dialogue on Water and Sanitation convened in Suva, Fiji and issued a call to action to address this array of challenges.
Participants called for: stronger leadership on water and sanitation, (“a fundamental recalibration of priorities and investments”); more support for local capacity to maintain safe, secure, appropriate and affordable systems and practices; increased investment in evidence-based decision making (and by inference, in science, data collection, communication, citizen science and traditional knowledge of water resources); stronger advocacy for change at all levels of society; better coordination across sectors; and the establishment of effective frameworks for action.
Hebblethwaite says one of the key messages—particularly for development partners—is that some of the water and climate action in the Pacific can involve some of the simplest things: “strapping on roofs, having solid guttering, resilient water tanks, resilient access to groundwater, resilient sanitation facilities that aren’t going to be destroyed by every cyclone that goes through.”
“Innovation is key absolutely, but it needs to be Pacific innovation and there’s a lot of home grown innovation in this area.”
Asked for an example, Hebblethwaite talks about an ongoing project in Vaitupu, Tuvalu, where an SPC-sponsored groundwater survey for the first time confirmed traditional knowledge about a pocket of fresh water.
“People knew about this lens, but it had never been quantified or mapped before, so it was the first time it had been delineated and quantified so you could say, ‘Yes, you can pump a certain amount out of this lens’. It is not going to be enough to sustain all the community’s needs, but it was certainly shown to be enough to drought-proof the community.”
The New Zealand government is now supporting the Tuvalu government to protect and use that groundwater lens.
There are many agencies working, in particular, on WASH issues. A small sample: in Chuuk, Pohnpei and Yap, the Federated States of Micronesia Adaption Fund is working on community-level infrastructure to provide access to clean water. In Ebeye in the Marshall Islands, where the number of cases of waterborne diseases averages 1,182 cases a year, the sewer system is dilapidated and fresh water sources are limited, the ADB and Australian government are funding programs linking all households to upgraded freshwater and sewage facilities that reduce water leaks and sewage overflows. UNICEF partners to build water and sanitation facilities in communities, schools and health centres, provides WASH assistance during emergency responses such as cyclones, and advocates for stronger national legal systems and policies for WASH. Australia’s Water for Women Fund is a A$110.6 program aimed at improving the health, gender equality and well-being of Asian and Pacific communities through inclusive, sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programs.
The gender focus is deliberate. Girls and women are the most impacted by water access challenges. They do most of the fetching, carrying and storage of water, and make most decisions about water use within households . Their personal health and safety also depends on WASH access. A 2017 Australian government-funded research paper on menstrual hygiene management, The Last Taboo, found that in Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, WASH facilities in schools and workplaces are commonly inadequate to meet the needs of menstruating girls and women.
“Challenges include non-functioning toilets and showers, unclean and poorly maintained facilities lacking in privacy, lack of toilet paper, lack of safe disposal options for used sanitary items, and a lack of soap and water for handwashing and personal hygiene, including washing of re-usable materials, where relevant… When WASH facilities are inadequate some girls and women prefer to return home to change used materials, contributing to absenteeism from school and work.”
“Water-proofing water solutions”
The SPC says all Pacific Island governments are making improvements in the sector. For example Kiribati is one of only 16 countries globally that has reduced open defecation by more than 20% since 2020.
However those improvements have not kept pace with population growth, population movement and the challenges posed by climate change.
The absence of critical data for decision-making, as in so many aspects of Pacific islands policy making, is another big challenge. Hebblethwaite say some of the most basic data is not being collected, in terms of rainfall and river flow, and that communities need the confidence that when they do collect this data and maintain equipment, it will actually make a difference.
“Banaba doesn’t have a rain gauge at the moment, and the nearest one to that is supposed to be Nauru, and the Nauru one is not operating at the moment. So that’s hundreds of kilometres in the Pacific where you’re not collecting basic data. Then in the places where the data is collected, connecting it to an agreed, drought planning mechanism, having triggers that can trigger action, there’s certainly activity on that, countries are doing work, but there needs to be a lot more support in the region.”
“The Pacific is leading the world in some respects by pulling together its climate change adaptation and its disaster risk reduction efforts through the Pacific Resilience Partnership. That’s quite a unique experience in the world in trying to bring those communities together but there is so much more that can be done to waterproof the discussion. There’s more than water and sanitation at play. There’s education and awareness processes that needs to happen.”
COVID complications
At the start of the pandemic, UN agencies and our national governments focused on how we could reduce transmission through handwashing, other hygiene practices and social distancing. In communities without good access to fresh and safe water, there was a focus on using tippy-taps and similar set-ups.
In Papua New Guinea, where community transmission of COVID-19 has reached alarming rates, the World Bank says “poor access to handwashing facilities results in poor hygiene and impedes effective measures to control the COVID-19 pandemic.” The National Research Institute’s Mary Fairio says the country’s WASH professionals need to restrategise, collaborate and pull their resources together.
“We’ve noticed a heightened attention from partners on WASH, which is good,” Hebblethwaite says. “Also because water and sanitation is part of our resilience dialogue in the pacific, partners are realising every time there is a disaster in the region [and] they’re called upon to support national efforts to build back or to support immediate needs, WASH is central to that all the time.”
He says the pandemic has also exposed further cracks, including the paucity of data on handwashing facilities. “The Pacific only has a few data points there…[and] those data points show that our handwashing facilities are really low. And that includes not just at the household level but in schools and healthcare facilities. Again that varies all around the region. But overall there are some really concerning numbers.
Beyond COVID, there are the long standing health issues that come with poor access to safe and fresh water and sanitation facilities. An estimated 1.3 million Pacific Islanders rely on the bush or the beach for their toilet, with a huge impact on the communities in which they live. Furthermore, UNICEF says only 40% of households across six countries in our region practice safe disposal of children’s faeces. The causes of Leptospirosis, Typhoid and Dengue Fever as water borne diseases is well understood, but there is also mounting evidence that hygiene, as well as nutrition, is a key factor in childhood stunting.
WHO says stunting rates in some Pacific Islands are very high: 44% in Papua New Guinea, and 33% in Solomon Islands and Kiribati. Stunting not only reduces a child’s chance of surviving, but also prevents them from thriving. It can interfere with learning, economic productivity and general health and wellbeing into adulthood.
More than prayers
The Banaban diaspora around the world have been urged to pray and fast for their family at home.
Pacific Islanders with limited water access, or threatened long term supplies need more than prayers, they need money to fix the problems. UN Water’s March update reports that “although official development assistance (ODA) commitments to the water sector increased slightly in recent years, this is mainly due to an increase in concessional lending, and the gap between actual disbursements and future commitments is growing.”
For Hebblethwaite, that assistance needs to be sustained and coordinated , and available right across the water cycle.
“Sometimes dealing with different climate financing mechanisms, there is a reluctance to support sanitation improvements because it’s seen to be a development measure rather than a resilience, climate change adaptation measure. I think that’s where climate finance institutions are starting to soften their approach or broaden their concept of it, particularly when you see disaster impacts, increasing weather events associated with climate change, [and the] impact on infrastructure.”
