Third Meeting of World Water Forum of Journalists
The 17th Congress of Asia-Pacific Forum of Environmental Journalists on
May 8-10, 2006
Christine I. Wallich, Country Director, World Bank Let me thank the organizers for inviting me at this media conference- - the 4th Meeting of World Water Forum of Journalists and 17th Congress of Asia Pacific Forum of Environmental Journalists -- with the very important and timely theme ‘Water, Sanitation and Climate Change-Achieving MDGs: Role of the Media’. Today I want to outline some of the environmental challenges Bangladesh is facing and how the media and the World Bank can help try and tackle them. It’s a massive task but one in which the Bank is committed to play its part. Let me start by saying that as international journalists, you are probably well aware that Bangladesh doesn’t always get the best press. This is a country often characterized by devastating floods, poor governance and poverty. Like many developing countries, Bangladesh has its problems, but it also has surprising successes even in the fields of the environment and in particular water management and sanitation.
For example over 95% of Bangladesh’s population has access to bacteriologically safe drinking water, exceeding India, its far richer neighbor. That’s a real achievement. In addition almost half of the population has access to improved sanitation, well above the average for South Asia. And look at the progress that has made in mitigating the devastating effects of natural disasters. Thousands of lives have been saved by the construction of cyclone shelters and government campaigns to educate households on food and water safety precautions during floods. Bangladesh has other surprises for the international visitor. It has already achieved the Millennium Development Goal of eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary school enrollment and is on target for achieving its child mortality goal. Of course, much more needs to be done. Next week the Bank will launch its Country Assistance Strategy for Bangladesh that focuses on how we can achieve goals such as improved water supply and sanitation, while promoting sustainable development. The Bank’s Country Assistance Strategy has two pillars, improving the investment climate and empowering the poor. Underlying these is a core focus on good governance. This means all World Bank interventions will be as much about improving governance as they will be about improving sector performance.
I will come back to this later. But first, perhaps we should remind ourselves of the scale of the environmental and development challenges faced: With population density approaching one thousand people per square kilometer, among the highest in the world, pressure on natural resources in Bangladesh is extremely high. Two-thirds of the land area is cropped, the highest proportion in South Asia, and the share under forest cover is the second lowest in the region. Pressure on wetlands and aquatic life is a particular concern in Bangladesh, as booming urban and industrial growth leads to land reclamation, not all of it well-advised or legally sanctioned. Pollution puts increasing pressure on fish stocks, in a country where fish continues to provide more than half the animal protein in the national diet. A World Bank report of last December estimated that the clean water needed in Bangladesh’s expanding urban centers will jump from 10,000 million liters a day to over 35,000 million liters a day in the future. As we see daily in Dhaka, providing safe water and a functioning sewerage system is already a major challenge. The city’s sewerage system serves only 27 per cent of the population. The Bank estimates that up to $8 billion dollars will be needed to correct the country’s water supply and sewerage system over the next 20 years. So what is the role of the media in dealing with this? Most simply, it is to find out and report on what is happening, even if the results are unpalatable to those in power. I applaud those Bangladeshi journalists who have already taken up this challenge. The photographers who get the pictures of the land-grabbers filling in the city’s waterways, - the journalists who name and confront the wrongdoers. Only by bringing publicity to such issues can momentum for change grow. Let’s go back to the example of the sewerage system. Sewerage systems are in disrepair and dysfunction in many of the world’s cities – it’s not just Bangladesh where the system is in need of investment. It is said that this is because “there aren’t any votes to be gained by spending taxpayer money, underground,” ie where it is not visible. It’s up to the media to keep people informed of the real cost of not tackling the problem; To tell them about what is happening to the Buriganga and Lakhya Rivers around Dhaka that absorb 80 per cent of the city’s effluents; Of the health risks of poor sanitation.
Yet with power also comes responsibility. For example air quality in Dhaka has recently worsened again, offsetting some of the gains from the successful banning of two-stroke engines from the city. Does this mean the ban on two-strokes was a failure? Not at all. Rather, Dhaka has grown, creating new problems that need to be tackled. It means further measures are needed. Responsible journalism would give credit, as well as criticism . I mentioned earlier the Country Assistance Strategy which will frame the World Bank’s program for Bangladesh over the coming years. Its focus on governance is something which should interest the media. Increasing transparency and accountability and reducing opportunities for corruption helps ensure that money allocated for improving the living conditions of the poor actually reaches its target. One cause of Dhaka’s water supply problems today is a shortage of electric power to drive the pumps, a shortage which can be directly traced to corruption and mis-governance in the power sector. Tackling these sector governance issues , enhancing accountability, would bring direct benefits to the city’s poor residents and water users. The media has an important role to play in explaining these cause-and-effect relationships, analyzing and highlighting root causes of a problem, and giving voice to realistic, viable solutions. Governance is also about the enforcement of sensible regulations. Here the media also has a role. Powerful economic interests may be able to persuade enforcement agencies to ignore so called ‘victimless crimes’ such as brick factories with chimneys below regulation height, pumping their fumes into residential areas, with everyone, in fact, a victim. Journalists can shame the law enforcers into action. The Country Assistance Strategy is also about partnerships, about the World Bank working with the Government, the media, civil society and other development partners to achieve development results. World Bank financing of the Arsenic Mitigation Project is a good example of this, where Government, NGOs and communities have been working together to build awareness of the problem, screen water sources and provide demand-led solutions. We are really pleased with the results and are now supporting a Water Supply Program Project involving the private sector in providing piped water in partnership with the community and Government. In both these projects, it is about getting the community to tell us what they need. I would just like to draw your attention to some other programs we are funding in the environmental sector. We are supporting the Government’s commitment to Total Sanitation by 2010, an essential step towards addressing the single most significant environmental threat to the nation’s health, and meriting the full support of development partners, the media and civil society. The World Bank, through the Local Government Strengthening Project , will provide additional block grants to the Union Parishads to accelerate this activity. In urban areas, while extending the public sewer system must be the long term aim, many new or expanding developments, as well as existing slums, will not receive trunk connections in the foreseeable future. For these areas, alternative solutions are needed. The World Bank is also proposing to provide support for improved sanitation through the planned Dhaka Chittagong Water Supply and Sanitation Project, and the Dhaka Environment and Water Resource Management Project. The World Bank is also exploring with Government efforts to tackle indoor air pollution, for example through providing rural energy, clean cooking technologies, including improved stoves and biogas.
In urban areas, vehicles remain the priority for emissions control. Measures aimed at controlling the age of vehicles need to be assessed, as well as the further promotion of public transport. Diesel vehicles are a particular concern in Dhaka, and the World Bank-supported Air Quality Management Project has commissioned a study to assess the options for controlling emissions from these sources. But what about the global issue of climate change? This is of critical importance to Bangladesh where dense population and the country’s location in a low lying delta makes it particularly vulnerable to climate change. For instance, models predict Bangladesh and North East India will be receiving 10-20 per cent more rainfall by 2100, with huge impacts on water resource management and flood patterns. The World Bank believes that climate change is as much a development as an environmental issue, and that the poor will be at the greatest disadvantage. As part of the global effort to combat climate change, the World Bank has developed a Carbon Finance Fund which seeks to improve developing countries access to the carbon finance market. This new Carbon Facility aims to ensure that the financial contributions from OECD countries to meet their emission reduction obligations under the Kyoto protocol, are transferred to developing countries in exchange for clean technology. The Bank is currently exploring possibilities for Bangladesh to receive credits for improved waste management through our municipal services project. This facility is an opportunity that many developing countries should take advantage of. To conclude: It is my firm belief that members of Asia-Pacific Forum of Environmental Journalists (APFEJ) and the World Water Forum of Journalists(WWFJ), will continue to play their pro-people role in bringing water, sanitation and climate change issues to the forefront. The World Bank strongly supports both these professional media organization work in helping to reduce the burden of environmental, water and climate stresses on Bangladesh and other vulnerable countries. I am looking forward to a fruitful discussion and feed back on the outcome of this important conference. Thank you.
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