Today is Blog Action Day 2008, where blogs all over the world are writing about poverty. We thought we would use this opportunity to talk about water and poverty. The connections between access to good water and sanitation and poverty are very strong and and the linkages are deep, through the time and effort spent to access water, and ill health and loss of income generation due to bad quality water supply and poor sanitation, and limitation in rural livelihood capacities due to lack of sufficient water and more. We highlight two striking points here:

The poor in urban areas of developing countries are often not connected to the urban water supply systems. This means that they have to fend for themselves for getting potable water, which in India for example is from water supply through tankers (water trucks), or from groundwater, both of which can be significantly more expensive than government supplied water. More striking UNDP posters here : https://www.indiawaterportal.org/blog/2007/10/29/undp-posters-on-water/ =================

There are other significant costs of not having piped water supply to the home or close to the home related the time and expense that is involved in procuring water for drinking and domestic use. This burden usually falls on women and involves long treks to the place of procurement of water, long waits, arguments and conflicts. In this striking spreadsheet, David Foster seeks to illustrate what he calls the 'hidden cost of free water'.