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NEW YORK -- Calls for increased help from Washington are on the rise as global efforts to tackle the world's burgeoning water and sanitation crisis have largely failed to produce any meaningful results so far.
"Support, sponsor, solve," read a full-page newspaper advertisement released by an advocacy group this week, urging the U.S. Congress to pass a piece of legislation that would significantly increase U.S. funding for safe drinking water worldwide.
If adopted, the proposed bill, known as the Water for the Poor Act, would allocate no less than $300 million in assistance to improve water and sanitation conditions in the developing world.
"The U.S. government can have a tremendous positive impact," said John Oldfield of Water Advocates, a Washington, DC-based non-profit organization seeking to enhance U.S. support for worldwide access to safe, affordable, and sustainable drinking water and adequate sanitation.
The group has launched a nationwide campaign to gather support for the proposed legislation.
"We need Americans to write their representatives and senators to ask them to pass the Senate version and fund the Water for the Poor Act for 2008," said Oldfield, who believes the devastating effects of the water and sanitation crisis are still widely unknown by most Americans.
Researchers say every year about 5 million people die from waterborne diseases, a toll even larger than those wrought by AIDS and malaria.
The proposed bill, which is named for the late Illinois senator Paul Simon, has drawn some support from both sides of the political divide, but its adoption is still in question. Thus, advocates are pressing for further lobbying and increased public support.
Proponents of the bill say increased funding from Washington would not only save many lives, but could also result in improving public health, education, environmental sustainability, and commerce, especially in less developed regions of Africa and Asia.
Research shows that in many parts of the world water tables are continuing to fall and rivers are drying up.
"As the world's demand for water has tripled over the last half-century and as the demand for hydroelectric power has grown even faster, dams and diversions of river water have drained many rivers dry," says Lester Brown, author of several books and president of the Washington, DC-based Earth Policy Institute, an independent environmental policy think tank.
In his most recent work, Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, Brown warns of the consequences of overpumping aquifers, which is occurring in a number of countries.
According to Brown, the depletion of so-called fossil aquifers, which are nonreplenishable, brings water pumping to an end, yet many countries, including China, India, and the United States -- the world's three largest grain producers -- continue to rely on this method to meet their growing water needs.
Brown says some farmers who lose their irrigation water have the option of returning to lower-yield dryland farming, if rainfall permits, but in more arid regions, such as the southwestern United States and the Middle East, the loss of irrigation water means the end of agriculture.
A World Bank study indicates that China is currently overpumping three key river basins -- the Hai, which flows through Beijing and Tianjin; the Yellow; and the Huai. Since it takes 1,000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain, the shortfall in the Hai basin of nearly 40 billion tons of water per year means that when the aquifer is depleted, the grain harvest will drop by 40 million tons.
That's enough to feed 120 million Chinese, Brown says.
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