Media Statement - 1st November 2007
A Rudd Labor government will take the lead on water and sanitation for developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
Unclean water and poor sanitation are the world’s second biggest killers of children, needlessly killing 1.8 million children every year.
An incoming Rudd Labor government will allocate an additional $100 million from Australia’s international aid budget in 2009/10 and an additional $200 million in 2010/11 to assist our neighbours meet a basic human need – access to clean water and sanitation.
These funds will be drawn from the Government’s already announced forward estimates in Australia’s overseas aid program budget.
Working in close cooperation with the world leader in this area, the UK Government, Labor will join the “Global Call to Action on Water and Sanitation”, focusing on:
- investing more in water and sanitation;
- ensuring that money is spent effectively and fairly; and
- putting the right structures in place to make progress.
Preliminary discussions between Federal Labor and the UK Secretary of State for International Development have already laid the groundwork for high level co-operation to take this proposal forward.
The world is facing a global water crisis in which over 1.1 billion people lack access to safe water and 2.6 billion people lack access to sanitation.
Lack of access to clean water and sanitation is of particular concern in our region of South East Asia and the Pacific:
- Some 100 million people in our region do not have access to clean water and around 190 million do not have access to adequate sanitation
- Approximately 75,000 children will die this year in South East Asia and the Pacific from diarrhoea.
- 10,000 people die each day from avoidable water-borne diseases and of these, 5,000 are children.
- Every 7 minutes a child in our region dies through lack of clean water and sanitation.
Access to clean water and sanitation are the cornerstones of health and poverty reduction. Poor health resulting from lack of clean water and sanitation infrastructure undermines productivity, economic growth and stability.