Dear Plenty Friends,

Depending on who you talk to, the World Summit on Sustainable Development just concluded in South Africa was "a disappointment" or "a disaster" for the world. UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan offered the most positive spin—"It’s just the beginning." The chief complaint of environmental groups and aid groups is that, while the governments committed themselves to a lot of fine sounding goals ("to substantially increase" the global share of renewable energy and "to cut significantly by 2010" the rate at which rare animals and plants are becoming extinct), for the most part specific targets were avoided and there’s no way to enforce the commitments that were agreed to. The one commitment that got the most accolades was to "halve the number of people lacking clean drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015."

According to the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA): "Today, 1.2 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water, 2.9 billion have no adequate sanitation facilities, and 4 billion do not have proper sewer systems. In 1998, water-related diseases caused an estimated 3.4 million deaths, mostly children."

I don’t think it’s farfetched to describe world inaction on this issue as equivalent to wielding a weapon of mass destruction. It’s causing three million, four hundred thousand preventable deaths every year.

CIDA further says: "If everyone on earth were to have access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities by 2025, it would cost an additional $75 billion a year." To say that another way: it would cost less than the price of one war on Iraq (estimated at $100 billion at least) every year for the next 23 years.

Of course, the United States is not going to fund this, but according to financial analysts we could. Robert Samuelson writes in Newsweek that during WW II the US military spending was 38% of gross domestic product (GDP). The War in Vietnam cost 9.4% of GDP per year during the highest year, 1968. Seventy-five billion dollars is less than 1% of US GDP today. The US Administration says we can afford a $100 billion war on Iraq, a $350 billion yearly defense budget, an open-ended War on Terrorism and a trillion dollar plus tax cut over the next 10 years. The industrialized countries have pledged to contribute .7% of GDP to poverty eradication. Denmark actually gives 1.1% and the US only around .1%. Can you imagine the goodwill that the US would earn if it actually starting giving 1%? Heck, let’s dump that tax cut and start giving 1% plus a trillion dollars over the next ten years administered by thousands of NGOs like Plenty in direct hands-on, village-scale projects. Okay, I’m dreaming, but this effort can’t be any more complicated than prosecuting a war against Iraq and fighting terrorists in 60 countries. The last war against Iraq demolished water supplies and infrastructure and directly and devastatingly impacted millions of children. Now they want to go back and do it again. You’ve heard the tired cliché—"thinking outside the box." Let’s ask the politicians to start thinking outside the war, outside the paranoia, and outside the cycle of violence! It’s time. It’s high time. The world is waiting.

Yours truly,

Peter Schweitzer
Executive Director