Like you have baby-friendly hospitals, you have UNICEF-friendly agencies. And I consider UNDP a UNICEF-friendly agency. That's where we were aloud to speak in this impressive row of UNICEF presentations. Before addressing the subject at hand, I'd like to give you a little bit of background about where UNDP is heading nowadays. Actually, we are adopting a new framework for international development corporation. One that looks beyond official development assistance, ODA, and includes trade. That management, private investment, and capital close, access to technology and the arms race and military and expenditures, this means that we are addressing this issue.
The new framework is needed to help redefine the relationship between industrialized and developing countries. It is needed to consolidate the emerging concept of sustainable people-centered development. People must reap the benefits of development. A new development corporation should seek not only to generate economic growth, but to distribute it equitably. It should empower people politically and economically and not marginalize them. And it should advance women and not "keep them in their place". I'm delighted to see so many women in this audience, which is a tremendous achievement for an international conference. As many have said, our agenda is very much determined by a number of major international conferences. The World Summit for Children, The Earth Summit and many others. Therefore, I don't need to dwell on them. I'd like to come to the subject on hand, which is water and environmental sanitation. As you can see, we talk about social and economic development and the quality of the environment. And what do we mean by social and economic development? We mean, that communities have a very important role to play, and that they perhaps collect money to pay for medicine, but also for water, plants and sanitation. It means that it may have access to credit, to employment.
Because water and sanitation is not only drinking water but it is also generating the services. And of course, it is very well know that proper water and sanitation have a direct impact on the health and nutrition of children. And obviously, in terms of environment, we talk about protecting the resource. We cannot keep on consuming water when there are so many people who are looking for this precious resource, whether it is for drinking or irrigation or industrial development. But we also need to protect the resource. Since this is Child Health 2000, to look at some of the water-associated diseases. Water boiling, water wash, waterbased and water related diseases. Now, at mid-decade, where are we in terms of water supply and sanitation? As you can see, the total of earth's surface people on the right side for water is 1.1 billion people. For sanitation it is 2.8 billion people not served by proper sanitary facilities. If I contrast this with 1990, the people served by water is 1.3 billion, it is more or less the same for 1994. And 700 million people in turn were served by sanitation.
The next picture is actually a very frightening picture. Not so much because of water, but because as you can see the number of unserved people for water is declining to 700 million people. And what is frightening is that all the efforts in this field have not produced very effective results in terms of sanitation. The estimate now which is an official estimate which will be published in a UN document very soon, is that 3.3 billion people still lack proper sanitation. I thought it might be useful to look at some of the lessons we have learned from the so-called "water and sanitation decade". I've briefly reviewed these eight lessons. The focus is on poverty yes. Actually at the present time, still about 80% of all the investments go to the urban well-off areas, for expensive insulations. Only 20% goes to the rural areas. Therefore we do need to focus on poverty. We have to think about building capacity. Meaning people and institutions that can take care of water and sanitation. I'll come back to this issue. Meeting demand, means that people not necessarily want to the hand pump but perhaps want to have a standpost or a tap in their homes. But each has a price tag. And depending on their ability to pay they may have access to these technologies. Meeting demand means also meeting demand of schools for water and sanitation. Schools are one of the most neglected areas for promoting water and sanitation as well as other health services. Sharing costs, in some people's minds perhaps it is not clear that many people actually are willing to pay for water and sanitation, if they get reliable sources and if it's affordable. Many people now in urban areas pay perhaps ten times for water from a vender compared to the city water supply, if it is properly provided. Nevertheless, there are still people that are very marginalized and there even with maintenance perhaps with some community efforts and a little money can be provided by communities. The rest has to be subsidized for the time being by the state or by international organizations. Clearly, technical innovation is vital.
Let me tell you a little anecdote which demonstrates the important role of women. In a small country in Africa, women have been given a pump to maintain. They have been given a pump to own. And the condition for owning it was that it should collect money to maintain it. Several women actually collected the money for month after month, little bit every month, and after a year and a half a nice sum of money. They thought it might be very useful to put it in the bank. They went to the local agricultural bank and the local banker said, "who are you"? They said, "well we are three women coming from so and so". He said, "what is your status"? They said, "well just women". The banker said, "I'm an agricultural bank, and I cannot take money for water and sanitation". But fortunately there was a little project in that particular area and they made sure that the ministry of agriculture got in touch with the ministry of health to make sure that the agricultural bank would actually receive money.
It is very important to set achievable goals that people can meet and thereby actually take courage for even higher goals. The last subject of national and international coordination is very much in our line of work in UNDP. Because we do look for partnership, we have partnerships in this particular field, we have major program. We have a number of countries working with UNICEF, WHO, World Bank and 50 bilaterals, and indeed yes, by working together, pooling your resources, you can achieve coordination. And we do help the international agencies to work together in this context. I mentioned a frightening statistic about the increase of lack of sanitation. But there are some very simple ways you can adopt to reduce diarrhea and here they are. Making water free from contamination by hand washing. Very simple. A lot can be done. A brief talk on the cost of water supply. We have technologies going from the very simple to the very sophisticated. And as you can see the cost goes from $10.00 per capita to $200.00 per capita for water supply. This gives you an idea of the cost involved depending on the technologies that are selected. Talking about the communities. We also need to talk about urban areas. Since urban areas are increasing their population, more water and sanitation is needed. But in addressing that need, we should be careful to realize that the next project as we call it, might cost twice the current costs or three times the current costs. Therefore, efficiency, doing more with what we have, rehabilitation and the start of new investments is very much recommended. We all have heard about issues like hardware and software, now this is software. It is very important that people for people to deal with water and sanitation as well with other services. But they can only do so if they are properly trained and work in an environment like an institution at any level that is conducive to their working together. So you need to get your human resources right, but also your institution right. And all this will come to naught if you do not have the legal framework that allows you to work this way. The example of the women I gave earlier, is an example of where you get the legal issues right and the institutions right. Yet, community participation is an issue that is applicable not only to rural but also to urban areas, and I'd like to read this to you because it is very interesting to see how this can be formulated. And decision making cannot be put on tap to be turned on and off when desired. Participatory approach is not inconsistent used throughout the cycle of planning, implementation and evaluation. Well 20/20, the formula I alluded to this morning. We in the UNDP believe that this is a very powerful formula and deserves to be adopted. In the first place by our own agencies. And I was so pleased to learn this morning that Canada has already allocated 25% of funding for it's social services. The very source of funding for the future. We know that ODA is not really increasing significantly. So we believe that apart from the ODA, which includes incidentally development banks, which still have billions of dollars to invest, that the other sources of funding clearly must be the communities themselves if they get value for the money. If they find the money, however little it is. And of course the private sector, with various ways of generating funding and mounting in joint ventures that brings into the private sector. But the main message I would like to leave with you, is that 80% of the needs of rural and prairie urban areas can be covered if low cost, community based approaches are adopted. And that gives hope for the future. Thank you.