Pulitzer Center Untold Stories

World Toilet Day is no joke

Peter Sawyer and Maura Youngman, for the Pulitzer Center

On November 19, World Toilet Day 2009, sanitation advocates at the U.S. Capitol made the point that going number two in the absence of sanitation is nothing to giggle about -- and that access to clean water is nothing to take for granted.

Nearly 2.6 billion people worldwide, 40% of the world’s population, lack access to basic sanitation; 1.1 billion do not have access to clean water. One result is that 1.8 million people, mostly young children, die each year from easily preventable water related diseases. In sub-Saharan Africa complications from the lack of sanitation and clean water are holding back economic growth -- to the tune of 5% of the region’s current GDP each year, or more than the region's entire share of international foreign aid. The technology to solve the clean water and sanitation problem already exists.  Only political momentum and awareness is in short supply.  

Indian Officials Declare Drought Worst Water Shortage in Mumbai’s History

Anna-Katarina Gravgaard, for the Pulitzer Center

Twenty million residents of Mumbai, India’s largest city, are facing an acute water shortage, the BBC reports this week. Authorities have cut water supplies by 30 percent, due to shortages brought on by sporadic monsoon rainfall. If rain doesn’t come soon, agricultural production is likely to suffer and urban residents are worried they will have to buy water from private tankers. If the drought continues, the lakes that feed the city’s water supplies will continue to recede. Water supplies for swimming pools have been cut and authorities say they may have to turn to cloud seeding to produce rain.

Meanwhile, floods have displaced 500.000 people in the western state of Maharashtra. Climate experts warn that changes in the monsoon and increased flooding are likely to be exacerbated with climate change. Hear what experts think about what is happening and what needs to be done.  World Bank Water Adviser David Grey in New Delhi:

From the Langtang Himalayas

For the mountain people of the Langtang region, the recession of the Himalayan glaciers is an unexplained fact of life.

Learn more about this project at South Asia's Troubled Waters

And join the conversation by sharing your story about water here.

From Bouddha, Nepal

William Wheeler and Anna-Katarina Gravgaard, for the Pulitzer Center

Reporting from an Tibetan exile community in Nepal on renewable energy.

Learn more about this project at South Asia's Troubled Waters

And join the conversation by sharing your story about water here.

Just Back from Pakistan

William Wheeler and Anna-Katarina Gravgaard, for the Pulitzer Center

Reporting summary on a trip to Islamabad to report on the status of the Indus water treaty.

Learn more about this project at South Asia's Troubled Waters

And join the conversation by sharing your story about water here.

 

Laying Sewers Before the Monsoon

William Wheeler and Anna-Katarina Gravgaard, for the Pulitzer Center

The streets of Boudha have turned into a muddy puddle as monsoon and sewer water mix while frantic community members work to lay down pipes before the waters rise over their feet.

Learn more about this project at South Asia's Troubled Waters

And join the conversation by sharing your story about water here.

People Around the World Share Their Water Stories

Chris Riha, Pulitzer Center

Nine-year-old Ely Kleinsmith knows that water and sanitation are issues that affect us all -- and that it's up to each of us to insure that everyone in the world has access to these resources that too many of us take for granted. What Ely has done, in his hometown of Solon, Iowa, is to found a Water Club aimed at raising awareness, and attract funding, for water-related programs in Haiti. He tells the story here.

When it comes to global challenges that touch every human, there's nothing like water and sanitation. This is an issue that engages everyone of us, like no other, and everyone has a distinctive story to tell. As a part of the Pulitzer Center’s ongoing water reporting we've been encouraging people to share their stories. More than a dozen have done so this week, joining the global conversation at our Water Wars interactive portal.

It's a great opportunity to expose people around the world to water-related problems in your area and to learn how this precious resource is treated across the globe -- especially now, with Congress debating the Paul Simon Water for the World Act that would greatly expand the dollars available to assure access to clean water and sanitation.

The Nepali Rain God

In the last parched weeks of the dry season before the monsoon arrives-- an eight month drought that has starved the fields, wells, and power generators on which Nepal depends-- the villagers of Pattan take the hulking figure of a rain god from his temple home and parade it through the streets in a plea for better hydrological fortunes. 

Learn more about this project at South Asia's Troubled Waters

And join the conversation by sharing your story about water here.

Water for the World: Senate hurdles, global challenge

Jon Sawyer, Pulitzer Center

A shortage of co-sponsors, and political will, is blocking Senate action on the Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2009, a bill named for the late Illinois senator that sets a goal, with funding, of providing an additional 100 million people with access to clean water and sanitation. It's a classic Washington impasse, politicians jostling over competing priorities and limited resources. But there's a human face to this issue too, one that's abundantly clear in recent Pulitzer Center reports from around the world.

A wrenching video by Anna-Katarina Gravgaard captures the daily struggle of slum dwellers in South Delhi, scrambling to siphon a bit of water from the tanker truck that passes through the neighborhood once a day -- while across the street, in a high-income compound, residents have built cisterns holding hundreds of gallons to assure that their own taps never run dry.

Ernest Waititu, reporting from the Kakuma refugee camp in the arid Turkana region of northwestern Kenya, join women and girls as they dig down to pockets of water, much of it impure, in the dried up bed of the Tarach River.

Sean Gallagher travels by rail and truck across north central China, documenting in photography and print what scientists consider the most rapid instance of desertification in the entire world.

From the Himalayan Hot Zone

Anna-Katerina Gravgaard, for the Pulitzer Center

Imagine a collaboration between Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, China, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal and Afghanistan. It sounds nearly impossible, but they all seek help to solve a common problem: The Himalayas are changing and everyone fears the consequences.

The Himalayas, which are often called "The Roof of the World", contain some of the most extensive and rough high altitude areas on Earth as well as the greatest area of glaciers and permafrost outside of the poles. Ten of Asia’s largest rivers flow from here, and more than a billion people’s livelihoods depend on them. To complicate matters further, temperatures are rising more rapidly here than the global average. In Nepal the temperature has risen with 0.6 degree over the last decade, whereas the global warming has been around 0.7 over the last hundred years.