Slum Improvement Requires More Focus on Water and Sanitation - 4th World Water Forum

The 4th World Water Forum (WUF4) is a gathering of urban specialist, ministers, mayors, parliamentarians, civil society, private sectors and other interest groups. The Forum, which held in Nanjing, China 3 - 6 November, 2008, was attended by 7,900 participants.

Ahead of the forum a colleague from WaterAid published a short report calling on city authorities, governments and donors to pay more attention to water and sanitation as an imperative to slum improvement. They point out a few surprising pieces of information , such as the fact that aid funding for water and sanitation has been declining since the 1990s relative to other sectors, and that the poorest countries and regions are not getting the bulk of aid funding for water and sanitation!

Here is the full Turning Slums Around report. Below are links to two articles about it:

BBC report

EDIE Network

Nigerian Environmental Newspaper No Longer Online?

I was excited to receive an email about The Sanitarian, an environmetal newspaper based in Nigeria. However, the excitement turned to disappointment when I tried to access the newspaper's website (supposed to be located at www.thesanitarianonline.com but as of August 10, 2009 the website does not exist). A few UNEP reports cite some articles from the now defunct website.

In the email I receive, they urge those in Nigeria to subscribe for weekly delivery. I found this contact information online, if you are looking for a way to subscribe. Let me know in the comments if you've read any issues or if they come back online or if you have any other information about this paper!

Welcome to The Sanitarian Online
Contact Information
Telephone
01-8180370
FAX
01-8180370
Postal address
19 Igbobi College Road, Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria

Here's more about the paper:
"The Sanitarian was conceived out of the urge to reach the public with soft
translations of the hard truths in our environment, creating an
environment consciousness strong enough to cause positive changes with
professional ethics and passion.

The Sanitarian beams search lights on those developments that endanger the
environment and threaten our individual and collective existence within
nature.

We report and applaud the good, draw attention to the ugly and take a firm
position on issues that affect our environment, when we have to.
We publish the environment every week (for now), with the intention of
going daily soon.

Our contents are 80% environment, 5% mild politics and business, 5%
health, 5% agriculture and 5% sports and entertainment.The Sanitarian is environment friendly, has no sacred cows, is character reformative, and reorientation based."

A technological fix for water scarcity?

I came across an interesting video on Yahoo today about windmills that produce water mimicking rain creation. Marc Parent, the inventor, has created a windmill that produces clean water from humidity in the air. He got the idea from salvaging water from air conditioners and feeding it into a tank.

Wind turbines suck in air, and the electricity generated cools the air turning steam into water. He says it is a solution for very remote areas, and arid areas. There is already some interest from the Middle East. Each turbine can produce about 800 liters of water per day, but it is costly, as each system costs between 9 to 25,000 Euros.

A video featuring the process can be found here.

Do you think this kind of technology has a useful place in solving the water crisis facing many countries?