Thousands of people in eastern DR Congo's Goma are on the move and need food, water and other urgent supplies. Photo: Drissa Fadiga/ Oxfam
The right to water
Oxfam has few more resonant symbols than the water tanks and sanitation equipment we deploy in times of crisis. They stand for hope and humanity and everything that our organisation aspires to represent. This World Water Day, with desperate crises in places like Democratic Republic of the Congo, Palestine and Sudan, we’re taking a moment to reflect on Oxfam's long history of ensuring the consistent supply of this precious and increasingly strained resource to people living in war-torn regions and on the frontline of the climate crisis.
Over many decades, our water engineers have provided supplies and disease-preventing sanitation facilities at scale and speed to millions, even in the most challenging, remote and inaccessible environments. They are renowned for their skills and efficiency, working with our partners and alongside communities, acutely conscious that what they do can make the difference between life and death.
Seldom, if ever, has Oxfam’s expertise in the provision of water been needed more than it is now. Water is of course the basic pre-requisite to life – a human right - but too often politics, conflict, unequal access, land grabs and unscrupulous industry have denied this precious resource to entire communities. Climate change is adding increasing pressure, resulting in still more people crying out for water.
A new report by Oxfam - Water-Driven Hunger: How the Climate Crisis Fuel's Africa's Food Emergency - focuses on how serious the crisis has become in Eastern and Southern Africa and how much worse it is going to get. A horrifying 116 million people in the eight African countries hardest hit by severe water crises - that's 40% of the total population - currently lack access to drinking water.
Climate change is making abnormal weather events like droughts, cyclones and flash floods the norm, often hitting the same communities over and over again. Compounding matters, those living in the most arid areas have to contend with flash-floods destroying their drought-resistant crops. This has resulted in the disappearance of more than 90% of Africa's tropical glaciers found in the Rwenzori mountains, Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya, as well as the depletion of groundwater, which has in turn impacted on Africa's small-scale farmers and those who depend on fishing for their food and livelihoods.
Our report shows that the human cost of these weather events in the hardest-hit countries - Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Somalia, South Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe - is rising all the time. The number facing extreme hunger in these countries has surged by nearly 80% over the past five years - reaching over 55 million in 2024, up from nearly 31 million in 2019. The speed of this deterioration is hugely alarming and is yet another wake-up call about the scale of the problem we face as a global community.
The climate crisis is equally a water crisis, and, to be clear, global demand for freshwater is going to outstrip supply by 40% in the next five years. Even as things stand, 2.3 billion people are living in water-stressed countries. There has to be a seismic shift, too, in the way our policymakers are approaching the water crisis that tackles the poverty, inequality, and lack of essential services that are intensifying the vulnerabilities of affected communities. As our report makes clear, policymakers need to adopt an integrated approach that tackles increasing water and food insecurities for those that have contributed the least to climate change. The emphasis needs to include the importance of equitable access to resources and coordination between sectors including water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) as well as food security and nutrition.
On World Water Day, let those of us who think nothing of showering in the morning demand that our policymakers work more urgently together to prevent any more of our fellow human beings dying of thirst. Until that challenge is solved, Oxfam’s water tanks are only ever going to be a tiny part of the solution to this daunting challenge.
