91Èȱ¬

The right to clean water isn't in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but there is now a campaign to have it included.
Over a billion people across the planet lack access to clean and potable water and millions die each year as a result.


So a challenge for Tim BL; use the power of the Web to provide clean, safe water to everyone on the planet.

I am interested in how he sees this being achieved? Simply campaigning for it to be in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights isn't enough; food is already included yet many children die of malnourishment.

Is Web access 'essential'?


or an affordable luxury as TVs were in the early 1960s and mobile phones became in the 1990s?

Can the Web be compared to clean water, food and shelter?
Clearly no it can't. It can be an immensely useful tool (and a great time waster and entertainment medium) but that doesn't make it essential for life.
Many people still choose to do without it. Others find it too complex to use effectively. Those that get the most from the web (and with other things in life) tend to be the top 10% that are most well educated.

If I had to I could live without it. I'd miss it, but obviously I'd survive. There are still phones, postal services, pens and paper etc; magazines and libraries flourish. (Given the time I spend on the Web it could be argued my life might be improved, I would do more of other activities.) And if I want in depth information I still turn to books.

But how do you provide a fully stocked library & stationers shop in every village in first world countries let alone those in the third world?

The provision of Web access via the internet allows the gaining of knowledge to help those without political or financial clout to make their aspirations happen.

I disagree that if one doesn't have the basics of clean water, sufficient food, permanent good habitation & medical care then entertainment is a luxury. Feeding the mind as well as the body is part of creating a happy healthy person.

It is not true that where there is access to the net there is the capability to obtain clean water. A person most likely also needs money but noone is suggesting cash is a basic human right. The web is a communications technology - it allows humans to communicate over great distances, thats all. Getting an email from some staving third world denizen does not guarantee I will respond immediatley and generously. That requires compassion, something which I suggest is taught and learned in much more intimate and personal settings than those provided by the web.

Hi Dan, (#3)

Many people don't have anyone to buy clean water from:

"The statistics are mind-boggling: of the more than six billion people in the world today, over one billion have no access to improved drinking water - a basic necessity for human life - and about 2.6 billion people do not have access to improved sanitation. And according to the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, polluted water and lack of basic sanitation claim the lives of over 1.5 million children every year, mostly from water-borne diseases." (2006)


I'd argues that the lack of clean, safe, affordable drinking water in many parts of the world is clearly more of a pressing need than: "nourishments from accessing the knowledge, data and, perhaps most importantly, connections across the globe. . ."

#3: "Interesting. That actually sounds like the sort of challenge inventors and geeks love to take up;" (And the 91Èȱ¬ too?)

SO, A CHALLENGE THEN:
Can the Web really transform the world? Could it help provide those one billion people with safe, clean drinking water and save the lives of millions of children?
(And by the power of the Web we're talking of all those interconnected people sitting in front of their computers; their ideas, funds, lobbying ability and so on. It can also bring all those organisations working with shared aims together; and - yes - it may also help spread ideas in remote regions.)

But for those one billion people, if it's a choice between their children's lives and going on the Web, guess which they'll choose.

(Of course, the choice isn't realistically there for them at all, but that's a larger debate.)