NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, November 13, 2014

World Economic Forum – Future Global Agenda series

Too many people in the world don’t have access to safe drinking water in their homes. This month’s meeting of theWorld Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council in Dubai could be the first step to changing that.

How do we explain the fact that just 43% of the world’s population can turn on a tap at home and expect to get clean drinking water but 96% of the world’s population now have access to a mobile phone connection? It doesn’t seem to be just about poverty: mobile phones are more expensive to run than taps.

It doesn’t seem to be that people don’t need or want clean drinking water as much as they want mobile phones. You can tell they need clean drinking water from the fact that water borne disease still accounts for 3.4 million deaths each year. You can tell people want clean drinking water because of the burgeoning market for extortionately priced bottled water.