Developed nations are significantly increasing outlay in dams and other water infrastructure and networks to avoid pervasive flooding, dearth and disease even before climate change accelerates these problems, experts have warned. Investment on water is critically needs to avoid further flooding before more climate changes, especially in the tropical area, which already experienced it before and lost many hundreds of valuable lives. One leading authority said spending needed to rise to 1.5 per cent of gross domestic product just “to be able to cope with the current climate” one thousand times the current level.

The warnings follow a summer of dramatic events, from hurricane flooding in the Caribbean and the east coast of America to desperate measures in drought-stricken Mediterranean countries, including importing water by ship. Rich nations suffer huge under-investment, but the threat of poor infrastructure to populations in developing countries is even greater. So serious is the problem that next year the UN’s World Water Assessment Report will make one of its main messages the need for investment to “accelerate substantially”.

You cannot justify the deaths of so many children because of lack of infrastructure, lost productive time of people intellectually, or physically incapacitated because of simple lack of access to safe water or sanitation. The UN has identified dams for hydropower and irrigation as leading drivers of sustainable economic growth in under developing countries. “Water and sanitation is clearly a better investment than medical intervention.

However, experts meeting at the International Water Association’s conference of 2,700 water professionals in Vienna suggested the true scale of the problem could be much higher. According to Professor Pavel Kabat, A leading author of water chapter in last year’s report by the UN intergovernmental Panel on climate change said “Investment needed to rise to 1.5 per cent of GDP for 20 years, just to cope with existing population demand and climate variability. Africa, the region with the greatest lack of infrastructure, would have to spend its entire forecast GDP growth for more than half a century even to reach relatively modest levels of water storage and supply; and even Europe would have to triple spending”.

If we failure to invest would surely mean, “We’d have more recurrent floods and droughts because our systems are not able to take the magnitude and frequency of water we’re witnessing”, he said. It would also undermine other development spending in poorer nations, said Kabat, citing the example of Kenya, where he said two extreme years of wet and dry in the 1990s destroyed 40 per cent of the country’s wealth.

If these things are not in place we can keep on building schools, hospitals and playground will be act of foolishness.