Poorer nations urge action over sanitation

After hailing their first apparent breakthrough on fisheries stocks, delegates at the earth summit on sustainable development focused today on trying to bring fresh water and sanitation to the hundreds of millions of people who currently lack access to either.

The UN reported that 1.1 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water, while 2.4 billion people were without sanitation. More than 2.2 million people die every year in the developing world from problems associated with dirty water.

The pressure group Global Water Partnership said that despite awareness of such figures, few governments have dedicated sufficient resources to the problem. "Why is water management not more of a priority?" asked Margaret Catley-Carlson, chair of the Global Water Partnership.

The UN hoped that delegates would agree to cut in half the number of people without access to clean water and sanitation by 2015. The US, however, has resisted setting a new target for action in the field of sanitation. EU officials, who favour the sanitation target, said they could not understand the US opposition. "It's important not only that people should be able to get drinking water, but to be able to get rid of waste water," said Hans Christian Schmidt, the Danish environment minister.

Negotiations have seen several developing countries urge for concrete action from the 10-day summit, while the richest country, the US, is backing away from any new commitments. Overnight, delegates reached an agreement on ways of restoring depleted fish stocks, "where possible", by 2015. Mr Schmidt, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU, hailed the agreement as "the first major breakthrough" of the summit.

EU officials said the "where possible" caveat had been adopted because it is already too late to save severely depleted species in some areas - elsewhere not enough is known about specific problems and how to tackle them.

Environmental campaigners welcomed the target date. But some delegates expressed concern that it was too far in the future to fully protect shark, tuna and swordfish stocks. "The restoration of those stocks is going to be really, really tough. 2015 will be too late," said Sian Pullen, oceans specialist for the World Wildlife Fund.