The co-ordination committee of the global council, consisting 80 experts inthe field from 20 countries, at the end of its three-day meeting, hosted bythe state-owned Gujarat Water Supply & Sewerage Board here recently, feltthe amount is affordable.

According to WSSCC chairman Richard Jolly, Europeans spend as much amount onice-creams every year and ten times that on alcoholic drinks. Americans arealso known to spend identical amount on their pets.

As per the recommendation of the 1992 World Summit for Social Developmenttoo, if the developing countries allocate 20 per cent of their publicexpenditure with donor countries allocate 20 per cent of their annual aidbudgets, the rest could be raised through debt.

Jolly, who is also special adviser to UNDP administrator and known as thearchitect of Human Development Report, said one billion people still lackedsafe drinking water, 2.5 billion people have no access to adequatesanitation and three million children died each year from water-relateddiseases.

``Vision 21 is an initiative to put an end to a global crisis, offering apractical solution to bring an end to this shameful scandal,'' he pointedout.

WSSCC is a global body of nearly 800 organisations and 3,000 people from 140participatory countries. Its first meeting held in Manila in November 1997decided to push harder towards resolving the basic needs of billions ofpeople.

It drew its strength on the experience of the first Water Summit held at Mardel Plata in Argentina in 1978, which was followed up by an UN resolution toobserve 1981-90 as the International Drinking Water and Sanitation Decade.

WSSCC adviser Hans van Damme attributed the present poor status of thesituation to lack of assigning responsibility for the maintenance of waterresources, lack of co-ordination among different agencies for differentservices like drinking water, sanitation, drainage, housing, etc. UNICEF'sWater, Environment and Sanitation Section chief Gourishankar Ghosh said thatthere was no shortage of technology or legislation to controlover-harvesting or polluting existing water resources, but what was urgentlyrequired was delegating responsibility to specific institutions along withtheir rights.