Whereas the United Nations General Assembly, by resolution, has designated March 22 of each year as World Water Day; Whereas a person needs 4 to 5 litersgallons of water per day to survive; Whereas a person can live weeks without food, but only days without water; Whereas every 15 seconds a child dies from a water-borne disease; Whereas, for children under 5 years of age 5, water-bornerelated diseases are the second leading cause of death; Whereas millions of women and children already spend several hours a day collecting water from distant, often polluted sources; Whereas every dollar spent on water and sanitation saves an average of $9 in costs averted and productivity gained884,000,000 people do not have access to safe drinking water; Whereas 2,500,000,000 people do not have access to adequate sanitation and 1,200,000,000 people do not have access to any sanitation facilities; Whereas water-related diseases are responsible for 80 percent of all illness and deaths in the developing world; Whereas, at any given time, 1/2 of the hospital beds in the worldsub-Saharan Africa are occupied by patients suffering from a water-borne diseasewater-related diseases; Whereas 88 percent of all diseases are caused by unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygiene50 percent of childhood malnutrition is associated with water- and sanitation-related diseases; Whereas 1,100,000,000 (1 in 6) people lack access to anevery dollar invested in improved water supply and sanitation yield gains of $4 to $12, depending on the type of intervention;

Whereas 2,600,000,000 people in the world lack access to improved sanitation;

Whereas the 263 transboundary lake and river basins in the world are part of the territory of 145 countries and cover nearly ½ of the land surface of the Earth; Whereas climate change may cause more extreme floods and droughts, increasing political tension and the potential for clashes over transboundary fresh water resources; Whereas the global celebration of World Water Day is an initiative that grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Whereas the participants in the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, including the United States, agreed toadopted the Plan of Implementation which included an agreement to work to reduce by 1/2

from the baseline year 1990

, between 1990 and 2015—

(1)

the proportion of people who are unable to reach or to afford safe drinking water

; and

(2)

and the proportion of people without access to basic sanitationby 2015; and Whereas Congress passed and the President signed into law the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act of 2005 (Public Law 109–121), which was intended to elevate the role of water and sanitation policy in the development of U.S. foreign policy and improve the effectiveness of U.S. official programs: Now, therefore, be it

That the Senate— (1)supports the goals and ideals of World Water Day; (2)urges an increased effort and the investment of greater resources by the Department of State, the United States Agency for International Development, and all relevant Federal departments and agencies toward providing sustainable and equitable access to safe drinking water and sanitation for the poor and the very poor; and (3)encourages the people of the United States to observe the week of World Water Day with appropriate activities that promote awareness of the importance of— (A)access to clean water and sanitation; and (B)cooperation between stakeholders in transboundary water management.

July 28, 2009

Reported with an amendment and with amendments to the preamble