ABSTRACT
One of the greatest challenges facing the world today is a growing water crisis that affects millions of poor people. The roots of this crisis can be traced to poverty, rapidly growing population, urbanization, agriculture intensification, inequality, unequal power relationships, global climate change, and poor water-management policies that exacerbate scarcity. While most of the countries in the North have an adequate supply of water, most people in the South are excluded from access to water by their poverty, limited legal rights, and policies that limit their access. Today more than a billion people in the world lack access to safe drinking water (United Nations Development Program [UNDP] 2006). Most of these people rank among the poorest and least healthy in the world.
