Topic: Ensuring Access to Potable Water
Country: Ukraine
Delegate Name: Suzy Deems
School: East Grand Rapids High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Ukraine position papers GLIMUN 2016 committees
Potable water is a great concern for the Ukraine as it for all the other countries in the world. From the Ukraine perspective the issue is deteriorating infrastructure which delivers the water. The Ukraine is not a developing country in the sense of 3rd world or 4th world developing countries. A great deal of fresh water exists in the Ukraine from the river systems of the Dnieper, Dniester, Bug, Donets and other rivers flowing out of the Carpathian Mountains, pripet marshes and central Russian upland that cross the Ukraine leading to the Black Sea. A water supply system was developed first by the Czarist and then Soviet governments for the urban areas. The rural areas relied on well systems. However, the country suffers from lower life expectancies, rising disease, and increasing infant deaths. The public health system is disintegrating.
Since the fall of the Soviet government there has been a lack of spending for maintenance of the water supply system. In addition from the Soviet industrialization has created a great deal of pollution which exists in the ground and aquifers and those same industries continue to pollute today. The most famous of these is the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown with all the radioactive waste it spread. The lack of maintenance of the municipal water systems and well water systems. Has led to a degradation of the water quality. Further there is a lack of investment by private companies or the government to restore these systems. Therefore the deterioration continues. The efforts to focus on these issues are handicapped by the actions of the Russian government seizing the Crimean peninsula and Donets’k Basin from the Ukraine. An undeclared war between Russia and the Ukraine continues in the Donets’k Basin observing the Ukraine’s resources. In addition, the Ukrainian government has been stalled by corruption and fighting between the parties thereby inhibiting actions to address such problems.
The Ukraine must resolve its war with Russia end the corruption in government and develop a long term maintenance program for its water supply.
