This paper examines the influence of water on public health throughout history. Farming, settling down and building of villages and towns meant the start of the problems mankind suffers from this very day – how to get drinkable water for humans and cattle and how to manage the waste we produce. The availability of water in large quantities has been considered an essential part of a civilized way of life in different periods: Roman baths needed a lot of water as does the current Western way of life with water closets and showers. The importance of good quality drinking water was realized already in antiquity, yet the importance of proper sanitation was not understood until the 19th century.

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This article explores the possibility of incorporating traditional water management experiences into modern water management. After the literature review, two case studies are presented from Borana and Konso communities in southern Ethiopia. The study was conducted through interviews, discussions, and observations. The two cases were selected due to their long existence. Both communities have their own water source types, depending on local hydrogeological conditions. Borana is known for the so-called Ella (wells) and Konso for Harta (ponds), which have been managed for more than five centuries. All government and development partners strive to achieve sustainable services in water supply and sanitation. Therefore, they design various management packages to engage the communities and keep the systems sustainable. However, the management components are often designed with little attention to local customs and traditions. The cases in the two communities show that traditional knowledge is largely ignored when replaced by modern one. However, the concepts of cost recovery, ownership experience, equity, enforcement, integrity, and unity, which are highly pronounced in modern systems, can also be found in the traditional water managements of Borana and Konso. Naturally, one shoe never fits all. Borana and Konso experiences are working for their own community. This research implies that when we plan a project or a program for a particular community, the starting point should be the indigenous practices and thoughts on life.

An appropriate pricing regime and full cost recovery must be introduced in order to prevent the aging and decaying of current water services infrastructure and to extend the coverage of improved water services in the developing economies. At the 75th AWWA Jubilee Conference in 1956, John F. Murdoch Jr. criticized the tradition of low water prices resulting from the historical development of these services. He pointed out that the public already considered water services essential and wanted them to be improved, strengthened, and extended. He further argued that the water industry should be ashamed of too-low water prices. Murdoch's views are surprisingly relevant for today's discussions on water pricing. In OECD countries, access to safe water supply and sanitation has largely been ensured by substantial investments over many decades (OECD, 2009). Yet there are two major challenges facing the water services sector in both OECD and non-OECD countries. The irst challenge is the increasing competition between the domestic, production sector, and ecosystems users of water resources. The second challenge, according to OECD (2009), is how to ensure access to adequate, sustainable, and affordable water and sanitation services for the world's unserved populations. The current igures for these unserved are 2.5 billion for sanitation and 0.8 billion for drinking water (WHO and UNICEF, 2014). The achievement of this goal is mainly constrained by management factors, including ill-conceived and vague investments, the deterioration of infrastructure resulting from insuficient cash lows, or inappropriate regulatory frameworks. These challenges are not limited to developing economies-OECD countries are facing some similar issues (OECD, 2010).Tariffs often provide the major share of financing for water services production, though the revenue usually falls well short of the goal of full cost recovery. This comes true when all economic costs and environmental externalities of the provision of household water services are recovered (Seppälä and Katko, 2003). Yet a number of obstacles constrain a fuller role for tariffs, such as lack of awareness of the broader economic benefits of water supply (particularly sanitation) and concerns about the affordability of full-cost pricing to low-income households. These obstacles are valid, to some extent, in both OECD and non-OECD countries (OECD, 2009).Aging infrastructure is a concern for all developed countries. OECD warned that the United Kingdom and Japan need to increase their water spending by 20-40% to cope with urgent rehabilitation and upgrading of water infrastructure (OECD, 2011). Aging infrastructure is likely to be the biggest challenge worldwide in the coming decades.Finance plays a key role in the water sector. The gap between required and projected financing is large and growing, and chronic underinvestment in the water sector is an ongoing problem (OECD, 2007). Deferring maintenance expenditures is perhaps the most perverse inefficiency and the hardest to quantify. With the p...

Since ancient times, the need for healthy water has resulted in the development of various kinds of water supply systems. From early history, civilizations have developed water purification devices and treatment methods. The necessity for fresh water has influenced individual lives as well as communities and societies. During the last two hundred years, intensive and effective efforts have been made internationally for sufficient water quantity and quality. At the same time, human life expectancy has increased all over the globe at unprecedented rates. The present work represents an effort to sketch out how water purity and life expectancy have entangled, thus influencing one another. Water properties and characteristics have directly affected life quality and longevity. The dramatic increase in life expectancy has been, indisputably, affected by the improvement in water quality, but also in other concomitant factors, varying temporally and spatially in different parts of the world throughout the centuries. Water technologies and engineering have an unequivocal role on life expectancy. In some cases, they appear to have taken place earlier than the progress of modern medicine. Among these, improved sanitation, personal hygiene, progress in medicine, and better standards of economic living have played the greatest roles.

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