""The inability of governments to provide children with a glass of clean water is going to cost two million lives," Watkins said.  "Now that, to me, is a fairly powerful indictment of what governments are doing and what the international community is doing."

Watkins says most of these deaths are caused by diarrhea and dysentery, the result of water polluted by human waste."

"Rich countries have focused on ways to reduce carbon emissions but have largely ignored helping poor nations cope with the consequences, it says.

The findings appear in the UNDP's Human Development Report 2006.

The authors say farmers whose crops are reliant on rainfall are already having to cope with unpredictable weather.

The report, called Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis, says climate change "now poses what may be an unparalleled threat to human development"."

Via: BBC News:Science/Nature