Despite talk of increased public-private partnerships, more transparency, and less corruption-which are all important steps that need to be taken-the chances of this amount of money being raised anytime soon are zero to none. Therefore, the only feasible way forward is to make better use of the money that is already available. One way to do this is to shift funding away from high-cost dam and irrigation projects and put it toward low-cost technologies, education and conservation.

Two successful development-related projects, the Roll-back Malaria campaign and the Guinea Worm eradication effort, prove that simple, low-cost disease prevention methods go a long way in saving lives.

Malaria, which kills more than one million people every year, is preventable and curable. Through the Roll-back Malaria (RBM) campaign, a joint project launched in 1998 by Unicef, the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank and the World Health Organization, partners aim to half the number of new cases of malaria by the year 2010. One of the ways the RBM campaign is working to achieve this goal is by increasing the number of people who use pesticide-treated bed nets. The average bed net, which costs less than three dollars, is one of the most effective ways to prevent malaria.

In Kenya, for example, when employers learn that the cost of lost labor due to malaria is far more than the cost of preventing the disease, many employers agree to pay part or all of the cost for the pesticide-treated bed nets. Flyers, posters and radio announcements are also used to educate the public on the benefits of throwing out standing water and using the treated mosquito nets.

Though the RBM campaign has made progress and malaria rates are down, they are not falling fast enough to reach the stated goals of the project. In order to have malaria cases by 2010, more education is needed, and access to bed nets for the poor is imperative.

Another example of a low-cost method of preventing a once-common waterborne disease is the program to combat Guinea Worm. The debilitating disease, which is contracted by drinking water contaminated with the worm's larvae, is close to eradication thanks to the common, cotton tee-shirt. An education project funded by Unicef and its partners teaches woman in rural Africa to place a cloth or a tee-shirt over their buckets and jugs before collecting water from rivers. This simple process filters out the larva responsible for the disease. Over the last ten years the number of cases of Guinea Worm has dropped by over 90 percent, mostly due to this education program.

Conservation is also crucial, especially in cities. By increasing water conservation efforts among urban populations, the supply of available clean water would increase significantly. Simply putting a brick in a toilet tank and installing a water-saving showerhead would result in a family of four reducing their water consumption by up to 20 percent. Low-cost measures are especially needed in cities where poor and rich live side by side. For example, while people in fancy neighborhoods in Durban, South Africa have access to an unlimited supply of tap water, their poorer neighbors across town have to trek down the street to retrieve water from a communal hose. If the demand for water were reduced in the wealthier neighborhoods, people in poorer areas would benefit by a the reduced cost of water.

Finally, there is the all-important hand washing. Everyday 6,000 people, mostly women and children, die as a result of diarrhea. Educating people on the benefits of good hygiene drastically reduced the spread if diarrhea-causing illnesses. Again, flyers, radio announcements, and programs in schools are low-cost methods that can be used to educate both urban and rural communities about hand washing and hygiene.

So as delegates at this week's Freshwater Conference in Bonn discuss ways to increase funding and transparency in order to bring freshwater and sanitation to more people, they should keep in mind the millions of lives that have been saved by tee-shirts, bed nets and bars of soap. By focusing on what governments, Nongovernmental organizations, and private industry can do with available funds instead of what they can do with money that may or may not be raised, more people will have access to safe water and sanitation and more lives will be saved.