Women fetch water in Somalia, where millions are suffering from severe drought
Giles Clark for The New York Times via Getty Images
According to a major United Nations report, about 2 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water.
Several factors are to blame, said lead author of the report, Richard Connor of the United Nations. Rising urban populations, expanding agriculture, lack of wastewater treatment infrastructure and climate change are all contributing factors, he says.
The United Nations World Water Development Report was published as the United Nations’ first major conference on water since 1977, held in New York.
This is an update on progress towards ensuring universal access to safe drinking water by 2030, one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals adopted in 2015. intended as
This goal is way off, says Conner. “To reach everyone by 2030, we need to quadruple the current provision of water and supply services.”
The report finds that global water demand has increased by 1% per year over the past 40 years and will continue to grow at a similar rate over the next 30 years. “This demand growth is concentrated in emerging economies and low-income countries,” says Connor. In particular, the city’s water demand is projected to grow by 80% by 2050.
The provision of adequate wastewater treatment infrastructure has not kept pace with this increased demand, the report found. It is estimated that 80% of the world’s wastewater ends up in the environment without being treated or reused. As a result, at least two billion people use faecal-contaminated drinking water sources and are at risk of contracting various diseases such as cholera.
Climate change is likely to make access to clean water more difficult around the world, Conner says. Seasonal water scarcity will become more common in areas of the world that do not currently experience such problems, and more severe in areas where it is already a major problem.
The world’s urban population facing water scarcity is projected to grow from 933 million in 2016 to 2.4 billion in 2050, with India projected to be the most affected country.
The report also found that 46% of the world’s population, or 3.6 billion people, do not have access to toilets or latrines that safely dispose of human waste. Conner says the lack of access to water and sanitation around the world comes down to poor political will and poor priority setting.
“Water tends to be seen as a social or environmental issue, not seen as an economic engine, so it doesn’t get the same political attention,” he says.
Conner said he hopes this year’s UN Water Conference will lead to more realistic water goals. “Instead of going to the moon and saying that everyone on Earth should have access to all these services, we want to look at something more realistic and make it a binding agreement where states are responsible. I have.”
Say “we’re clearly off track” Claire Seaward at WaterAid. “What is clear is that we need a tremendous change in ambition and approach.”
“There is no magic bullet for this, what it really needs is for all of us to come together to strengthen the water and sanitation system as a whole,” she says.
Greg Pierce of the University of California, Los Angeles says it’s unlikely we’ll have clean water for everyone by 2050. “It’s already a focus, but doubling down on institutional and governance reforms could yield more real progress than we’ve seen so far.”
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