Access to clean drinking water and improved, hygienic sanitation facilities is taken for granted in the developed world, but it remains a tantalising goal for much of the developing world. The joint monitoring report 2010 (from the World Health Organisation and UNICEF) Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water reports that, while much progress has been made, much remains to be done.
Access to Improved Basic Sanitation
The Millennium Development Goals are a set of ambitious goals to foster development around the world. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Seven focuses on environmental sustainability, and one of its targets aims to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
The WHO defines an improved sanitation facility as one that hygienically separates human excreta from human contact. 39% of the world's population, 2.6 billion people, the vast majority of whom live in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, live without such access. The report warns that, at current rates of progress, “the world will miss the MDG sanitation target by almost 13 percentage points.” That equates to about 1 billion people. Even if the target is met, about 1.7 billion people will still not have access to improved sanitation facilities in 2015.
Access to Safe Drinking Water
An improved drinking-water source is defined as one that by the nature of its construction adequately protects the source from outside contamination. The picture regarding access to such sources is promising. At current trends the world will meet, or perhaps exceed, the MDG clean drinking water target. However, that still means that 884 million people do not have access to improved sources of drinking water.
The clean drinking water situation is uneven. In China, for instance, 89% of the population has access to drinking water from improved sources, up from 67% in 1990. Yet only 60% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa and 50% of the population in Oceania use improved sources of drinking water.
The report also highlights the striking disparity between rural and urban areas. Seven out of ten people without access to improved sanitation live in rural areas. However, due to the ever-increasing pace of urbanisation, growing populations in the cities mean that the urban infrastructures are being further strained.
Clean Water and Sanitation a Fundamental Need
Access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities is a fundamental basic need, which has a key effect on a number of the Millennium Development Goals to end global poverty. These include eradicating diseases such as malaria and cholera, and cutting child and maternal mortality. The WHO reports 2 million deaths attributable to unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene annually.
Source:
WHO/UNICEF joint monitoring report 2010: Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water Update (accessed 18 February 2011).
Paris Franz - Paris Franz is a London-based freelance journalist, specialising in the arts, history and travel.
