Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation

Sourced from the UN:
Clean, accessible water for all is an essential part of the world we want to live in and there is sufficient fresh water on the planet to achieve this. However, due to bad economics or poor infrastructure, millions of people including children die every year from diseases associated with inadequate water supply, sanitation, and hygiene.Water scarcity, poor water quality, and inadequate sanitation negatively impact food security, livelihood choices and educational opportunities for poor families across the world. At the current time, more than 2 billion people are living with the risk of reduced access to freshwater resources and by 2050, at least one in four people is likely to live in a country affected by chronic or recurring shortages of fresh water. Drought in specific afflicts some of the world’s poorest countries, worsening hunger, and malnutrition. Fortunately, there has been great progress made in the past decade regarding drinking sources and sanitation, whereby over 90% of the world’s population now has access to improved sources of drinking water.To improve sanitation and access to drinking water, there needs to be increased investment in management of freshwater ecosystems and sanitation facilities on a local level in several developing countries within Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, Southern Asia, Eastern Asia and South-Eastern Asia.

Facts and Figures

• 3 in 10 people lack access to safely managed drinking water services and 6 in 10 people lack access to safely managed sanitation facilities.
• At least 892 million people continue to practice open defecation.
• Women and girls are responsible for water collection in 80 percent of households without access to water on premises.
• Between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of the global population using an improved drinking water source has increased from 76 percent to 90 percent
• Water scarcity affects more than 40 percent of the global population and is projected to rise. Over 1.7 billion people are currently living in river basins where water use exceeds recharge.
• 4 billion people lack access to basic sanitation services, such as toilets or latrines
• More than 80 percent of wastewater resulting from human activities is discharged into rivers or sea without any pollution removal.
• Each day, nearly 1,000 children die due to preventable water and sanitation-related diarrheal diseases.
• Approximately 70 percent of all water abstracted from rivers, lakes, and aquifers is used for irrigation.
• Floods and other water-related disasters account for 70 percent of all deaths related to natural disasters.