Around 2 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water
An international pledge to ensure that all the world’s population has access to safe drinking water by 2030 is woefully off track, according to a major UN report
By Jason Arunn Murugesu
21 March 2023
Women collecting water in Somalia, where millions are being affected by a severe drought
Giles Clarke for The New York Times via Getty Images
Around 2 billion people don’t have access to safe drinking water, a major United Nations report has found.
Several factors are to blame, says Richard Connor at the UN, the report’s lead author. Rising urban populations, expanding agriculture, a lack of waste water-treatment infrastructure and climate change all play a role, he says.
The UN World Water Development Report is being published as the UN’s first major conference on water since 1977 gets under way in New York.
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It is intended as an update on progress towards ensuring that everyone in the world has access to safe drinking water by 2030 – one of the UN’s sustainable development goals adopted in 2015.
This goal is severely off track, says Connor. “Achieving universal coverage by 2030 will require a quadrupling of the current rates of progress in the provision of water and supply services.”
The report has found that the global demand for water has risen by 1 per cent each year for the past 40 years and will continue to rise at a similar rate for the next 30 years. “This growth in demand is concentrated in emerging economies and lower-income countries,” says Connor. In particular, urban water demand is projected to increase by 80 per cent by 2050.
