The Water Gap: Senior MPs call for more to be done as report reveals nations with lowest access to water
With 60% of the world now living in water stressed areas, WaterAid report reveals nations with lowest access to water.
2018 may well be remembered as the year one of the world’s great tourist destinations almost ran out of water.
In a startling reminder that our world’s most precious resource is becoming increasingly scarce for too much of the population, Cape Town hit the headlines for declaring a date for Day Zero: the day on which city taps would run dry.
While Cape Town seems to have averted its disaster with careful conservation and prioritisation of water use, long queues and limited water supplies are already happening in many other less headline-worthy locales, reminding us of the need for better and fairer management of Earth’s water supply.
Already more than 60% of humanity lives in areas of water stress. If water is not managed more prudently the crises observed today will become the catastrophes of tomorrow.
WaterAid’s report State of the World’s Water 2018: The Water Gap reveals that the number of people defined as without clean water close to home has gone up.
Some 844 million people are struggling to access life’s most essential requirement – almost 200 million more than previously counted, because of new definitions of access. Eritrea, Papua New Guinea, Uganda and Ethiopia count among nations with the lowest percentages of access to water close to home, while India and Nigeria are among those with the highest numbers of people without access.
Responding to the report Former International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell MP, said: “There are many ways of fundamentally changing the world to address the hideous discrepancies of opportunity and circumstance which disfigure life across the planet.
“Ensuring that everyone has access to clean water, hygiene and sanitation is right up there with all the others. In spite of the huge progress we have made (led by Britain and its internationally respected development work) there is still much more we can do.”
New data that links water access to household wealth also shows that there are still vast discrepancies between richest and poorest.
As this year’s report demonstrates, wherever you are in the world, it’s the poorest and least powerful who are most often without clean water. That means those who are older, ill, disabled, who live in a remote or rural location or have been displaced, or who are of a caste, ethnicity or religion likely to be discriminated against. Inequalities in wealth and power, attitudes in society and culture, and limited resources mean they are also hardest to reach. Gender intensifies this inequality; it is mainly up to women and girls to find and fetch water, or to find ways to adapt when it is scarce.
Shadow Secretary of State for International Development Kate Osamor called the findings ‘shocking’, saying:
“It is shocking that while elites and a few billionaires make obscene profits from driving our global economy and the planet into the ground, 844 million people are now without access to clean water.
“Around the world, people need governments that are serious about tackling climate change, about investing in universal, quality public services like water, and about narrowing the water gap between rich and poor.”
Importantly, 2018 presents a chance for change. Nearly three years ago, world leaders passed the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, a promise to end extreme poverty and create a fairer, more sustainable world. This summer, Global Goal 6 – to deliver access to water and sanitation to all – will be reviewed at a high-level political forum in New York, to measure progress and press ahead for more.
Around 289,000 children under five die each year of diarrhoeal illness directly linked to dirty water, inadequate toilets and poor hygiene. This shouldn’t be normal. It is a crisis we cannot ignore.
This World Water Day, WaterAid is calling for recognition that the UN Global Goals are everyone’s responsibility to deliver, to ensure no one is left behind. Everyone is accountable if they fail.
WaterAid is urging for responsible environmental management, to protect and preserve enough clean water for communities’ basic needs and for access to water, sanitation and hygiene to be recognised as central to health, education, nutrition and gender equality.
There needs to be urgent action on the ground, at regional, national and global scale. Access to safe drinking water is a UN-recognised human right: politicians need to prioritise it and fund it, civil society must help all people speak out for their rights, and those working in water, sanitation and hygiene must support service providers and government to respond.
WaterAid's Chief Executive, Tim Wainwright, said:
“This year presents a time for real change as this summer, progress towards UN Sustainable Development Goal 6 – to deliver access to water and sanitation for all by 2030 – will be reviewed by world leaders in New York. We urge them to take real action as without water and sanitation, none of the other Global Goals - for alleviating poverty, improving health and creating a fairer and more sustainable world - will be achieved.”
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