Clean drinking water update: 703 million people still lack access
The WHO and UNICEF periodically publish a report on access to water and sanitation.
Fortunately, we are moving in the right direction: from 785 million people in 2000 to 703 million people without access to safe drinking water today.
703 million people
A few years ago, the World Health Organisation and Unicef published the report “Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene 2000-2020, Five years into the SDG’s“.
In 2023, the most recent fact sheet on drinking water was added.
The main conclusion is that we are moving in the right direction: from 785 million people without access to safe drinking water in 2000, via 771 million in 2020 to 703 million now. But there is still a lot of work to be done because the impact for still 1 in 10 people is enormous.
According to the World Economic Forum, the water crisis is even in the top 5 of global threats to society as a whole.
112 MILLION DRINK THIS WATER
Of this large group of 703 million people, 112 million people are still completely dependent on surface water with all the health risks that this entails.
The rest of these people depend on water supplies far away or with limited availability (282 million) or dependent on wells that are poorly maintained and polluted (367 million people).
By the way, 703 million is one and a half times as many as all the inhabitants of Europe put together.
SDG 6
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals state, among other things, that we want to give everyone access to safe drinking water and sanitation by 2030. (SDG 6)
Although a positive development is visible, we are not going to make it with the current effort. In fact, we need to do four times as much as in the last 5 years to get to where we really want to do well.
Unfortunately, the countries where these people live are often unable to pay for or organize the water supplies themselves.
A drop?
Is our contribution then a drop in the ocean? Certainly not: in the past five years we have already managed to realize at least 10 billion liters of clean drinking water. With this we give at least 140,000 people permanent access to good facilities. That is just as much as the whole of Den Bosch and about 1% of the progress of this area worldwide.
A small contribution can already make a difference: for just over 20 euros we can give someone permanent access to safe drinking water. And for only 2.50 you can give someone enough clean drinking water for a year to drink, cook and wash!
Contribute to our mission too
You can do so in more ways than you might think.
