The lack of safe drinking water and sanitation infrastructure is severe worldwide and worsening, UN experts warned in a report published Thursday.
The report found that millions of the world’s 7.78 billion people do not have access to clean water or adequate sanitation infrastructure to maintain human health through household waste disposal.
On the second day of a UN conference on water, the report called on the world “to talk about water and take water seriously,” in order to achieve global development goals, said Kaveh Madani, who trained as an engineer with a focus on water. resources in Iran and directed the United Nations University, a global think tank.
The report “has some alarming statistics and results, but it is better to disclose it early, while we still have time,” Madani told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.
The report’s authors state that lack of access to basic water-related services kills more people worldwide than floods, droughts and other disasters, even in an era of global warming.
“Far more people die because they don’t have access to water, then they die because of less climate disasters… I’m not saying that people don’t die,” said Dr. Charlotte McAlister, a British-trained hydrologist and senior researcher at the United Nations University Institute. “But more people are dying because of the lack of safe water, safely managed water and safely managed sanitation.”
One of the reports issued by the UN body on water this week, there is no complete solution. But Thursday’s report tried to transcend the despair, saying that “significant progress can be made in the remaining years.” Progress can happen even in countries that do not have the infrastructure or resources to match the ability of wealthier countries to provide clean water and sanitation, the report said.
Nearly three quarters of people in the world are in the water-insecure category, which means they score below 65 out of 100 in the indicator that combines 10 water-related factors. The report says that more than 0.61 billion people (8%) are water insecure.
Of the water insecure people, 4.31 billion people live in the Asia-Pacific region, 1.34 billion in Africa, 415 million in the Americas, and almost 66 million in Europe.