A Global Water and Sanitation Crisis

Today, more than one billion people still lack access to clean drinking water, while some 2.6 billion people – a staggering 42% of the world’s population – have no access to a toilet. Many families and communities in developing countries rely on dirty water taken from polluted streams and rivers or unprotected springs and wells. It is common for water collectors – usually women and children – to have to walk many kilometres to reach unsafe water sources, because they have no alternative.

The consequences of the water and sanitation crisis are devastating and far- reaching:

• Every year, some 2 million people die from diarrhoeal diseases caused by poor sanitation and dirty water; 90 per cent of these preventable deaths occur in children under the age of five. In fact, diarrhoeal diseases are the single greatest killer of children in poor countries;
• At any one time, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from water- and sanitation-related diseases, making dirty water and poor sanitation the single largest cause of sickness around the globe;
• Health care costs soar, countless school and working days are lost, and communities around the world sink deeper into poverty and despair.

The lack of safe water supply and sanitation services in the developing world is acutely felt by the rural and urban poor. With few resources at their disposal to access water or sanitation services, the poor are susceptible to many illnesses. This makes families’ efforts to escape from poverty even more difficult.

Moving Towards a Global Solution
In 2000, Canada and other members of the international community committed to achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which include the target to halve the proportion of people without water and sanitation by 2015.

At the global level, all regions except sub-Saharan Africa have made progress towards improving drinking water coverage. In the case of achieving the sanitation target, however, progress is dangerously off-track world-wide. Based on current trends, we will miss the 2015 sanitation target by more than half a billion people.

SWAN Canada’s members believe that tackling the global water and sanitation crisis – with the right solutions – will yield significant results, and lay a strong foundation for Canada and the international community’s broader poverty-fighting efforts.

To gain a better understanding of the global water and sanitation crisis, go to our Resources section.