This year’s United Nations water conference the first in nearly 50 years failed to produce a binding agreement. However, this event that took place in New York in March was a wake up call as water scarcity crises are getting worse and require our urgent attention. According to a July report by the World Health Organization and the UN children’s agency UNICEF, some 2.2 billion people still did not have access to safe drinking water as of last year. And about 653 million people did not have a hand washing facility at home.
Addressing these issues is among the goals of the sixth of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): “to ensure access and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” by 2030. This editorial is part of Nature’s series that addresses each of these goals. , set in 2015, halfway through them. We focus on questions and gaps that researchers can help address.
2 billion people have gained access to safe drinking water
When the SDGs were launched, there was optimism that the water targets could be achieved, and progress has been made on some of its targets. Since 2000, an additional 2 billion people have gained access to safe drinking water, and by 2020 approximately 56% of all households will have treated wastewater.
However, overall progress has not been fast enough, and already in 2018 UN-Water, which coordinates the UN’s work on water and sanitation, warned that the world was not on the right track. Countries do not prioritize this goal either at the national or global level. According to the UN’s own estimates, to achieve SDG 6, the world will need to spend $260 billion a year by 2030 mostly in Asia and Africa, where the number of people without safe drinking water is highest.
International development assistance for water-related projects is currently around US$9 billion per year and has been declining since 2017. When there is no policy strategy, it is difficult to demonstrate large-scale research or pilot projects. Yet it must happen if clean water and sanitation are to become universal.
Water-related projects is currently around US$9 billion per yea
Generations of water-stressed communities have applied the results of knowledge and innovation to water harvesting. But at best there have been partial successes in attempts to systematically share techniques known to work on a local scale, such as condensing water from clouds using giant networks, used in Chile and Peru, or storing snow for use in dry seasons, as practiced in some parts of China.
It’s the same with newer technologies. For example, membrane distillation is a low-temperature method of water desalination. It is more environmentally friendly than existing methods because it uses less electricity, as chemical engineer Mohammed Rasool Qtaishat of the University of Jordan and his colleagues reported last year.
However, it is trying to break out of the research and pilot phase and be deployed on a larger scale. In a study2 published in March, Patricia Gorgojo, a chemical engineer at the University of Zaragoza, Spain, and her colleagues recommend improving communication between those who conduct small studies and those who implement larger demonstration projects, because the two often have different needs.
When it comes to research more broadly, results can be magnified, as shown by medical anthropologist Sera Young and her team at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois3,4. They developed an inclusive measure of water stress experience, called the Water Shortage Experience Scale (WISE).
Sanitation SDG 6 calls for “special attention to the needs of women and girls”. But the UN’s annual progress reports do not include data on this topic. The main reason seems to be that surveys are usually conducted at the household level rather than at the individual level and therefore cannot be disaggregated by sex or gender. This is where the WISE scales are effective: they can collect data at the household or individual level.
They examine how water scarcity affects everyday activities, health and well-being, from cooking, handwashing and laundry to personal hygiene and feelings of anger and anxiety. Respondents are identified by, among other things, age, gender and income.
The WISE scale is used by approximately 100 national, intergovernmental, research and civil society organizations worldwide. Their use as a political tool was demonstrated last year in Australia, which officially has a relatively low level of water scarcity, with only 1% of the population affected. However, some communities do not recognize this image.
In 2022, Yuwaya Ngarra-li, a partnership between the Dharriwaa Elders Group an Aboriginal cultural organization in the rural town of Walgett and the University of New South Wales in Sydney applied the WISE methodology to a survey of 251 people and found that around 44% of respondents reported water scarcity and 46% food shortage (see go.nature.com/3dciovf). Communities and Walgett Shire Council are investigating how to make improvements.
As the world approaches the SDG 2030 deadline, other ideas with promising potential will no doubt emerge. But SDG 6 will not be achieved regardless of scale. This is the big missing piece of the water and sewer puzzle. Finally, implementation is important.
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Reference: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02442-7
