Not as rosy as it seems?

WaterAid response to the JMP report - Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water: 2010 Update.

Published on Monday 15 March 2010, the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) report on sanitation and drinking water provides detailed estimates of progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

It breaks down figures for access to sanitation and water by country, region and rural/urban.

This year's report suggests that the world is on track to meet or even exceed the MDG for drinking water – to halve the proportion of people without access to safe water by 2015.

Download the Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) report on sanitation and drinking water here (PDF, 12Mb)

However, all is not as rosy as it seems.

Firstly, much of this progress is down to rapid improvements in East Asia, particularly China, without which we would still be off-track. Secondly, the overall figures mask huge disparities within countries and between them. Thirdly, even though we are on-track globally, nearly 900 million people are still without access to safe drinking water.

Many of the poorest countries will still not have met the water target by 2050 unless efforts are scaled up; sub-Saharan Africa in particular is a long long way indeed from a vision of clean water for all. Furthermore, there are huge disparities even within countries that are on track nationally, such as between urban and rural areas, with rural areas usually having far lower access figures.

Aid that is given at present is not going to the poorest countries where most people without access to safe water and sanitation live – in fact only 32% goes to Low Income Countries where the need is greatest.

A key headline is that we are seriously off-track on the sanitation MDG target, which is to halve the proportion of people without access to sanitation by 2015. The new report's figures suggest that, if current rates of progress continue, the global sanitation goal will be met 30 years too late – that’s a billion people too late. Such a failure is not an option, so global efforts on sanitation must be rapidly scaled up to avoid this scenario.

Across the world, 2.6 billion people are still without access to a safe place to go to the toilet. In the meantime, 4000 children across the world continue to die silently and needlessly every day from diseases caused by poor sanitation and unsafe water.

Sub-Saharan Africa needs particular focus. At the current rate of progress, the sanitation target in that region will not be met for nearly 200 years. This gives sanitation the dubious honour of being the second most off-track MDG in Sub-Saharan Africa, with only maternal mortality seeing slower progress.

This water and sanitation crisis is holding back improvements across all other MDGs including education and maternal and child health, affecting not only human development but also, crucially, economic growth. To prevent other development efforts from being undermined, we need world leaders to take firm action to reverse the global water and sanitation crisis before it's too late.

On 23 April, Ministers have the chance to do just that as the first ever high level meeting on water and sanitation takes place in Washington – they simply must commit to delivering real progress towards achieving sanitation and water for all.

Ends

For more information, to speak to a spokesperson or for high res images of WaterAid's work to ensure access to safe water, hygiene education and sanitation, please contact: annnoon@wateraid.org or call 020 7793 4790. For media enquiries out of hours, call 07887 521552.