The push to bring safe water to millions around the world is going to be even more challenging due to climate change, which threatens both water supply and water safety for millions of children living in drought or flood-prone areas, warned Unicef.
Last year, as the world saw the end of Millennium Development Goals era, around 663 million people around the world still did not have access to drinking water from improved sources – which are supposed to separate water from contact with excreta.
However, data from newly available testing technology show that an estimated 1.8 billion people may be drinking water contaminated by E-coli, which comes from faecal matter, even if the water comes from improved sources, said a media statement by Unicef issued on the occasion of World Water Day today.
The safety concerns are rising due to climate change – when water becomes scarce during droughts, populations resort to unsafe surface water. At the other end of the scale, floods damage water and sewage treatment facilities and spread faeces around, very often leading to an increase in water-borne diseases such as cholera and diarrhoea.
Higher temperatures brought on by climate change are also set to increase the incidence of water-linked diseases like malaria, dengue, and now Zika, as mosquito populations rise and their geographic reach expands.
In this situation, the most vulnerable demographic are around 160 million of children under the age of five years who live in areas at high risk of drought around the world. Meanwhile, around half a billion children live in flood zones, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia, according to Unicef statistics.
“Now that we can test water more cheaply and efficiently than we were able to do when the MDGs were set, we are coming to terms with the magnitude of the challenge facing the world when it comes to clean water,” said Sanjay Wijeserkera, head of Unicef’s global water, sanitation and hygiene programmes.
“With the new Sustainable Development Goals calling for ‘safe’ water for everyone, we are not starting from where the MDGs left off; it is a whole new ball game.”
One of the principal contributors to faecal contamination of water is poor sanitation. Globally, 2.4 billion people lack proper toilets and just under one billion of them defecate in the open. This means that in many countries and communities, faeces can be pervasive to the extent that even some improved water sources can become contaminated.
Unicef is responding to these challenges by focusing on disaster risk reduction for water supplies, the statement said.
In Bangladesh, nearly 20,000 children now have access to climate and disaster-resilient sources of water through an aquifer-recharge system which captures water during the monsoon season, purifies it, and stores it underground.