Clean Water and Sanitation: Charting a course to a healthy population on a healthy planet

By Gilbert F. Houngbo, UN-Water Chair

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

As the United Nations marks its 75th anniversary, international cooperation is clearly vital to us all.

With a shift in priorities, we can get the world on track to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, including SDG 6 – ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

Our immediate, shared task is to accelerate progress on SDG 6 to establish water and sanitation for all people, for all purposes, to help future-proof global society against threats that loom.

We are in uncharted waters. In 2020, we have been hit by the most severe pandemic in over a century, which has triggered the deepest global recession in recent history. All of our certainties have been shaken. Around the world, people are focused on surviving a crisis that has no end in sight.

As the United Nations marks its 75th anniversary, international cooperation is clearly vital to us all.

The UN was set up in 1945 precisely to deal with global challenges like this – problems which can only be solved when we come together, see the bigger picture, put aside any differences and take action for the benefit of humanity as a whole.

The threat of coronavirus has made all of us appreciate the value of  health. And that one’s own health depends on the wellbeing of those around us and the systems that protect it.

It should be no surprise that in the ‘UN75’ global public consultation, conducted throughout 2020 with over one million people, the number one finding was that most respondents’ immediate priority during the COVID-19 pandemic is improved access to basic services: healthcare, safe water and sanitation, and education.

Water and soap for handwashing, which is essential to combating the spread of this and other infectious diseases, is a first line of defence. Safe water and sanitation are fundamental both to preventing disease and to the functioning of healthcare and education, not to mention every other aspect of society, from business and industry to agriculture and the integrity of our environment.

However, 2.2 billion people lack safely managed drinking water and 4.2 billion people worldwide live without safely managed sanitation. Global demand for water is skyrocketing, while many water sources are becoming more polluted. Manufacturing is getting thirstier, as are, energy generation, and other industries. And, climate change is making water scarcer and unpredictable, wreaking havoc and displacing millions of people.

The deadly coronavirus and its wider impacts will only exacerbate the looming global water and sanitation crisis.

As COVID-19 spreads across the globe, the consequences of chronic underinvestment in water and sanitation services are already abundantly clear. We need strong water and sanitation systems and the integrated management of water resources to sustain progress on health, education, food, energy, climate change and peace.

The extraordinary global disruption caused by the pandemic offers an opportunity to “build back better”, to focus on getting the basics in place, leaving no one behind. If COVID-19 has taught us nothing else, it is that we have a shared vulnerability and a common destiny.

With a shift in priorities, we can get the world on track to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, including SDG 6 – ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

This is why the UN system is setting up a global framework to accelerate progress on SDG 6. This initiative will mobilise action across governments, civil society, the private sector and the UN; better aligning efforts, optimising financing and enhancing capacity and governance.

The SDG 6 Global Acceleration Framework has three novel features. First, it will increase focus on practical support that will augment impact at the country level.

Second, it embodies a clear commitment from principals of UN agencies, funds and programmes that will enable UN entities to work better together, improving the way the UN system and its partners deliver collectively.

And third, it mandates a multi-stakeholder, high-level, annual progress review to help stakeholders maintain momentum on SDG 6, and share lessons and best practices.

We have examples from many countries around the world which prove that dramatic gains in water and sanitation are possible in just a few years and that some of the solutions are inexpensive, effective and can be quickly deployed.

There is a high likelihood that COVID-19 will not be the last pandemic we see bringing the world to a halt. Next time could be much worse.

We need to do more to prevent the spread of infectious diseases and reduce the stresses caused by population growth and economic development. Providing well-managed water and sanitation services and the facilities to practise good hygiene to the billions of people who lack them today is everyone’s problem.

The UN’s 75th anniversary comes during the biggest wake-up call humanity has ever faced. We will only escape this global crisis with a united effort.

We are in uncharted waters but the course we must set is unarguable: towards a world in which our health is protected by universal basic services. Our immediate, shared task is to accelerate progress on SDG 6 to establish water and sanitation for all people, for all purposes, to help future-proof global society against threats that loom.

SDG