Approximately 4 billion people lack safe drinking water globally. A new study conducted by REACH, a global research program, found the estimated amount in 2020 more than doubled.
Most people without access to safe drinking water lived in East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, according to the research team, who said the largest obstacles were contaminants and lack of infrastructure.
“[A]n estimated 4.4 billion people lack safe drinking water across 135 low- and middle- income countries, which is more than double the global estimate made in 2020,” the study, published in the journal Science, said. “According to the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation resolution declared by the United Nations, water services must ensure sufficient quantity, safety, reliability, physical proximity, affordability, and nondiscrimination. These goals are challenging in rural areas of Africa and Asia and in sparsely populated regions where safe drinking water services on premises are costly and complicated to maintain.”
The study was launched by University of Nairobi and University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment in 2015. REACH focuses on the improvement of Africa and South Asia’s water security for the poor, EcoWatch reported.
“4 billion people is a sobering number,” Rob Hope, director of REACH, said. “There is a danger that policy and investments focus on reaching the most people at the lowest cost, and do not focus on those most in need in more difficult environments.”
Some factors include “high annual average temperatures and seasonality of precipitation negatively affect safely managed drinking water as well as, “land use, vegetation, and bedrock, which influence the storage and movement of groundwater, affect overall water resource availability,” the authors said.
“It’s clear that the impacts of climate change casts a large shadow,” Hope said. “The analysis agrees with wider work on how droughts, floods and pollution are creating significant water quality and operational impacts manifested most acutely for people’s drinking water supplies.”
The study used remote sensing data and household surveys to build a computer simulation that generated maps for 135 countries that showed where safe drinking water access was available and compared those maps with UNICEF data to come up with an estimate of people who lack safe drinking water globally, according to a press release.
Safe water access was classified by having water on the premises that was free of bacteria, harmful chemicals and other contaminants, Phys.org reported.
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