World meets goal of boosting access to clean water

(March 07, 2012) The goal of reducing by half the number of people without access to safe drinking water has been achieved, well ahead of the 2015 deadline, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Between 1990 and 2010, over two billion people gained access to improved drinking water sources, such as piped supplies and protected wells, according to a joint report by the UN Children’s Fund - UNICEF and the UN World Health Organization - WHO. Halving the number of people without access to clean drinking water is one of the targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which include ending extreme poverty, reducing child and maternal mortality rates, fighting diseases and establishing a global partnership for development. “Today we recognize a great achievement for the people of the world,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said upon the release of the report, entitled ‘Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation 2012’, and produced by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation. At the end of 2010, some 89 per cent of the world’s population, or 6.1 billion people, used improved drinking water sources, according to the report. The report estimates that by 2015, some 92 per cent of the global population will have access to improved drinking water. The report showed that the world is still far from meeting the MDG target for sanitation, and is unlikely to do so by 2015. Only 63 per cent of the world population has access to improved sanitation, a figure projected to increase to only 67 per cent by 2015. Currently 2.5 billion people still lack improved sanitation.