What does the
WATER, SANITATION AND SANITATION SYSTEM
look like?
The seemingly simple task of having clean water flow from a tap, or removing and dealing with faeces from a household, is anything but. Behind it lies a miracle of organisation. Thousands of people, billions of dollars, complicated networks of pumps and pipes, ecosystems from which we draw (and to which we return – polluted) water. All of them exist within a framework of policy and rules that decide who does what, how they’re paid, and the standards they must meet.
Every year, billions of dollars are invested in public services that are, often, poorly designed, implemented and managed and that fail long before they should. Even worse, far too many people have still never benefited from such a service at all.
HOW FAR ARE WE OFF TRACK IN WATER, SANITATION AND HYGIENE?
Today, five years before the date the United Nations had set for eradicating extreme poverty and providing everyone with safe drinking water and sanitation – we are still badly off track.
HOW CAN WE CHANGE THIS?
For water and sanitation - and indeed for all public services - to be effective, and to reach everyone including the poorest, policy needs to support practice; plans need to be accompanied by budgets; service providers need to be held accountable for quality and reliability, users of services need to be part of that change. Above all, people in power need to care and commit to providing them.
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Progress in closing the gap in open defecation between the richest and the poorest varies across countries.
There's been much progress in water and sanitation. But in a world where we’re facing new, and accelerating challenges, what got us here is no longer sufficient for where we need to go.
