The UN World Water Development Report 2023 paints a grim picture of the huge gap that needs to be filled to ensure that all people have access to clean water and sanitation by 2030.
Drinking water supplies around the world are increasingly threatened by overconsumption and billions of people do not have access to it.
The United Nations issued the warning in a report ahead of a major summit on the issue starting Wednesday.
On average, “10% of the world’s population lives in countries with high or critical water scarcity” — and up to 3.5 billion people live under conditions of water scarcity for at least one month a year, according to the report from UNESCO, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
The world is “blindly walking down a dangerous path” as “unsustainable water use, pollution and uncontrolled global warming are depleting the lifeblood of humanity,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a foreword.
The UN World Water Development Report 2023 painted a stark picture of the huge gap that needs to be filled to ensure that all people have access to clean water and sanitation by 2030.
Richard Connor, the report’s editor-in-chief, told a news conference that the estimated cost of meeting the targets is somewhere between $600 billion and $1 trillion a year.
Connor said the actual increase in demand is happening in developing and emerging economies, where it is driven by industrial growth and especially the rapid increase in the population of cities. It is in these urban areas “that demand is booming,” he said.
‘Time not on our side’
With agriculture using 70 percent of all water worldwide, irrigation of crops needs to be more efficient – as some countries now use drip irrigation, which saves water. “It allows water to be available to cities,” he said.
Due to climate change, the report said, “seasonal water scarcity will increase in regions where it is currently abundant – such as Central Africa, East Asia and parts of South America – and worsen in regions where water is already short. like the Middle East and the Sahara in Africa.”
Connor said the biggest source of water pollution is untreated wastewater. “Worldwide, 80 percent of wastewater ends up in the environment untreated and in many developing countries that is about 99 percent.”
Hosted by the governments of Tajikistan and the Netherlands, the UN water conference will gather some 6,500 participants, including 100 ministers and a dozen heads of state and government, from Wednesday through Friday in New York City.
“There is much to do and time is not on our side,” said Gilbert Houngbo, president of UN-Water.