Page - 9 - in Water, Energy, and Environment - A Primer

1.5 IMPLICATIONSOFLIMITEDACCESSTO FRESHWATER The implications of limited or no access to freshwater are significant, not only for food production but also for public health. Unfortunately, reliable data on clean water access and sanitation practices for parts of the developing world are still hard to come by. The 2017 report of theWHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program on Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (8) estimates that in 2015 ‘844 million people still lacked even a basic drinking water service…159 million people still collected (potentially contaminated) water directly fromsurfacewater sources/58% lived in sub-SaharanAfrica… 2.3billion people still lacked even abasic sanitation service’… 892millionpeople still practiced opendefecation.’ An additional challenge is posed by increasing urbanization, the population shift from rural to urban areas. Seen as an inevitable consequence of the industrial revolution, it hasmajor implications for delivery ofwater services. Currentlymore than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and this fraction is expected to increase to 70% by 2050. In 1970 Tokyo and New York were the only cities with a population greater than 10 million people, so-called megacities. Today, there are 13megacities inAsia, four in LatinAmerica, and two each in Africa, North America, and Europe. Many of these cities are already experiencing severe water stress and their situationswill onlyworsen.Water stress (sometimes referred to aswater scarcity) can be defined as the inability tomeet human and ecological demand for freshwater. The minimum quantity of water deemed necessary to satisfy basic human needs ranges from 20 to 50 litres (7.3–18.3m3) per person per day, depending onwhat is included in ‘basic needs’.Many countries already fall below that level –water shortages currently plague almost every every country in MENA – and experts project that, under ‘business as usual’, close to 2 billion people in Waterand itsglobal context 9