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Opinions & Insights | 23 August 2024

This is a critical moment for water. Only by working together can we turn the tide

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

By Alvaro Lario

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Water is everywhere and nowhere. It is so ubiquitous that we barely notice it – and we take it for granted.

There is water everywhere, yes. The oceans cover 70 per cent of our planet. But freshwater that is actually usable and available is surprisingly limited: only 0.05 per cent of water on Earth.

That relatively small amount is incredibly precious. And human actions are putting it at risk.

As climate change bites and populations grow, our continuing abuse and neglect of the entire water cycle is compounding every other challenge we face. Despite so much progress in other areas, 2.2 billion people globally – more than one in four people – are still living without safely managed drinking water.

Even worse: 3.5 billion people do not have access to safely managed sanitation.

This year’s World Water Week is happening at a critical moment, at the midpoint of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Despite concerted efforts and global commitments, progress so far has been insufficient to meet the promise of the sixth Sustainable Development Goal: to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

In some regions and countries, progress is even reversing.

Harvesting cabbages in Kenya with small-scale farmer Gilbert Muriuki, whose vegetables are flourishing thanks to an irrigation system provided by an IFAD-supported project. © IFAD/Joe Kinyanjui Kageni

IFAD’s work on water

IFAD’s work on water helps achieve SDG 6 by investing in water infrastructure and technology for rural people. These are people who live in the communities most reliant on water – not just for drinking, cooking and sanitation, but for their entire livelihoods.

These investments – including in domestic water supplies, small-scale irrigation schemes and post-harvesting processing – are made with rural communities, traders, retailers and local governments.

In Cambodia, for example, IFAD supports CAM-Science: a tech start-up finding better ways of farming. CAM-Science designed a digital system that allows farmers to control irrigation from their mobile phones while measuring useful indicators, like soil moisture and air temperature.

Farmers who use the technology see better crop yields and lower water use. CAM-Science is now exploring how other technologies, including artificial intelligence, could improve the system.

And in southern Mongolia, IFAD supported a project that invested in deep wells across six provinces that had been suffering shortages due to climate change – and causing tensions between pastoralist communities. With less competition for water, there is less conflict – a trend reinforced by working with the communities on pasture management plans to ensure the water wells are used and shared equitably.

IFAD believes that by advocating for an integrated and participatory approach to water resource management, poor rural people can be given back control over the resources on which they depend.

This is the whole point of SDG 6.

A global strategy for a global problem

And yet, we find ourselves dramatically behind on a global level. Water-borne, preventable diseases, like cholera and typhoid, kill around 1,000 children under five every single day.

The 2024 series of indicator reports on progress towards SDG 6 show that we are faced with a crisis that has profound repercussions for many other SDGs, particularly those related to poverty, food, health, education, gender equality, sustainability and environmental integrity.

I’m proud that as Chair of UN-Water, we brought the entire UN system together to develop a response that aims to refocus our efforts, enhance our cooperation across the system and mobilize resources to make good on our commitments to global society and the future of our planet.

The UN System-wide Strategy for Water and Sanitation reaffirms the need for the UN to better support Member States – especially developing countries – in their efforts to make safe water and sanitation available to all.

This strategy is the embodiment of a new consensus: that faster and greater action on water and sanitation will drive gains across all dimensions of sustainable development and alleviate human suffering.

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Despite unprecedented challenges, we now have unprecedented tools and political momentum. We must use these to deliver investments to the areas of greatest need, building a world with accessible, available, sustainably managed and affordable water and sanitation for all.

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