The Environmental Dimensions of Universal Access to Safe Water

Achieving universal and sustainable access to water and sanitation services will require significant investment in the management and protection of water resources. This is because of the greater demand for water and the assimilative capacity of water bodies implied by more ambitious Sustainable Development Goals targets and, more importantly, because of changes in resource conditions and demands arising from environmental and socioeconomic change. As the global population heads for almost 10 billion by 2050, the world is becoming more urbanised and wealthier. Water demands for energy, industry and irrigation are increasing, outstripping population growth in transforming economies. And greater climate variability increases the risks of flooding and drought – extreme events that threaten water and sanitation infrastructure and services. This combination of pressures, in a context of weak water management, has the potential to undermine existing gains in access to water and sanitation and threaten future progress, particularly for those with a stake but no voice or formal rights in water allocation. This chapter begins by looking at the global availability and quality of water resources, highlighting the uneven distribution of water between areas and over time. The importance of groundwater is discussed in view of the growing role groundwater bodies will play in providing potable supplies and in assimilating waste, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. While the global conversation on water tends to fixate on scarcity and over-exploitation, the more insidious problem of pollution is also highlighted. The authors then review the pressures on water systems, and describe how growing competition for the services water bodies provide, and changes in resource conditions, could affect access to safe water in the coming decades. Finally, the authors argue that water accounting and allocation systems in most countries are ill equipped to deal with the stresses of demographic, environmental and economic change, and call for a concerted effort to build the institutional plumbing of water resources management needed to safeguard poor people’s access to services.