Progress on Water and Sewage?

Are we making progress, or are we running in place (or perhaps even going backwards)?

The answer to that question, of course, depends on what you are measuring, how you are measuring it, and what baseline you are using to measure your progress against.

A good example can be seen by taking a look at global clean water and sewage hookups between the year 1990 and 2000.

Due to population growth, the percentage of people with access to clean water actually increased, while the absolute number of people without access to an improved water source actually stayed the same.

On the positive side, real gains were made in terms of sewage hookups, with about 1 billion people in the world human getting sewer access during the 1990s, at a time when word population grew by about 800 million people. Slow progress, to be sure, but progress none-the-less.

CLEAN WATER
Percent of Total Populaton with Access to Clean Water, 1999-2000

YEAR 1990 2000

Sub-Saharan Africa 53 vs. 57
Middle East/North Africa 82 vs. 87
South Asia 72 vs. 85
East Asia/Pacific 71 vs. 76
Latin America/Caribbean 82 vs. 86

Industrialized Countries 100 vs. 100
Developing Countries 71 vs. 78
Least Developed Countries 63 vs. 62

World 77 vs. 82


SEWAGE
Percent of Total Population with Access to Sewage Disposal, 1999-2000

YEAR 1990 vs. 2000

Sub-Saharan Africa 54 vs. 53
Middle East/North Africa 72 vs. 83
South Asia 22 vs. 34
East Asia/Pacific 26 vs. 48
Latin America/Caribbean 72 vs. 77

Industrialized Countries 99 vs. 100
Developing Countries 38 vs. 52
Least Developed Countries 41 vs. 44

World 51 vs. 61

Data from Unicef at >> http://www.childinfo.org/eddb/water.htm