Four billion people estimated to lack safe drinking water servicesMore than half of the global population was estimated to lack safely managed d...
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network
More than half of the global population was estimated to lack safely managed drinking water services in a recent study led by Eawag researchers. This is shown in a global map that researchers compiled using machine learning based on data from household surveys and data derived from Earth observations.
Safe drinking water access is a human right and one of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. However, data on the number of people using safely managed drinking water services is lacking for more than half of the world's population. "With our work, we aim to help close this information gap," says Esther Greenwood, PhD student at Eawag and lead author of the study funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, and published in the journal "Science". The researchers from Eawag with the support of ETH Zurich, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organization (WHO), Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, and the University of Basel developed models to estimate the use of safely managed drinking water services in 135 low- and middle-income countries (LMICS).
The models were developed using machine learning based on existing data sets from household surveys and data derived from Earth observations. A main finding of the study: only one in three people in LMICS countries used safely managed drinking water services in 2020. The study also found that fecal matter polluted the drinking water of almost half of the population in these countries, and a third of people needed to fetch water from a shared water point.
The global maps produced by the researchers show where the drinking water services are lacking: In rural areas of low-income countries with high temperatures and strong seasonal fluctuations in rainfall. The maps suggest that in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa less than 10% of the populations used safely managed drinking water. "We estimate that over four billion people worldwide do not use adequate drinking water services," summarizes Greenwood. This is a notable result because this figure is more than twice as high as the previous estimate of the WHO and UNICEF, which are responsible for monitoring drinking water in a joint program. "The number of people whose basic human right to safe drinking water is not being met may therefore be significantly underestimated," says the scientist.
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https://smartwatermagazine.com/news/eawag-swiss-federal-institute-aquatic-science-and-technology/four-billion-people-estimated-lackTaxonomy
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