Water - Water Supply & Sanitation

More than 1.1 billion people lack access to safe water, and 2.6 billion lack access to basic sanitation. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) include a target to halve the fraction of the world’s population without access to water and sanitation by 2015. The world is roughly on course to reach the target for water supply, but will fall short by half a billion people in sanitation.

% of population with basic access (2004)
	Urban	Rural	Total
Water Supply	95	73	83
Sanitation	80	39	59

The costs of inadequate water supply and sanitation (WSS) are high: 1.6 million children die every year from diarrhea, mainly as a result of inadequate sanitation, water supply, and hygiene. And the economic costs of lost time in fetching water and environmental degradation from wastewater pollution are high—for example, more than 1.4 percent of GDP in Bangladesh, 1 percent in Colombia, and 0.6 percent in Tunisia.

Challenges and opportunities in water supply differ from those in sanitation, and these in turn differ in rural and urban contexts. This is reflected not only costs and economies of scale, but also differences in poverty and institutional capacity for investment and management.

Key Challenges
The greatest challenge lies in building competent, efficient, business-like, and service-oriented institutions. Sustainable service provision is only possible where customers themselves cover the costs of operation and maintenance; capital cost recovery is not always possible, but often requires predictable public subsidies.

Finance is short: estimated investment towards the WSS MDGs, at $15 billion a year, is only half what is needed to meet the MDG targets, even without sewage treatment. Other major constraints on expanding access include political instability, corruption, social dislocation through urban migration, and population growth. For example, the number of people with access to basic sanitation grew by half from 1990 to 2004, but the number without sanitation remained essentially the same, because of population growth. Challenges associated with local climate, hydrology, and environment can also be formidable, and will mount with climate change.

World Bank Response
The World Bank is committed to reaching the poor in water supply and sanitation and helps countries develop, share, and apply global and local knowledge to meet challenges in this sector. It operates across the spectrum of public and private provision to help ensure efficient, affordable, and sustainable delivery of WSS services. World Bank projects that closed between 2000 and 2004 improved access to WSS services for about 10 million people a year. The active World Bank WSS portfolio is $10.7 billion (60 percent for water supply and 40 percent for sanitation). Among the regions, East Asia & Pacific, followed by Sub-Saharan Africa, are the largest recipients of World Bank financing for WSS. About half the WSS lending flows through multi-sector operations.