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Building Energy Efficiency and Sustainability
News Release from: CIWEM | Subject: Millennium Development Goals
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 29 January 2008
Millennium Development Goals for
sanitation
CIWEM believes that international community's approach to sanitation must change.
CIWEM supports the UN's International Year of Sanitation and appropriately themed World Water Day, which highlight the need to accelerate progress on improving global sanitation However, CIWEM believes that the international community's approach to this issue must change
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 1 Sep 2005 at 8.00am (UK)
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Currently 2.6 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation, with one-sixth of the world's population getting their water from sources contaminated by human and animal feces and half of all people in developing countries having an illness related to sanitation and water quality.
The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS by the target date of 2015.
Millennium Development Goal 7 commits countries to ensure environmental sustainability, which includes halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
In order to meet the MDG target, an additional 1.6 billion people need access to improved sanitation by 2015, but if trends continue, the world is likely to miss this by almost 600 million people.
Only parts of Asia, northern Africa and Latin America are on track to meet the target, and in sub-Saharan Africa, the number of people without access to sanitation has actually increased from 335 million to 440 million.
With countries already struggling to meet basic sanitation provision and climate change set to make the situation more difficult, CIWEM believes that it is the time to conduct a full review of the MDG target.
CIWEM Director of International Development, Paul Horton, says: "The health, economic and social reprecussions of poor sanitation are widely recognised but there is a growing realisation that some of the MDGs will not be met, especially access to clean water and basic sanitation".
"As we are at the halfway point between the adoption of the MDGs and the target date, it is right that we see how much remains to be done".
"Many countries do not have the right framework of policies in place and climate change will make things a lot worse over the next few years".
"The whole approach to meeting the target has to change and it is imperative that we see the scale of the challenge ahead.".
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