SDG 6: Clean water and sanitation

The pandemic has highlighted the importance of hand washing with soap and water. We have learned to wash our hands better and to value this simple act that has prevented a huge number of infections.

But the reality is that many people do not have a water point at home where they can wash their hands.

It is estimated that 3 out of 10 people do not have such a facility at home, or at least not in a safe way. Thirty per cent of the population cannot wash their hands, but how many people are a third?

According to UN figures, in March 2021, 2.2 billion people still had no access to safe drinking water and 4.2 billion people were living without adequate and safe sanitation.

This fact makes very difficult to eradicate pandemics and prevent the transmission of endemic diseases. In other words, the lack of access to water facilities in the homes of almost 1/3 of the planet is a very serious problem that concerns us all.

Indeed, we must remember that the SDG 6 targets aim to "ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for everybody by 2030". Covid-19 has only highlighted the urgent need to ensure that everyone has access to adequate hand hygiene.

In Africa, Asia and Latin America, more than half of the population does not have a sink and a toilet at home. This is unthinkable in the age of self-driving cars, where we can buy anything at the click of a button. Meanwhile, many people have to walk miles to fetch drinking water. No one can bring them water at the click of a button. Water, something as basic as water.

The lack of clean water for hand washing or showering causes pathogens and microbes to roam freely in the human body, infecting it with a myriad of infections, the billions of people who do not have a toilet defecate in the vicinity of their homes. This attracts many disease-carrying insects, which then spread diseases. It is impossible to prevent future pandemics under these conditions.

And this is obviously not the responsibility of the people who suffer it. None of us have worked hard to have clean and drinkable water at home. These are basic needs that are supposed to be met. Governments need to prioritise this problem and ensure that water is available to all the population centres in their countries.

But the pandemic is not the only problem or the only reason to work hard on this issue. There are still others that make it very difficult for this third of the population to have access to water. And yes, it is becoming more and more difficult to find water. Overexploitation of water resources, inequality in the distribution of freshwater around the world, and climate change bringing with it increased droughts and desertification. So the problem of access to water is growing in many countries.

In fact, it is estimated that by 2050 more than half of the world's people may be at risk from water scarcity, as desertification will be a serious problem from now on, affecting the livelihoods of nearly one billion people in more than 100 countries. The UN estimates that intense water scarcity could displace up to 700 million people by 2030.

UNICEF has estimated that by 2040 one in four of the world's children will live in areas of extreme water scarcity.

But in addition to water scarcity, the climate change we are experiencing increases the frequency and intensity of floods, which have serious impacts on water supply systems and lead to increased water pollution. As a result, both water quantity and quality are gradually decreasing.

The World Economic Forum's Global Risks 2020 Report includes, for the first time, environmental threats among the top five global risks in terms of likelihood. At last, environmental threats are on the table and are a reality. But what is more, the eighth place is occupied by water crises, and the most important thing is that they are categorised as a social threat and not an environmental threat anymore.

The Spanish government recently acknowledged that investment in this area is clearly insufficient. Again, it requires governments, institutions and organisations to work together to fund and drive wholesale structural change in many parts of the world. We cannot face new pandemics under these conditions.