UNDP Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Portfolio – Accelerating MDG Progress through Governance Reform and Local Action

UNDP Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Portfolio – Accelerating MDG Progress through Governance Reform and Local Action

October 24, 2016

UNDP works worldwide in over 90 countries in water governance to scale up water and sanitation services for the poor. Through programmes like MDG GoAL WaSH, Cap-Net, the Community Water Initiative, Every Drop Matters, the MDG Spanish Fund, and the Millennium Acceleration Framework, UNDP promotes and facilitates equitable access to water and sanitation services as a fundamental contribution to enhancing human development.

 

 

 

Highlights

  • Water and sanitation matter most for the poor. Sanitation remains one of the two most off-track MDG targets, with almost 2.6 billion people lacking the mostbasic of facilities. And while the world as a whole may have met the water supply MDG target, there are vast disparities in several regions and in individual countries in all regions. Furthermore, climate change and over abstraction of groundwater resources threaten to reverse this achievement.
  • The global water and sanitation crisis is mainly rooted in poverty, power and inequality, not in physical availability. This deprivation in access to WASH services overwhelmingly impacts poor people, marginalized communities, and women and children. They are systematically excluded as a result of inequality, unequal power relations and failures of governance. Unless this discrimination ends, WASH services will never reach those most in need. For this reason UNDP promotes access to water and sanitation for life as a basic human need and a fundamental human right.