World Water Day 2006: Water and Culture

MDG and safe water
 

The global challenge: Goals and targets

The Millennium Development Goals are an ambitious agenda for reducing poverty and improving lives that world leaders agreed on at the Millennium Summit in September 2000. For each goal one or more targets have been set, most for 2015, using 1990 as a benchmark:

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

Target 10:
Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water

By 2020 achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.

Indicator 30. Proportion of population with sustainable access to an improved water source and improved sanitation.

Situation Analysis

In the case of Bangladesh the target is to increase coverage of safe water from 99 percent to 100 percent in urban areas and from 76 percent (arsenic-adjusted estimate) coverage to 96.5 percent in rural areas by 2015.

In addition, access to improved sanitation must be increased from 75 percent to 85.5 percent in urban areas, and from 39 percent to 55.5 percent in rural areas by 2015.

In the case of Bangladesh, MDG 7 - Target 10 was modified to highlight the crucial role that access to water and to sanitation play in maintaining a healthy and productive population. Besides the global indicator of the proportion of population with sustainable access to an improved water source, a second indicator was included - the proportion of urban and rural population with access to improved sanitation.

Proportion of population with sustainable access to an improved water source

This indicator is defined as the percentage of the population who use any of the following types of water supply for drinking: piped water, public tap, borehole or pump, protected well, protected spring or rainwater. By this definition nearly 100 percent of the population in Bangladesh has access to water. However, over the last few years thousands of tube-wells have been found to be contaminated with naturally-occurring arsenic at higher than WHO-recommended levels. If quality is taken into account, access to safe water drops to only 72 percent in rural areas. In spite of the fact that this is good coverage by developing country standards, it implies that 30 million people remain without access to safe water. Coverage in urban areas is 82 percent.

Proportion of the urban and rural population with access to improved sanitation

In rural areas access to improved sanitation has increased from 11 percent in 1990 to 29 percent in 2002. In the case of urban areas however, the situation has deteriorated, coverage dropping from 71 percent to 56 percent. This is mainly due to unbridled and unplanned urbanization that has been taking place in recent years. Although technologies such as sewers, septic tanks, pour-flush latrines, simple pit latrines, and ventilated improved pit latrines contribute towards the achievement of target 10, additional factors also need to be taken into consideration. For example, it is essential in the case of simple pit latrines that excreta are adequately treated before being discharged into the environment. Even in towns and cities with sewerage systems, discharges are passed untreated directly into the environment. Solid waste disposal remains an environmental sanitation hazard, especially in the urban areas.

The Government recognizes the importance of increasing access to sanitation. Following a major initiative that culminated in the SACOSAN Conference in Dhaka in October 2003, the Government declared its own target of achieving 100 percent sanitation coverage by 2010, and has allocated two percent of its annual development budget for the task.