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Water
Water – key to realising the Millennium Development Goals
"Ensuring that every person has access to at least 20 litres of clean water each day is a minimum requirement for respecting the human right to water."
(Human Development Report 2006: Beyond scarcity – Power, poverty and the global water crisis)
At the start of the 21st century 900 million people – around one seventh of the world population – lack access to clean potable water. Some 2.5 billion are without basic sanitation facilities.
Water scarcity and poor water quality are among the chief causes of poverty, disease and environmental degradation. In the face of world population growth, increasing urbanisation and industrialisation and emerging climate change, it is becoming increasingly difficult to provide and maintain adequate water supplies.
One of the targets of the seventh Millennium Development Goal (Ensure environmental sustainability) is to "halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation".
This goal will not be met unless present progress on water and sanitation services and water resource management is significantly stepped up. Improved water and sanitation services are, moreover, key to the attainment of other Millennium Development Goals – such as food security, poverty reduction, health, environmental protection and also gender equality, since many girls are unable to go to school either because they are needed to fetch water or because the school has no sanitation facilities.
German development cooperation is committed to Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). That means it works actively within the water sector to maximise economic benefits and human well-being in ways that also promote the sustainability of vital ecosystems. To this end Germany supports the coordinated management of water, land and related resources.
IWRM takes account of all usage interests and activities – including transregional and trans-sectoral ones – that could affect the hydrological regime. In the context of a project for supplying potable water this could mean, for example, that it is necessary to take into consideration any existing hydropower plants, anti-erosion measures and forest conservation along the upper reaches of a river, the contamination of water and soil by waste and general land-use planning.
Clean water is fundamental to all progress. When available in sufficient quantity it acts as a catalyst for a country’s development. The water sector is therefore a priority area of German development cooperation.
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