Progress on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene 2000‒2020: Five years into the SDGs

Overview

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development called for ‘ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all’ under SDG6, and established ambitious new indicators for WASH services under targets 6.1 and 6.2. While the number of countries with estimates available for the new SDG global indicators has increased with each JMP progress update, many still only have a small number of data points making it difficult to assess trends. However there are now enough data to begin to assess the prospects for achieving the SDG targets. This 2021 report extrapolates estimates based on existing trends to illustrate current trajectories and the acceleration required to achieve universal coverage by 2030.

Five years into the SDGs, the world is not on track to achieve SDG targets 6.1 and 6.2. Achieving universal coverage by 2030 will require a quadrupling of current rates of progress in safely managed drinking water, safely managed sanitation, and basic hygiene services. Least Developed Countries have the furthest to go and it will be especially challenging to accelerate progress in fragile contexts. Many more countries are facing challenges in extending services to rural areas and to poor and vulnerable populations who are most at risk of being left behind.

Read the press release: Billions of people will lack access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene in 2030 unless progress quadruples

Access here the latest and updated version of this publication.