Is Clean Water for All an Achievable Goal?

Water runs through every aspect of our lives, and through the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Goal 2, which is Zero Hunger, will be impossible to achieve without sufficient quantities of water for crop cultivation. Goal 5—Gender Equality—is impacted by the fact that women living in Africa and Asia walk an average of six kilometers to their nearest water source. It's no surprise, then, that the UN has dedicated an entire development goal to water. That goal is SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation. Crucial to the issue are the policies that control and apportion water, and central to the discussion is the fact that, unlike life-giving resources such as air and sunlight, water is capturable, monetizable, and deniable to others.

Water and sanitation are linked in SDG 6 because poor sanitation leads to contaminated drinking water. Untreated or insufficiently treated water causes 80% of illnesses and up to 1.2 million deaths in low-income countries annually. Therefore, the UN's objectives include not only universal access to safe and affordable drinking water, but also access to adequate and equitable sanitation, improved water quality, increased treatment of wastewater and recycling of water, protection of water-related ecosystems, including mountains, forests, wetlands, rivers, and aquifers, and a general increase in the efficiency of water systems.

Some obstacles standing in the way of success include declining or yet-unbuilt infrastructure, limited transboundary cooperation (surface water or aquifers accessible to two or more countries), and disagreements over the nature of free enterprise. The latter issue is critical. Debate is simmering over whether water is a public resource and human right, or a commodity to be sold for profit on an open market. The divide is exemplified by former Nestlé's CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe's infamous 2005 statement that NGOs that “bang on” about water as a public right are taking an “extreme position.”

This opinion was perhaps unsurprising. Nestlé has long been accused of using water at volumes far beyond what is sustainable for local communities. Brabeck-Letmathe later clarified his remarks to say that he does, in fact, believe water for drinking and hygiene is a human right. This is a position taken by many figures in the private sector, but it avoids the question of whether that water should be the provided by governments, or private companies making a hefty profit, or some combination of both.

Often, articles about the subject point out that many water systems are aging and substandard, with a choice between inefficient government and efficient private provision then presented as a false dichotomy. This formulation neglects to mention that private provision is not always efficient, and government is often only as efficient as those currently in power want it to be. Whether at the national or local level, among certain lawmakers the neglect or dismantling of the public sector is dogma. In the U.S., safe drinking water standards are issued by the Environmental Protection Agency; lawmakers who want the agency abolished are legion and aren't bashful about their views.

Staff at water-focused NGOs have occasionally been surveyed about these matters, and unsurprisingly, private control is not a favored solution, with the major objection being the increase in costs for the poor. Other observers point to the loss of transparency, the transfer of assets away from municipalities, and the shifting of accountability from the public to shareholders. All of these are valid concerns, whether in developed or undeveloped countries. But it is in less developed countries that water access becomes an infrastructural and economic conundrum directly impacting mass survival, and it is in those places that the capital to expand or improve distribution systems is often unattainable except via outside assistance.

These challenges have led to water solutions that run the gamut. In India, Uganda, and Bangladesh, private investors partnered with NGOs have created water ATMs, which are exactly what they sound like—water vending machines, open 24/7, often solar powered, able to dispense by the liter, accessed via a water card. In Ghana, the nonprofit Safe Water Network has introduced integrated digital operating platforms for water station operators in order to improve efficiency. The social justice organization Splash managed to provide water filtration systems to every orphanage in China—1,100 of them—and has helped one million children in eight Asian and African countries. Many nonprofits make hygiene education a major pillar of their work, helping people to understand how waterborne germs affect heath.

Private water companies have had successes increasing access and quality in the developing world, but there have been notable instances of abuse. In Cochabamba, Bolivia, when the government turned over the public water utility in 1999 to a private company, rates shot up and people began collecting water from alternate sources. At that point, in collusion with the investors, the government hurried through new laws that made collecting from lagoons, streams, and rivers illegal. The episode ended with protests, violence, and water officials fleeing the country. The episode exemplifies fears of corporate takeovers of life sustaining resources, and is known today as the Cochabamba Water War.

Failures of these types aren't isolated to developing countries. In England and Wales, the domination of the water sector by private equity has led to high levels of debt, increased water shortages, more leaks, and more sewage pollution in rivers than when water was in public hands. Meanwhile, dividend payments to shareholders have soared. Such stories have contributed to a shift in public sentiment in Europe about water as a public good, and have prompted more than 100 European cities that had relied on private services to backtrack and remunicipalize water services.

Ultimately, then, the question is where does SDG 6 come down on the issue of service provision? By what method are its objectives to be met? Billions of people will lack access to adequate water in 2030 unless progress on the issue quadruples. At the moment, only about 5% of the global population receives water from the private sector. That alone makes privatization an attractive solution at the policy level, simply because it hasn't been tried in most places. However, private investors are least interested in areas where water is most needed; their services tend to be concentrated in populous locales where the percentage of people who can pay is high. That alone indicates that private investment may not be up to the challenge of meeting the UN's water goals.

However, the UN rules out nothing. All the SDGs, including SDG 6, are presented in such a way as to sidestep, or at least minimize, direct political questions. The language used is that of “expanding international cooperation” and “strengthening the participation of local communities.” But it's safe to say that corporate involvement in water provision is considered a useful tool to bring about a desired end, as long as that result does not force people to choose water over other subsistence needs. Because the SDGs are interlinked, water must be provided via good faith, reasonable-cost efforts, or else other SDGs—zero poverty, improved health, etc.—could shift into reverse. Governments understand that access to clean water and sanitation promotes economic stability. How that water is provided depends on who is in power, and what their particular view of human rights versus markets may be.

Water and sanitation may have been abstract issues at one point in time, but that day has passed. An April 2022 Gallup poll found that the pollution of drinking water and natural waterways ranks as the most serious environmental concern for Americans—above global warming. Internationally, 58% of people consider fresh water shortages to be a serious problem. In recent years, we've seen how water scarcity has contributed to famine across Africa and Asia, and warfare in Syria and Sudan. It is, quite simply, one of the most basic problems facing humanity today. We will have to solve it in order to attain the lofty vision embodied by the Sustainable Development Goals.