More than a billion people are denied the right to clean water, while 2.6 billion do not have adequate sanitation. (2006 Human Development Report, 'Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis').

"Each year 1.8 million children die from diarrhea that could be prevented with access to clean water and a toilet; 443 million school days are lost to water-related illnesses; and almost 50 percent of all people in developing countries are suffering at any given time from a health problem caused by a lack of water and sanitation," the document notes.

One of the UN Millennium Development Goals is to halve the proportion of people in the world without access to safe drinking water by 2015. "If we continue the current development rate, 234 million people will miss that basic water target," says UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis.

This problem isn’t just confined to a particular region of the planet – it’s a world-wide issue. A third of the Earth’s population lives in “water stressed” countries and that number is expected to rise dramatically over the next two decades. The crisis is worst in developing nations, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Drinking from and bathing in polluted water are the most common causes for the spread of infectious disease, and nearly half of the world’s population suffers from water-related diseases. These diseases are the single largest killers of infants in developing countries – diarrhea alone causes 1.8 million deaths each year – and access to safe water is directly linked to the survival of children under age five.

Many poor households in developing countries are forced to rely on contaminated water, and the prevalence of waterborne diseases like cholera is increasing. An epidemic of cholera swept through Latin America in 1991, causing thousands of deaths – the majority of the cases occurring in communities lacking safe water and proper waste disposal.

Factors that cause the world water crisis

The world water crisis is created by a confluence of factors including climate and geography, lack of water systems and infrastructure, and inadequate sanitation, something that 2.6 billion people (40% of the world’s population) lack access to. Some of these countries have additional problems, including high levels of arsenic and fluoride in drinking water.

Even with these unsanitary conditions, many women and young girls in rural areas in Sub-Saharan African and other parts of the world must trek as much as six miles everyday to retrieve water for their families - Department for International Development (DFID). Due to this manual labor, such women and children are prevented from pursuing an education, maintaining their households or earning additional income.

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