Key Points
- World leaders are meeting at a UN summit on global water issues.
- Population growth and urban development has put more pressure on water supplies.
- Water use has grown globally by about 1 per cent a year for the last four decades.
Governments and groups in the public and private sector are meeting in New York for the first United Nations conference on water in 46 years.
Attendees will be invited to present proposals for a so-called water action agenda to reverse that trend and help meet the development goal, set in 2015, of ensuring "access to water and sanitation for all by 2030."
Co-hosted by the governments of Tajikistan and the Netherlands, the UN Water Conference will gather some 6,500 participants, including a hundred ministers and a dozen heads of state and government for a three-day conference in New York from Wednesday local time (Thursday AEDT).
The last conference at this high level on the issue, which lacks a global treaty or a dedicated UN agency, was held in 1977 in Mar del Plata, Argentina.
What issues will be discussed at the conference?
At the UN conference, delegates will put forward proposals to arrest the trends and assess how the nations are tracking when it comes to meeting targets set in 2015 for 2030 on providing clean water and sanitation to all.
The target is contained in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as goal six, which calls for "access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene is the most basic human need for health and well-being."
Some observers have already voiced concerns about the scope of these commitments and the availability of funding to implement them.
"There is much to do and time is not on our side," said Gilbert Houngbo, chair of UN-Water, a forum for coordinating work on the topic.
The European Commission said it will be using the conference to push for "access to safe drinking water and sanitation as a human right" as part of its 2050 plan.
It also wants more cooperation across sectors to manage the use of water, with a push also for increased water reuse and efficiency in the energy and agriculture sectors.
To ensure access to safe drinking water for all by 2030, current levels of investment would have to be tripled, a new report released by UN-Water and UNESCO ahead of the summit finds.
How severe is the water scarcity situation?
The outlines key aspects of the "global water crisis", which UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay described as "spiralling out of control".
The report warns that "scarcity is becoming endemic" due to overconsumption and pollution, while global warming will increase seasonal water shortages in both areas with abundant water as well as those already strained.
Richard Connor, lead author of report, told AFP that the impact of the "world water crisis" are mapped out in the report in scenarios.
"If nothing is done, it will be a business-as-usual scenario - it will keep on being between 40 per cent and 50 per cent of the population of the world that does not have access to sanitation and roughly 20-25 per cent of the world will not have access to safe water supply."
With the global population increasing every day, "in absolute numbers, there will be more and more people that don't have access to these services," he said.
The report forecasts that the water demand in urban cities is set to soar by 80 per cent by 2050.
At the moment, between 2 billion and 3 billion people are subject to water shortages for at least one month a year.
Also by 2050, the number of people in cities globally who will lack access to safe drinking water is expected to double from 1 billion to as many as 2.4 billion.
Water stress and climate change - what's the connection?
"About 10% of the world's population lives in a country where water stress has reached a high or critical level," the report says.
According to the t, published Monday by the IPCC expert panel, "roughly half of the world’s population currently experience severe water scarcity for at least part of the year."
Those shortages have the most significant impact on the poor, Mr Connor told AFP. "No matter where you are, if you are rich enough, you will manage to get water," he said.
The report notes the particular impact of existing water supplies becoming contaminated due to underperforming or nonexistent sanitation systems.
"At least 2 billion people (globally) use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces, putting them at risk of contracting cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio," it said.
That high number does not even take into account pollution from pharmaceuticals, chemicals, pesticides, microplastics and nanomaterials.
Freshwater ecosystems - which in addition to water, provide life-sustaining economic resources and help combat global warming - "are among the most threatened in the world," the report warns.
"We have to act now because water insecurity is undermining food security, health security, energy security or urban development and societal issues," Henk Ovink, the Dutch special envoy for water, told AFP.
"It's now or never as we say - a once in a generation opportunity."
