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Contents
What is the News?
Water Aid, an international non-profit organisation has released a report titled “Mission-critical: Invest in water, sanitation, and hygiene for a healthy and green economic recovery”.
About Mission Critical Report:
- The Mission Critical Report calls on all government and private bodies to mobilize investments in water, sanitation, and hygiene(WASH). It will fuel economic recovery and sustainable development.
Key Findings of the Report:
Impact of Inadequate Investment in WASH Infrastructure:
- Inadequate access to WASH is responsible for as much as 10% of the global disease burden. It contributes to 1.6 million preventable deaths each year, including 60% of all diarrheal deaths.
- A lack of basic WASH infrastructure requires households to spend 1–2 hours per day on average collecting water, displacing time spent in employment or education. The incidence of these heavily impacts on health and economic opportunities of women.
Benefits of Investing in WASH Infrastructure: The report provides the benefits of achieving universal access to safe WASH services, such as:
- Unlocking trillions of dollars of value over the next two decades.
- For example: achieving universal access to safely managed sanitation is estimated to yield net benefits of $86 billion per year between 2021 and 2040.
- Health outcomes would also be improved through reducing cases of diarrheal diseases.
- Environmental outcomes would be improved by reducing the pollution and contamination of land and water resources.
- Social and economic outcomes would be improved by reducing the time it takes to collect water.
Recommendations:
- G20 governments must urgently phase out their US $580 billion annual subsidies to fossil fuels and redirect this towards supporting investments in WASH services.
- Fiscal stimulus packages – supported by the international community – should include financing for the safe and sustainable WASH services.
- Donors and private sector investors should strengthen collaboration and create the enabling environments for increased water investments.
- All high-income countries(HICs) should fulfil their responsibilities to provide new and additional climate finance.
