One in four people don’t have access to safe drinking water. And the data says this won’t change anytime soon

Jul 7, 2021

Township children play around a communal tap sevicing the Imizamo Yethucommunity near Cape Town, August 5, 2002. Quenching the planet'sgrowing thirst will be a gigantic task, with some experts warning thatwhole regions are in danger of drying up with catastrophic consequencesfor their impoverished populations. Water was the focus of the EarthSummit on Wednesday, with developing countries pushing for a globaltarget on sanitation to complement the Millennium Development Goal(MDG) of halving the proportion of people without access to cleandrinking water by 2015. FOR RELEASE WITH STORY SUMMIT-ENVIRONMENT-WATERREUTERS/Mike HutchingsMH/CLH/ - RP3DRIDGEZAA

Billions still go without access to clean drinking water, sanitation and handwashing facilities. Image: Reuters/Mike HutchingsMH

Hannah Ritchie

Researcher, Our World in Data

Our Impact

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Water is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

Water

Sub-saharan Africa has notably worse access to safe drinking water when compared to the world as a whole. Image: WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply and Sanitation

Share of the population with access to safely managed drinking water

Safely managed drinking water is water from an improved water source which is located on premises, available when needed and free from contamination. Image: Our World in Data

Share of the population with access to sanitation facilities.

Sub-Saharan Africa has low levels of safely managed water. Image: WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply and Sanitation

Share of the population with access to safely managed sanitation

Safely managed sanitation is improved facilities which are not shared with other households and where excreta are safely disposed in situ or transported and treated off-site. Image: Our World in Data

WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply and Sanitation

Western Asia and Northern Africa have majority basic access to handwashing facilities. Image: Our World in Data

Share of the population with access to basic handwashing facilities

This measures the availability of a handwashing facility on premises with soap and water. Image: Our World in DataWHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply and Sanitation

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.