The Global Situation of Water

Source:UNDP (2015), The Way to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Adoption, Retrieved October 20, 2018

Have you ever seen the following 17 pictures?

The pictures are called “Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” These are built on the successes of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at the UN summit in September 2015.
On MDGs, the goal “ Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation ” was set and they achieved decreasing the proportion from 23% in 1990 to 13% in 2008.
On SDGs, the developed and developing countries cooperate each other to achieve these 17 goals.

Now, 844 billion people cannot get even a basic drinking water service. In Japan, people can get clean water as soon as you turn on a faucet. However, there are a lot of people who must take many hours to draw and carry water. This is mainly the job for Children, especially girls are the ones who are responsible for these water related job. They fall into a vicious circle - because of having responsibilities for the water supply, they miss schools, later on they cannot find a good job because they cannot read.

There are also people who suffer from diseases like malnutrition and infections due to unhygienic water.

Water scarcity is taken up on the SDGs Goal as number 6 in the ranking. It states as “Clean water and sanitation.”
However we have to think of Goal No. 3 which is “Good health and well-being” , Goal 4 which is “Quality education” and Goal 10 which is “Reduced inequalities” . We need to reconsider from a perspective that everyone can access to clean and safe drinking water.
It is not too much to say that water scarcity connects to all goals.