Water and sanitation

Girl getting water from community water pipe. Sri Lanka.	Flickr	Dominic Sansoni / World Bank	http://flickr.com/photos/worldbank/1988371320/Water and sanitation are essential for human security and development and for pro-poor growth. Yet more than one billion people lack access to clean water, and 2.5 billion people lack access to proper sanitation. MDG7 requires a halving of the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation between 1990 and 2015. The world is just about on track for the water target, but sanitation remains the poor cousin, lagging behind in attention and funding.

ODI believes that the achievement of the MDG7 targets for water and sanitation requires effective governance and sufficient resources, backed by social and political environments that enable progress. Our work examines water and sanitation related resource management issues from a range of perspectives: governance, environment and poverty reduction.

Key publications and resources by issue - click for listings

Key events - click for details

The Year on Sanitation 2008
Theme Year - 21 November 2007 - 20 November 2008
Water Governance: Challenging the Consensus
Event series - 18 December 2004 - 21 October 2005
Water and the Poor: Visions and Actions for 2025
Event series - 01 March - 01 June 2000