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According to recent research published in Science on August 15, more than 4.4 billion of the approximately 8.2 billion people living on Earth lack access to safely managed drinking water. This estimate, derived from computer simulations analyzing data from low- and middle-income countries, significantly exceeds the World Health Organization’s previous figures, suggesting that the true scale of the issue may be vastly underestimated.
Environmental microbiologist Esther Greenwood from Eawag, an aquatic research institute in Dübendorf, Switzerland, emphasizes, “The number of people whose basic human right to safe drinking water is not being met may therefore be significantly underestimated.”
One of the primary challenges in accurately assessing access to safe drinking water lies in the difficulty of gathering reliable data, particularly in areas with limited technological infrastructure. This data gap complicates international initiatives aimed at improving access to clean water. Greenwood and her team are working to address this issue.
Utilizing a sophisticated computer simulation that merges environmental data with survey responses from nearly 65,000 households worldwide, Greenwood and her colleagues produced maps for 135 countries, illustrating regions that likely had access to safely managed drinking water services in 2020. By comparing these maps with population data from UNICEF, the researchers estimated the number of individuals without access to clean drinking water.
The findings indicate that sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and East Asia are the regions with the lowest levels of clean water access. The most prevalent barriers to safe drinking water include bacterial and chemical contamination, as well as inadequate infrastructure. Notably, approximately 650 million people in sub-Saharan Africa lack drinking water services in or near their homes.
Although high-income countries were excluded from this analysis, the researchers acknowledge that certain populations within these nations may also face inadequate access to safe drinking water.
Gregory Pierce, a water solutions researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, notes that while this new estimate may not supersede the official counts— which rely on government-provided data rather than surveys and simulations— it highlights the urgent need for increased investment in research and initiatives to enhance clean water accessibility. “We’ve been investing in them for quite some time as a global community, but we’ve never actually stepped up the order of magnitude,” Pierce states. “Hopefully, this will lead to the necessary actions to close the gap.”
