Clean Water and Sanitation: Ensure Availability and Sustainable Management of Water and Sanitation for All

This document analyzes global progress toward equitable water, sanitation, and hygiene, showing gains in “improved” services yet large shortfalls under stricter “safely managed” standards that require on-premises, available, and uncontaminated supplies plus complete sanitation chains and handwashing facilities. In 2015, 663 million people still used unimproved water sources, 2.4 billion lacked improved sanitation, and an estimated 946 million practiced open defecation, with rural poor in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia most affected.It explains how refined monitoring can sharply reduce reported coverage, details wide hygiene gaps, and links access to broader water-cycle challenges: quality and wastewater, scarcity and withdrawals, integrated resource management, and ecosystem protection. The report calls for better data, including satellite observations, and stronger stakeholder participation to translate global targets into national action.