[BLANK_AUDIO] In this video we're going to look at some global water and sanitation statistics prepared by the joint monitoring program of the World Health Organization and UNICEF. How we conceptualize a problem often has a profound influence on the options that we envisage for addressing this problem. In the global water community, we've often thought about the problem is people being covered with water and sanitation services or not covered with water and sanitation services. Of course everybody has some kind of water service or they wouldn't be alive. So we need to distinguish between improved water and sanitation services and unimproved water and sanitation services. But the problem is not so simple as just having good services or having bad services. There's a continuum between good and bad services and where we draw the line is a bit arbitrary. This next slide shows the world at night. And shows electricity coverage in different parts of the world. You might think that if this slide doesn't tell you anything much about water coverage. But that would not be quite right. Because, if a household doesn't have electricity, it's very unlikely to have piped water services. In the past, the global community struggle to get good water and sanitation coverage statistics. The data were often self-reported by different national governments in a varying quality. And surveys were carried using different protocols and different definitions of water and sanitation services. Informal service options were often ignored, and it was often hard to get coverage statistics that could be related to the income of an individual household, so it was hard to see how coverage varied for different income groups. The joint monitoring program statistics have addressed several of these programs and really provide us a much better picture today of what's going on around the world in terms of who has improved services and who doesn't. In round numbers, about 800 million people in the world don't have improved water services. And about 2.4 billion people don't have improved sanitation services. About 1.9 billion people, without sanitation services are living in Asia today. So before I show you the coverage statistics, let's look at the definitions for improved water sources, and for improved sanitation services. For water an improved source includes piped water into a dwelling or a plot, public taps or stand posts, tube wells or bore holes, some kind of intervention where water quality is tried has been improved. For unimproved water supplies this would include unprotected wells or unprotected springs. It would include surface water, rivers or lakes or ponds, streams. But the definitions also include water vendors, who water is delivered by cart from small tankers, or in drums. Or from a tanker truck. But if you think about it, this is again kind of arbitrary. I mean piped water services, they're only available one or two hours a day. Or even for one or two hours a day, you know, for a few days a week were not really improved. Especially if they're not potable. So again this is kind of a arbitrary definition that we're going to be looking at. For improved sanitation, we include a flush or pour-flush toilet connected to a pipe sewer system as improved. Or a pour or pour flush toiled connected to a septic tank or pit latrine would be considered improved. Also, an improved ventilated pit latrine is considered improved. On the unimproved side, we include pit latrines without slabs or open pits, bucket latrines, hanging toilets, pour flush, that toilets that don't discharge to a sewer system or a septic tank. And often households in developing countries don't have any sanitation systems at all. We record this in the surveys as open defecation and, or having no facilities and, defecation just occurs in the bush or out in the field. We also include shared or public toilets among the unimproved sanitation services. So, now let's turn and look at some of the JMP global statistics. This first map shows water services, around the world for both urban and rural. And the orange colors and the yellow colors show poor coverage. What this slide shows is that many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa jump out as having poor water coverage. The countries in light blue also have large number of households with improved water supplies. In Latin America, these include Peru and Bolivia. In Asia, these light blue countries include Nepal, Cambodia, and Indonesia. But note that India and China actually have high coverage of improved water services. And these are countries with very large populations. So if we know, we want to know how many households lack improved services, we need to pay particular attention to countries with high populations such as China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Nigeria. This next map shows improved water coverage just in rural areas and this picture doesn't look as promising as when we zero in. On rural areas. Sub Saharan Africa still stands out as having poor coverage, but now we can see that there are many rural households in India, and China and Latin America that still do not have improved water supplies. This next slide shows improved water coverage just in urban areas. And the urban areas actually look considerably better than the rural areas. Cities in sub-Saharan Africa however, still have a ways to go. This next figure shows changes in improved water coverage over the 20 year period from 1990 to 2010, by region of the world. The colors show the type of water services. So on the bottom, the dark blue shows the percentage of households in the region, with piped water services on the premises. The light blue shows other types of improved water sources. The orange and brown colors shows unimproved and surface water sources respectively. The figure shows the rapid gains in coverage, in East Asia and North Africa. Sub Saharan Africa, however has made little progress in coverage, but remember these are in percentages, so a population is growing, it doesn't mean that more and more people haven't received services, it just mean in percentage terms, the numbers haven't gone up. [COUGH] Know here also that central Asia has experienced a decline in coverage following the breakup of the former Soviet Union. Now let's turn to look at the sanitation coverages globally. This first map shows both urban and rural. And this really shows a different picture than the water side. First, globally, the coverage levels for improved sanitation are a lot lower than for water. This means that there are many households that have improved water services that don't have improved sanitation services. In this map, South Asia jumps out as a sanitation hotspot. Note also that sub-Saharan Africa is a hotspot for sanitation, just like it was for improved water. This next map shows improved sanitation by rural areas only. If we look at rural coverage for improved sanitation, Latin America and Southeast Asia are added to Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia as problem areas. I'm going to look next at improved sanitation just in urban areas. Here are the hotpots for low coverage are Sub-Saharan Africa and Bolivia. But importantly urban areas in south Asia and east Asia still have a long way to go. There are millions of people in urban south Asia and east Asia that still lack adequate sanitation facilities. This next slide shows where open defecation is still occurring globally. This is the most extreme sanitation problem. And the map shows that open defecation is still widely practiced in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. This next figure shows changes and improved sanitation coverage over the 20 year period between 1990 to 2010 by region of the world. The colors show the type of sanitation services. So, on the bottom, the dark green shows the percentage of households in the region with improved sanitation. The light green shows use of shared sanitation facilities. The orange and brown color show unimproved and open defecation respectively. This figure shows that there have been rapid gains in East Asia over this period from 1990 to 2010. Other regions are making slow progress, including Sub Saharan Africa. South Asia is making progress but still has a long way to go. Just to wrap up this video you can see that water and sanitation conditions are very different in different parts of the world. They're different from rural areas to urban areas. They're different in different regions in the world. I don't want you to take this picture for granted. It's been really hard for the global community to assemble the data to show you these kinds of coverage maps. If you'd like to learn more about this process and the joint monitoring program, and how this was set up, please listen to my conversation with Clarissa Brocklehurst. One of the implications of these differences around the world in water and sanitation conditions is that we're going to need different strategies for addressing these problems. We're going to need different strategies for tackling open defecation in south Asia, from unreliable piped water supplies in cities of Latin America. In the next video, we're going to look at coverage statistics for a little different perspective, using some different data from the World Bank's Living Standards Measurement Surveys. Thanks for watching this video!
