Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Chad and Mozambique also fare badly as report on World Water Day highlights global water and sanitation crisis

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Papua New Guinea, where 60% of the population live without a safe water supply, has the poorest access to clean water in the world, according to a study released to mark World Water Day.

A report on the state of the world’s water showed Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Chad and Mozambique joining Papua New Guinea in the bottom five of a table ranking countries according to the percentage of households with access to clean water. Globally, 650 million people are living without an “improved” source of drinking water, which includes public taps, protected wells, rainwater or water piped into households.



When ranking countries by the sheer number of people living without access to safe water, India comes out worst – 75.8 million people have no access to safe water, followed by China, Nigeria and Ethiopia.

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Henry Northover, head of policy for WaterAid, the organisation behind the study, said the global water and sanitation crisis was not a problem of limited supplies.

“This is not always an issue of scarcity – by and large we are dealing with a distributional crisis. It is fixable with clear and coherent government policies, and with the focused support of international agencies,” Northover said.

The study also explored the high costs of water access, examining why the poorest communities often foot the largest bill. When there is no public access to clean water, people are forced to buy their water from street vendors, tanker trucks or other informal delivery services, all of which charge a premium.



In Papua New Guinea’s capital, Port Moresby, the average cost for 50 litres of water from a delivery service is £1.84, which accounts for half of a typical daily salary. This compares with £0.07 for 50 litres of piped water in the UK.

“There is perverse irony when it comes to water poverty,” Northover said. “Those who have the least have to pay the most for this most essential of human needs. And they pay the most not in proportion of their income, but in absolute terms.

“If you live in a slum in Nairobi, you are paying more in absolute terms for a cubic metre of water than if you were living in Manhattan.”

Efforts to make clean water more available have paid off, with 2.6 billion people gaining access since 1990. Cambodia tops the list of countries with the greatest improvement in increasing access to safe water, followed by Mali, Laos and Ethiopia.

Various interventions have been credited for this progress, including public-private partnerships on water distribution, pro-poor policies that offer low-cost tariffs to communities, and strong political will.

While the world achieved the millennium development goal of halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015, Northover said that target had set “a pretty low bar”.

“The MDG target was met, but that was largely due to progress made in China and south-east Asia, and certain definitions of water access have been tightened for the sustainable development goals, which will result in a significantly higher number of people in water poverty,” Northover said.

“We know it’s still achievable even with a stretching target, because many countries have proved it’s possible, but we need a clear, coherent strategy on behalf of governments and for water access to be a global priority.”