HC Deb 12 November 2003 vol 413 c316W
Miss McIntosh

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what assessment his Department has made of progress towards the Millennium Development Goal to halve the proportion of people in the world without safe access to water and sanitation by 2015; and what additional funds will be made available to water and sanitation projects to reach the Millennium Development Goal. [137175]

Hilary Benn

The Global Water Supply and Sanitation Assessment 2000, produced by the World Health Organisation (WHO)/United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)) Joint Monitoring Programme, provides baseline figures on progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Among the main findings are:

  1. (a) The percentage of people served with some form of improved water supply rose from 79 per cent. in 1990 to 82 per cent. in 2000. Over the same period the proportion of the world's population with access to sanitation facilities increased from 55 per cent. to 60 per cent.;
  2. (b) At the beginning of 2000 one-sixth (1.1 billion people) of the world's population was without access to improved water supply and two fifths (2.4 billion people) lacked access to improved sanitation The majority of these people lived in Asia and Africa;
  3. (c) Although an enormous number of people gained access to services between 1990 and 2000, with approximately 816 million additional people gaining access to water supplies and 747 million people gaining access to sanitation facilities, the percentage increases appear modest because of global population growth during that time;
  4. (d) The water supply and sanitation sector will face enormous challenges over the coming decades. The assessment estimates that, to achieve the 2015 target in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean alone, an additional 2.2 billion people will need access to sanitation and 1.5 billion will need access to water supply by that date.

The Joint Monitoring Programme is continuing. DFID has provided substantial financial support and technical assistance to this initiative from the outset. The Government remains firmly committed to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDG targets for water and sanitation are central to DFI D's approach to poverty reduction and sustainable development and they remain important priorities for DFID.

We are working actively with partner country governments to support production of their own agendas for development, known as Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, and toensure that water and sanitation are adequately represented in them.

The Global Assessment 2000 can be accessed on: http://www.who.int/docstore/water sanitation health/ Globassessment/GlobalTOC.htm