Progress on sanitation and drinking water: 2015 update and MDG assessment  

In 2000 the Member States of the United Nations signed the Millennium Declaration, which later gave rise to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Goal 7, to ensure environmental sustainability, included a target that challenged the global community to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP), which began monitoring the sector in 1990, has provided regular estimates of progress towards the MDG targets, tracking changes over the 25 years to 2015.
The report goes on to examine trends over the MDG period by region and by level of service. It pays particular attention
to the numbers of people who have gained the highest level of service in drinking water supply – piped water on premises – and those with no service at all, who use surface water for drinking and practice open defecation. In order to understand the nature of progress, it is important to look carefully at the way improvements in water and sanitation have benefited different socioeconomic groups. This report sheds light on equality gapsbetween urban and rural dwellers, and between the richest and poorest segments of the population. It presents several new ways to visualize progress on extending service to the poor, designed to reveal the nature of inequalities and give the reader insight into the great challenge that still exists in ensuring that progress reaches everyone.