According to a report released by the United Nations Institute of Water, Environment, and Health, Pakistan is one of 23 countries that are “critically water insecure.”
The UN University’s Global Water Security 2023 Assessment revealed that 33 countries from three geographic regions were water secure, whereas all regions had nations that had inadequate levels of water security.
The latest global water assessment headed by United Nations water experts revealed that access to safely managed drinking water and sanitation was still a pipe dream for more than half the global population, as more than 70 percent or 5.5 billion people do not have safe water access, with Africa having the lowest levels of access, at only 15percent of the regions population.
Three out of four people currently live in water-insecure countries. More people die from a lack of safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services than water-related disasters.
Experts found that at present most of the worlds population lived in water-insecure countries including Eritrea, Sudan, Solomon Islands, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Vanuatu, Djibouti, Papua New Guinea, Haiti, Somalia, St Kitts and Nevis, Libya, Liberia, Madagascar, Micronesia, Niger, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Chad, Comoros, Yemen, and Sri Lanka.
This is a cause for major concern because water security is fundamental to development, the press statement reads.
Sweden was named the most water-secure country in the report, along with Denmark, Austria, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Norway, Finland and Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, Greece, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Latvia, Croatia, Estonia, Spain, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czechia, and Portugal.
Water-secure countries in the Asia Pacific were Cyprus, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Kuwait, Israel, and Malaysia, whereas Canada and the United States were the only countries in the Americas to make the list.
Many countries in Africa, the Asia-Pacific and the Americas with abundant freshwater resources have high rates of WASH-attributed deaths due to limited WASH access, poor water quality, and water having low economic value despite potentially high economic losses due to floods or droughts.