The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Wendy Morton)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) for securing this important debate just four days before World Water Day on 22 March. I am grateful to Members across the House who have raised a number of specific points, which I will address, and who have shared many experiences and examples of the importance of water both domestically and globally.
The theme of this year’s World Water Day is “valuing water”. What does that mean? The value of water is far more than its price. Access to safe water, sanitation and good hygiene is critical for people’s health. In much of the world, diarrhoea is a killer, responsible for the deaths of 1,200 young children a day. Almost 60% of those deaths are caused by inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene.
We have committed to help end preventable deaths, and improving water supply, sanitation and hygiene is one of the most effective ways we can do that. However, as Members have rightly reminded us, nearly 800 million people still lack access to basic water supplies, 2 million live without basic sanitation services, and 3 billion do not have any hand-washing facilities at home. That last statistic should ring loud. We are dealing with the worst pandemic in a century, and 40% of the global population are unable to wash their hands at home—something that we take for granted.
Beyond the household, one in four healthcare facilities has no water supply, rising to 50% in the world’s least developed countries. Health facilities should be a source of care, not of infection. We want universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene by 2030, but at the current rate of progress we are not going to achieve that before the end of the century.
The value of water extends well beyond its direct connection with health. Water allows children—especially girls—to attend school and learn there. According to UNICEF, one in three girls lacks basic water supplies. Even more lack facilities for menstrual hygiene, which is a massive barrier for adolescent girls. Access to water for household use and public services is fundamental for human health and development, but it only accounts for 11% of all the fresh water we use. Agriculture and industry use the rest, and demand is fast outpacing supply. Climate change is making the situation worse, as we have heard this afternoon. In many parts of the world, prolonged drought and severe flooding are becoming more common, which have particularly high human impacts in developing countries. Poor people are experiencing climate change through water.
The UK Government take the issue of water and sanitation very seriously, as a development concern and as part of our approach to dealing with covid-19. Members have raised the importance of hand washing. Recognising that hand hygiene is a critical element to tackle the virus, in March last year we forged a unique partnership with Unilever: the Hygiene and Behaviour Change Coalition. It is a brilliant example of what we can achieve through partnership, with the private sector, the public sector, civil society and research institutions all working together. We provided £50 million of funding, which Unilever matched in hygiene products and expertise in promoting behaviour change.[Official Report, 23 March 2021, Vol. 691, c. 4MC.]
The programme has been active in 37 low and middle-income countries, from Brazil to Kiribati and Syria to South Africa. Action on the ground is by an amazing team of 18 NGOs, UNICEF, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Unilever has donated tens of millions of bars of soap and other hygiene products, alongside its valuable advice and campaign materials. This ambitious programme has an equally ambitious target, which is to reach 1 billion people with essential advice on hand hygiene, and we are almost there.
More broadly, I am pleased to report that we have exceeded our target of 60 million more people with safe water or sanitation over the last five years. Those receiving our support are among the world’s poorest and in fragile or conflict-affected areas.
Reliability and sustainability are important concerns, too. We are assessing the sustainability of our earlier work and that review will inform a shift in our emphasis. We will move from supporting household or community systems to supporting Governments to establish or strengthen services. British innovation will drive services from e-payment and smart maintenance systems to safe reuse and recycling. That will maximise the impact of UK aid and, at the same time, demonstrate what the UK has to offer in this area. It will also help to attract domestic and private resources, which are vital to meet our ambition of universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene by 2030.
That shift will be reinforced by national leadership on water, sanitation and hygiene, with sound policies and plans that are backed up by good evidence. We will do that through several channels: the Sanitation and Water for All partnership, which includes more than 70 national Governments, our support to the World Health Organisation for evidence-based guidance, and our support to the UNICEF-WHO joint monitoring programme, which is tracking progress against the sanitation and water global goal. That work reinforces our wider objectives of safeguarding water resources.
With UK support, water insecurity is an increasingly hot topic for Governments in the run-up to COP26 later this year in Glasgow. The new Adaptation Action Coalition has identified water as one of the three priority themes to address with UK support. We know that the challenges are enormous, but I am confident that we can and will use our insight, experience and resources to good effect. We will work with like-minded partners and deliver the impact that is urgently needed.