Sanitation: An Introduction to This Year’s Global Topic

Sanitation and clean water access are recognized as human rights by the United Nations, but access to well-managed sanitation systems is a global challenge. Sanitation refers to having clean water available for drinking and cleaning, and having a system in place for handling human waste. While people have struggled to have proper sanitation throughout history, it is increasingly difficult with a growing population. Ancient civilizations buried their waste away from living environments and over time, improvements in sanitation have progressed from latrines, to toilets, to fully managed sanitation systems. Even with improvements, billions of people lack access to well-managed sanitation systems and many people live without private toilets or the resources for sanitary handwashing.

Improved access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene could save 1.4 million lives a year. The majority of these deaths are happening in low and middle income countries but there are challenges with sanitation in higher income countries too. The challenges include lack of access to basic sanitation, inadequate or poorly managed sanitation systems, and contaminated water. Open defecation is still a problem in the present day but it has decreased significantly since 2000. Sanitation infrastructure cannot keep up with the rapid growth of cities but even though there are many sanitation challenges in urban areas, 66 percent of people without access to basic sanitation live in rural areas. Poor sanitation has an impact on human wellbeing and is a public health concern. Lack of access to sanitation is costly and can limit a country’s economic growth while contributing to multidimensional poverty.

Global access and the sustainable management of sanitation and water is Goal 6 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Even with the global focus on sanitation, none of the targets for SDG 6 are on track to be met by the 2030 deadline. And some targets are especially behind – to reach the goal of ‘safely managed sanitation systems worldwide’ by 2030, current progress would need to quadruple. New construction of sanitation facilities is needed for more than 800 million people to have access to adequate sanitation systems. And many areas will need improvements to make their current sanitation infrastructure resilient to a changing climate.

World Toilet Day helps raise awareness about sanitation access worldwide. While making sure all people have access to basic sanitation would be a great step in the right direction, more will need to be done to reach and maintain SDG 6’s targets in the future.

Learn more about Sanitation by reading the full topic overview.