20世纪90年代，获得经改进饮水的人数增加了9亿人（城市地区有5.35亿人，农村地区有3.65亿人），把人口增长计算在内，从1990年占全球人口的78％上升到2000年的82％。非洲从57％增加到62％，亚洲从76％增加到81％，拉丁美洲和加勒比从82％增加到85％。这在所有区域都是一个重大进展，但大部分都低于到2015年实现《千年宣言》和《约翰内斯堡执行计划》目标所需的比例。在西欧和北美，几乎百分之百的人口都获得经改进的饮水供应。在东欧和前苏联，相当多的人，尤其是农村地区，缺少饮水；不过，数字和趋势的测量不大准确。
20世纪90年代，南亚获得饮水供应的成果最大，从人口的72％增加到85％，主要是印度、尼泊尔、巴基斯坦和斯里兰卡进步较大。因此南亚正在逐步实现2015年目标。获得饮水比例最低的是撒南非洲和大洋洲，两者的比例分别是58％和48％。撒南非洲面临的挑战更加复杂，因为出现大量流离失所者和难民，一些国家陷于冲突或正在重建，以及艾滋病毒/艾滋病传染。
在所有发展中区域，城市人口和农村人口获得改进饮水的情况差别很大。虽然1990年代农村地区比城市地区改进更大——农村地区获得饮水比例增加7％，而城市地区则为1％——但农村地区起点较低，饮用水供应情况仍然很差。2000年，在缺少饮水的人口中，五分之四以上居住在农村地区。撒南非洲的城乡差别最大，城市人口有83％获得饮水，农村只有45％。在东亚以及拉丁美洲和加勒比，城乡差别几乎是30％。改善农村家庭饮水情况费用比改善城市家庭饮水情况普遍较低，因为在农村只需开挖一口井眼或水井，而在城市则要安装家庭水龙头或公用水龙头，并连接到城市供水系统，但还是存在城乡差别。在发展中国家，开挖一口井眼或水井的通常费用是人均大约20～50美元，而城市的家庭水龙头则是100～140美元，公共水龙头是30～60美元。
进展情况和限制因素：区域概况
非洲：撒南非洲获得改进饮水的比例低于其他区域。缺少进展的主要原因是水资源管理能力不足，而不是缺少淡水。非洲五岁以下儿童死亡率高于其他区域，20世纪90年代下降速度也慢于其他区域，部分原因是饮水受到污染和卫生条件较差。刚果民主共和国拥有非洲大陆最大的水文潜力，但获得改进饮水的人数却有下降。与此相反，1990年代，坦桑尼亚联合共和国获得饮水人口比例则增加30％。
亚洲：亚洲部分地区仍很难获得安全饮水，但在1990年代，若干国家，主要是南亚各国，扩大安全饮水范围取得重大进展。其他国家，包括不丹、东帝汶、柬埔寨和蒙古，需要特别重视这个问题，才能逐步实现目标。若干国家报告，他们设有监测水质的综合方案，这些国家包括中国、印度、日本和新加坡。
西亚：西亚扩大供水网络工作取得进展，但还很难让所有人都获得安全饮水和卫生，改进废水处理，尤其是在农村地区。在黎巴嫩、约旦和沙特阿拉伯，百分之百的城市人口获得饮水供应，而在也门和阿曼等其他国家，在实现目标方面还没有取得重大进展。
拉丁美洲和加勒比：获得安全饮水和卫生的人口比例相对较高，安全饮水为80％，卫生为59％。不过，所有国家都报告指出，农村和城市之间的服务有很大差别。2000年，94％的城市人口获得经改进的供水，但农村人口的比例只有1/3。
2000年，发展中国家报告获得改进水源的城市人口比例为92％。联合监测方案的定义是：“改进”是指住家管道联系、公共水管、水眼、受保护的水井、受保护的泉水或收集的雨水。没有包括在内的是未得到保护的水井和泉水、商家提供的饮水和水车供水。如果同大致占世界城市人口1/3的约9.24亿人生活在贫民区这一情况相比较，获得饮水的人口比例就很突出。这表明，很高比例的贫民区居民确实获得改进水源。许多人使用水管或水眼，即便从商家或水车买水的住家也可能间接从改进来源获得饮水。
关于饮用水供应趋势的现有数据限于“改进”水源，但安全饮水还取决于水源的水质。人的废物或动物废物、工业废物、或砷这样的自然毒素，可污染饮用水，即便其来自改进过的来源。总之，没有足够的数据来确定获得安全饮水的人数或趋势。发展中国家许多城市报告，城市饮水常常不符合国家微生物、化学、物理或外观质量标准。在非洲，饮水水质测量表明，约36％违反国家标准；亚洲约为22％；拉丁美洲和加勒比大约为18％。
获得饮水的定义并没有充分概括服务的质量。在许多国家，现有的供水系统不能充分维持供水服务。非洲、拉丁美洲和加勒比三分之一以上以及亚洲半数以上的城市供水时断时续。许多城市饮水系统也不处理水：非洲、亚洲、拉丁美洲和加勒比地区，五个系统中有一个系统，大洋洲小岛屿中五个系统中有两个系统不处理水。
在发达国家和发展中国家，城市供水系统中水的损失和漏水情况仍很严重去向不明的饮水平均在非洲大城市中约占39％，在亚洲大城市中占35％～42％,在拉丁美洲大城市中占40％。在一些缺水城市，去向不明的饮水数字甚至更高：20世纪90年代，阿尔及尔为51％，安曼为52％。供水系统运作不良或保养拖后，预算吃紧，缺少收回成本机制，管理薄弱，体制框架效率低下，这些都是供水系统运作不良的主要原因。但仍存在着很大的潜力，可以通过改进保养，收回成本改进供资，改进设施的治理和管理，及提高公共意识，减少损失。
农村供水系统的状况常常很差。例如，最近在尼日尔进行的调查发现，35％的手泵失灵，32％的小水管系统状况不佳；但同非洲许多国家一样，这些在国家统计中仍计作“安全”供水点。这些系统年久失修，得不到零部件。在巴基斯坦的旁遮普省，约13％的饮水供应系统运转不良，保养不善，取用过度造成水质恶化，以及社会冲突，因此不能运作。塔吉克斯坦几乎三分之一的供水系统完全失灵。捐助国协调不良，也造成服务水平下降。在赞比亚，调查结果发现，全国各地有40多种不同类别的手动水泵，因此零部件费用很高，运转和保养不良，有些系统最终只得放弃。
儿童基金会按照目前城市和农村人口获得饮水比例，利用预测人口数字，估计在2000至2015年之间，要再有16亿人需要获得改进饮水，才能实现国际商定的目标；这16亿人中有60％以上生活在城市地区。
在每个区域，一些国家在实现国际商定目标方面进展突出，其中撒南非洲有中非共和国、刚果、加纳、肯尼亚、南非和坦桑尼亚联合共和国；南亚有印度、尼泊尔和巴基斯坦；东南亚有越南；北非有摩洛哥和突尼斯。这些国家之所以取得进展是因为增加了国内外的供资，采取了通过收回成本机制有效调集资源的战略，建立综合体制框架以及制订有效的法律和规章。
影响进展的因素
全球各地的范例提供了最佳实践，可以通过调整加以应用推广，以推动执行工作的进展，迎接挑战，克服障碍。例如，1980～2000年间，印度获得改进饮水的人数几乎增加两倍。获得卫生服务方面的进展虽然不大突出，但也稳步前进，其主要原因是技术进展，再加上重视质量管理、设备的运作和保养以及推广良好的卫生习惯。坚定的政治承诺促成了预算资源分配额的增加；非政府组织、政府和社区间建立新型伙伴关系是推动进展的关键因素。在埃塞俄比亚，1990～2000年间，改进饮水供应的比例只增加2％，达到24％；因基础设施保养不良，向1700万人提供饮水的6000多套农村供水系统有大约30％失灵。影响供水服务的其他因素有项目执行费用很高，供水部门投资很少。在智利，几乎所有住家都接通了供水管道和下水系统，污水处理也取得进展。供水服务质量普遍很高，供水公司资金充裕，专用补贴有助于确保低收入群体获得供水。
人们常常提到的妨碍实现国际商定目标的障碍有：供资不足，成本回收政策不完善，体制结构松散，水务部门管理经济机制不妥，因缺少人的住区规划而造成环境和生态问题，公共意识有限等。非洲国家更因水的开发分配成本较高，技术体制能力较弱而受到影响。
因开发新的水资源的财政费用和环境成本增加，通过减少漏水和损失现象来增加有效供水，一般更具备成本效益。改善供水的另一种有效方法是收集雨水。人们担心雨水的水质，因而忽略了这一饮水来源。现在中国、泰国、印度和斯里兰卡等亚洲许多发展中国家逐渐流行收集雨水的做法，因为雨水为缺水问题提供了一种持久解决办法。缺水的西亚国家和小岛屿发展中国家利用海水脱盐的做法来提供饮水或其它高值水，但因成本很高，限制了在穷国的应用或作为灌溉等价值较低用途的用水。
原文如下：
Access to safe drinking water
During the 1990s, the number of people with access to improved drinkingwater supply increased by 900 million (535 million in urban areas and 365 million in rural areas), from 78 per cent of the global population in 1990 to 82 per cent in 2000, taking into account population growth. The increase was from 57 per cent to 62 per cent in Africa, 76 per cent to 81 per cent in Asia, and 82 per cent to 85 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean. While that represents significant progress in all of those regions, the rate of increase is in most cases well below the rate required to meet the Millennium Declaration and 2015 target of the Johannesburg Plan, Asia being the exception. In Western Europe and North America, virtually 100 per cent of the population has improved drinking-water supplies. In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, a significant number of people, particularly in rural areas, do not have access, but the numbers and trends have not been accurately measured.
The greatest gains in access to drinking water in the 1990s were registered in South Asia, from 72 per cent to 85 per cent of the population, particularly due to major progress in India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. South Asia is therefore on track to meet the 2015 target. The lowest access rates remain in sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania, where only 58 per cent and 48 per cent of the population, respectively, have access. The challenge in sub-Saharan Africa is more complex owing to large displaced and refugee populations, countries in conflict or in reconstruction, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
In all developing regions, there are wide disparities in access to improved drinking water between urban and rural populations. Although rural areas saw greater improvements in the 1990s than urban areas — a 7 percentage-point increase in access compared with 1 percentage point — they started from a much lower base, and rural areas remain poorly served in drinking-water supply. In 2000, more than four out of five people without access to improved drinking water lived in rural areas. Urban-rural disparities are greatest in sub-Saharan Africa, where only 45 per cent of the rural population has access as opposed to 83 per cent of the urban population. In East Asia and in Latin America and the Caribbean, the urban-rural disparity is almost 30 percentage points. Those disparities exist despite the fact that it is generally less expensive to provide rural households with improved access — usually by a borehole or well — than it is to provide urban households, usually with a household piped connection or public standpipe connected to the municipal water supply. The typical cost of a borehole or well in developing countries is about $20- $50 per person served, compared with $100-$140 for a piped household connection, and $30-$60 for a standpipe.
Progress and constraints: regional snapshots
Africa: Sub-Saharan Africa has a lower rate of access to improved drinking water than other regions. The lack of progress is primarily due to inadequate water management capacities, not scarcity of freshwater. Partly as a result of contaminated drinking water and poor sanitation, the under-5 child mortality rate in Africa is higher and has declined less over the 1990s than in any other region. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, home to the largest hydrological potential on the continent, reported a decline in the number of people with access to improved drinking water. In contrast, the United Republic of Tanzania achieved a 30 percentage-point increase in water access over the 1990s.
Asia: Access to safe drinking water is still inadequate in parts of Asia, but several countries, notably in South Asia, have made significant progress in extending coverage during the 1990s. Others — including Bhutan, Timor-Leste, Cambodia, and Mongolia — need special attention to make progress towards the targets. A number of countries report comprehensive monitoring programmes for water quality, including China, India, Japan and Singapore.
West Asia: Progress has been made in the region in expanding water distribution networks, but there are still difficulties in providing access for all to safe water and sanitation and improving wastewater
management, particularly in rural areas. In Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, 100 per cent of the urban population has access to drinking-water supply, while other countries, such as Yemen and Oman, have not been making sufficient progress to meet the target.
Latin America and the Caribbean: In terms of safe drinking water and sanitation, access is relatively high — 80 per cent for safe drinking water and 59 per cent for sanitation. However, all countries report great disparities in services between rural and urban areas. In 2000, 94 per cent of the urban population had access to improved water services, but only two thirds of the rural population.
Source: National Reports submitted to the Commission on Sustainable Development in 2002.
The proportion of the urban population in developing countries reported to have access to an improved water source was 92 per cent in 2000. By the Joint Monitoring Programme definition, “improved” refers to a household connection, public standpipe, borehole, protected dug well, protected spring, or rainwater collection. Excluded are unprotected wells and springs, vendor-provided water, and tanker truck water. The percentage seems impressive when set against the estimated 924 million people living in slums (see the companion Human Settlements Report), roughly one third of the world’s urban population in 2000. It suggests that a high proportion of slum dwellers do have access to an improved water source. Many utilize standpipes or boreholes, and even those who buy water from vendors or tanker trucks may indirectly obtain it from an improved source.
While the data available for trends in drinking-water supply are for “improved” sources, safe drinking water also depends on the quality of the water at source. Contamination of water sources by human or animal waste, industrial waste, or natural toxic elements, such as arsenic, can render water unsafe for drinking even though it comes from an improved source. In general, there is not enough data to determine the levels or trends in access to water of a quality safe for drinking. Many cities in developing countries report that municipal drinking water often does not meet national standards for microbiological, chemical, physical or aesthetic quality. In Africa, about 36 per cent of drinking-water quality tests show violation of national standards, in Asia about 22 per cent, and in Latin America and the Caribbean about 18 per cent
The definition of access does not adequately capture the quality of service. In many countries, service delivery by existing water supply systems is inadequately maintained. Over one third of the urban water supplies in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and more than half of those in Asia, operate intermittently. Also, many urban drinking-water systems do not treat water: one in five systems in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean, and two in five systems in the small islands of Oceania.
Water losses and leakages in urban water supply systems remain high in both developed and developing countries. Average unaccounted-for-water is around 39 per cent for large cities in Africa, 35-42 per cent for large cities in Asia, and 40 per cent for large cities in Latin America.4 Figures for unaccounted-for-water in some water-stressed cities are even higher: 51 per cent in Algiers and 52 per cent in Amman in the 1990s.5 Poor operation or deferred maintenance of the systems, budgetary constraints, lack of cost-recovery mechanisms, weak governance, and deficient institutional frameworks remain leading causes for the poor performance of water supply systems. Considerable potential exists to reduce those losses through improved maintenance, better financing through cost-recovery, improved governance and management of utilities, and public awareness raising.
The condition of rural water systems is also often poor. A recent survey in rural Niger, for example, indicates that 35 per cent of the hand pumps are nonfunctional and 32 per cent of the small piped systems are in poor condition, yet they are still included in national statistics as “safe” water points — as they are for many other African countries.6 Those systems suffer from deferred repairs and maintenance and non-availability of spare parts. In the Punjab Province of Pakistan, some 13 per cent of the drinking-water supply schemes are non-operational owing to factors including inadequate operation and maintenance, deterioration of water quality due to over-pumping, and social conflicts. Almost one third of the water supply system of Tajikistan is completely broken down. Poor donor coordination ha contributed to degradation of service delivery. In Zambia, a survey found that there were over 40 different types of hand pumps scattered all over the country, resulting in high costs for spare parts, deficient operation and maintenance, and eventual abandonment of some of those systems. Based on current urban and rural access rates, and using projected population figures, UNICEF has estimated that between 2000 and 2015, an additional 1.6 billion people will need to gain access to improved drinking water in order to meet the internationally agreed target, over 60 per cent of them in urban areas.
In each region, some countries are exceptional in their progress towards achieving the internationally agreed targets, including the Central African Republic, Congo, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and the United Republic of Tanzania in sub-Saharan Africa; India, Nepal and Pakistan in South Asia; Viet Nam in South-East Asia; and Morocco and Tunisia in North Africa. Progress in those countries was due to increased funding from domestic and international sources, effective resource mobilization strategies through cost-recovery mechanisms, and integrated institutional frameworks, together with effective laws and regulations.
Frequently noted obstacles to the implementation of internationally agreed targets are inadequate financing, deficient cost-recovery policies, fragmented institutional structures, inadequate economic mechanisms in water sector management, environmental and ecological problems arising from lack of human settlement planning, and limited public awareness. In the case of Africa, those constraints are further compounded by higher water-development and distribution costs and weak technical and institutional capacities.
Owing to the increasing financial and environmental costs of developing new sources of water, it is generally more cost-effective to increase the effective water supply by reducing leakage and losses. Another cost-effective approach to improving water supplies is rainwater harvesting, which has been neglected as a source of drinking water partly because of water-quality concerns. It is now gaining popularity in many developing countries in Asia, including China, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka, as it provides a sustainable solution to water scarcity.9 Desalination of sea water is used to provide water for drinking or other high-value uses in some water-scarce West Asian countries and small island developing countries, but the high cost limits the application of desalination as a source of water in poor countries or for relatively low-value uses such as irrigation.
Factors influencing progress
Examples from around the globe offer some best practices that might be adapted or replicated to accelerate progress, as well as challenges and constraints that impede implementation. For example, in India, between 1980 and 2000, access to improved drinking-water supply nearly tripled.
Progress in sanitation access, though less remarkable, was steady mainly due to technological progress together with emphasis on quality control, operation and maintenance of equipment, and the promotion of good hygiene. Strong political commitment reflected in increased allocation of budgetary resources, and innovative partnerships among nongovernmental organizations, government and communities were the key factors driving progress. In Ethiopia, between 1990 and 2000, access to improved drinking-water supply increased by only 2 percentage points, to 24 per cent. In Ethiopia, of more than 6,000 rural water-supply systems serving 17 million people, some 30 per cent are not functional owing to poor maintenance of infrastructure. Other factors inhibiting water services are high project-implementation costs and low investments in the sector. In Chile, almost universal coverage has been achieved in household connections to piped water supply and sewers, and progress has been made in wastewater treatment. The service is generally of high quality, the water companies are financially sound, and targeted subsidies help to ensure access by low-income groups.
