A multidisciplinary team of environmental scientists has created a computer simulation that shows that more than half of the world’s population has limited access to clean drinking water. The results were published in the journal Science.

Rob Hope of the University of Oxford has published a Perspective article in the same issue of the journal describing the conditions that must be met for an area or region to be classified as a safe drinking water area and describing the team’s work on this new project.

In 2020, organizations around the world estimated that about 2 billion people worldwide did not have access to clean drinking water. In this new study, researchers found evidence that the actual number is more than twice that.

As Hope notes, access to safe drinking water means that people have access to clean water whenever they need it. Safe access to water also means that water is local – people shouldn’t have to travel far to find it. And the water they drink must be free of contaminants such as bacteria or harmful chemicals.

The researchers created their simulation using environmental and survey data from nearly 65,000 households around the world. The team used the simulation to create maps for 135 countries showing where people have access to clean drinking water.

They then compared the maps with data from UNICEF to estimate the total number of people in the world who do not have access to clean drinking water. They found that number to be 4.4 billion – more than half of the current world population of 8 billion people.

As expected, the research team found that most people without access to clean drinking water live in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia. They also found that the biggest barriers to clean drinking water are the presence of contaminants and lack of infrastructure. As an example, they cited that about 650 million people in parts of Africa live in places where there is no water supply.

© 2024 Science X Network