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The World’s Water Access in One Visualization

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Water Access Infographic

The World’s Water Access in One Visualization

View the high resolution version of today’s graphic by clicking here.

Water is the world’s most vital resource. Beyond its basic functions of sustaining life, it’s also a precious commodity – one that billions of people in the world have trouble accessing.

Today’s infographic is from Raconteur, and it puts the global issue of water access into staggering perspective. It’s a two-fold problem: safe drinking water is hard to come by, while basic access to sanitation is less common than you’d expect.

Diving into Drinking Water

It’s easy to take water for granted when it comes out of every tap in developed economies, but the stark reality is that 2.1 billion people worldwide can’t get safe water this way.

Many people in the world spend hours waiting in long lines, often multiple times a day, for community-shared water, or, they have to travel to distant sources just to collect it.

World regions are categorized according to five classifications for drinking water access.

drinking water classifications

Here’s a breakdown of how each region fares.

RegionSafely ManagedBasicLimitedUnimprovedSurface Water
North America99%--1%-
Western Europe96%3%-1%-
Eastern Europe and Central Asia84%11%2%2%1%
Middle East and North Africa77%16%4%2%1%
Latin America and Caribbean65%31%1%2%1%
Eastern and Southern Africa26%28%18%16%12%
West and Central Africa23%40%10%20%7%
East Asia and Pacific-94%1%4%1%
South Asia-88%4%7%1%

The water crisis in Flint, Michigan is a dire exception to the safely managed water rule in North America. After a change in river source in 2014, insufficient water treatment resulted in lead from pipes leaching into the drinking water, affecting over 100,000 residents.

The Struggle of Sanitation

managed sanitation classifications

The invention of the toilet in 1875 is credited with saving one billion lives to date. Yet, poor water hygiene and its associated diseases claim the lives of roughly one million people annually.

This is because roughly 4.5 billion people still don’t have access to a toilet, with the problem being particularly acute on the African continent. More than half of the population in Eritrea (76%), Niger (71%), Chad (68%) and South Sudan (61%), for example, do not have any access to even basic sanitation.

Every Drop of Water Counts

According to the World Economic Forum, water has been a top-five global risk for the past seven years.

From an economic perspective, it’s easy to see why:

  • An estimated $260 billion is lost globally each year from the lack of basic water and sanitation.
  • Almost $18.5 billion in benefits can come from universal access to basic water and sanitation.

Securing water access has profound consequences. For every $1 invested in water and sanitation, there’s a $4 return from lower health costs, higher productivity, and fewer preventable deaths.

Fortunately, progress is being made on the global scale. Between 2001 and 2015, there’s been a 9% improvement in safe drinking water, while safely managed sanitation has risen by 10%.

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Environment

How Carbon Dioxide Removal is Critical to a Net-Zero Future

Here’s how carbon dioxide removal methods could help us meet net-zero targets and and stabilize the climate.

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Teaser image for a post on the importance of carbon dioxide removal in the push for a net-zero future.

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The following content is sponsored by Carbon Streaming

How Carbon Dioxide Removal is Critical to a Net-Zero Future

Meeting the Paris Agreement temperature goals and avoiding the worst consequences of a warming world requires first and foremost emission reductions, but also the ongoing direct removal of CO2 from the atmosphere.

We’ve partnered with Carbon Streaming to take a deep look at carbon dioxide removal methods, and the role that they could play in a net-zero future. 

What is Carbon Dioxide Removal?

Carbon Dioxide Removal, or CDR, is the direct removal of CO2 from the atmosphere and its durable storage in geological, terrestrial, or ocean reservoirs, or in products. 

And according to the UN Environment Programme, all least-cost pathways to net zero that are consistent with the Paris Agreement have some role for CDR. In a 1.5°C scenario, in addition to emissions reductions, CDR will need to pull an estimated 3.8 GtCO2e p.a. out of the atmosphere by 2035 and 9.2 GtCO2e p.a. by 2050.

The ‘net’ in net zero is an important quantifier here, because there will be some sectors that can’t decarbonize, especially in the near term. This includes things like shipping and concrete production, where there are limited commercially viable alternatives to fossil fuels.

Not All CDR is Created Equal

There are a whole host of proposed ways for removing CO2 from the atmosphere at scale, which can be divided into land-based and novel methods, and each with their own pros and cons. 

Land-based methods, like afforestation and reforestation and soil carbon sequestration, tend to be the cheapest options, but don’t tend to store the carbon for very long—just decades to centuries. 

In fact, afforestation and reforestation—basically planting lots of trees—is already being done around the world and in 2020, was responsible for removing around 2 GtCO2e. And while it is tempting to think that we can plant our way out of climate change, think that the U.S. would need to plant a forest the size of New Mexico every year to cancel out their emissions.

On the other hand, novel methods like enhanced weathering and direct air carbon capture and storage, because they store carbon in minerals and geological reservoirs, can keep carbon sequestered for tens of thousand years or longer. The trade off is that these methods can be very expensive—between $100-500 and north of $800 per metric ton

CDR Has a Critical Role to Play

In the end, there is no silver bullet, and given that 2023 was the hottest year on record—1.45°C above pre-industrial levels—it’s likely that many different CDR methods will end up playing a part, depending on local circumstances. 

And not just in the drive to net zero, but also in the years after 2050, as we begin to stabilize global average temperatures and gradually return them to pre-industrial norms. 

Carbon Streaming uses carbon credit streams to finance CDR projects, such as reforestation and biochar, to accelerate a net-zero future.

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Learn more about Carbon Streaming’s CDR projects.

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