Clean water
Reading Passage 3
You should spend 20 minutes on questions 1-12, which are based on Reading Passage 3.
The Millennium Development Goals
The MDG drinking water target has been reached. Over 2 billion people gained
access to improved water sources from 1990 to 2010, and the proportion of the
global population still using unimproved sources is estimated at only 11 per cent.
This is less than half of the 24 per cent estimated for 1990. Almost 6.1 billion
people, 89 per cent of the world's population, were using an improved water source
in 2010. The drinking water target has thus become one of the first MDG targets to
be met.
While this tremendous achievement should be applauded, a great deal of work
remains.
First, huge disparities exist. While coverage of improved water supply sources
is 90 per cent or more in Latin America and the Caribbean, Northern Africa and
large parts of Asia, it is only 61 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa. Coverage in the
developing world overall stands at 86 per cent, but it is only 63 per cent in countries
designated as 'least developed'. Similar disparities are found within countries -
between the rich and poor and between those living in rural and urban areas
Second, complete information about drinking water safety is not available for global
monitoring. Systematically testing the microbial and chemical quality of water at the
national level in all countries is prohibitively expensive and logistically complicated;
therefore, a proxy indicator for water quality was agreed upon for MDG monitoring.
This proxy measures the proportion of the population using 'improved' drinking
water sources, defined as those that, by the nature of their construction, are
protected from outside contamination. However, some of these sources may not be
adequately maintained and therefore may not actually provide 'safe' drinking water.
As a result, it is likely that the number of people using safe water supplies has been
over-estimated.
Finally, more than 780 million people remain unserved. Although the MDG drinking
water target has been met, it only calls for halving the proportion of people without
safe drinking water. More than one tenth of the global population still relied on
unimproved drinking water sources in 2010.
Assessing progress towards the MDG target alone creates an incomplete picture,
since countries that started out with low baseline coverage have had to work much
harder to halve the proportion of the population without water and sanitation.
Added to this is the challenge of rapid population growth, which can easily mean
that any gains in people served are overtaken by population growth. Moreover,
it is the poorest countries that are often characterized by a combination of low
baseline coverage and high population growth. This means that countries may be
making significant progress in the absolute number of people served, but still be
persistently 'off track'.
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Unit rLi
In response, the JMP* has developed an alternative indicator that represents the
proportion of the current population that has gained access over the period from
1995 to the most recent update, in this case 2010. It is thus the percentage of
people living in a country today who have gained access in the last 15 years.
This indicator can be used to assess a country's performance irrespective
of whether it started out with high or low baseline coverage. The indicator is
expressed as: the increase since 1995 in the number of people with access as a
proportion of the current (2010) population.
The graph shows selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have performed
above the regional average of nearly 26 per cent. Some countries have made
remarkable progress in providing large proportions of their population with access
to improved drinking water sources, and this is true even of countries that are off
track in terms of MDG progress Rwanda and Sierra Leone, for instance, both
experienced conflict during the period 1995 to 2010, but have nevertheless shown
greater progress than that suggested by the regional average. In Rwanda, more
than 30 per cent of the population have gained access to improved drinking water
sources since 1995; this represents over 3 million people. Even countries that have
not reported such good progress are noteworthy in terms of the number of people
served.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has provided improved water sources for
only about 16 per cent of its population since 1995; still, this represents more than
10 million people. It is remarkable that sub-Saharan Africa has outstripped Eastern
Asia in terms of the proportion of the current population that have gained access in
the last 15 years.
* JMP - Joint Monitoring Programme
Questions 1-6
Complete the table with information from Reading Passage 3. Write NO MORE THAN TWO
WORDS OR A NUMBER.
1990 2010
Projected percentage for 1990 11% of world's population using 1
2 %. 3 % of global population using treated water.
4 % of sub-Saharan population has access to
safe drinking water.
86% of population in 5 use improved water
sources.
63% have improved water in 6 countries.
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Clean water
Questions 7-10
Complete the flow chart with information from Reading Passage 3. Select your
answers from the list A-F.
A drainage
measurement
C unpolluted
water sources
inaccurate
F costly
Problem 1
Testing water quality 7 and difficult to organize
Solution 1
Proxy indicator
= proportion of population using 8 drinking water
Problem 2
Data does not reflect true progress
9 systems not maintained
Poor countries have low baseline and high population growth
Solution 2
Alternative 10 introduced
= increase in percentage of population with access to clean water over 15 years
Questions 11-12
Label the graph with information from Reading Passage 3. Write NO MORE THAN FOUR
WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER.
Percentage of population which has gained access to safe drinking water since 1995
11
12
Regional average
10 15 20 25 30 35
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