World Water Day: These innovators are improving access to clean water

World Water Day is March 22nd:

• Water is an increasingly stressed resource.

• Initiatives like World Water Day aim to accelerate action on achieving the UN’s sustainability goal relating to water.

• Technological innovations are helping make progress on clean water security.

• Here we detail five areas - from cleaning up the wastewater sector to seawater desalination - that are benefitting from these new technologies.

For a planet nearly three-quarters covered in water, it is incredible how much we are struggling with access to clean water: 771 million people worldwide don’t have access to clean water close to their homes. And poor sanitation and dirty water continue to kill millions of people every year.

Our current progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 - clean water and sanitation for all - is significantly off track. And it is putting sustainable development goals more broadly at risk - because this lack of access to safe water is considered one of the biggest risks to societies globally.

World Water Day: to accelerate change, we need more action

World Water Day and the UN Water Conference, which take place in March each year, aim to accelerate action on water for the health of people and the planet. Research suggests governments need to work on average four times faster to meet SDG6 on time, but achieving this aim will rely on partnerships across the public, private and NGO space.

One such example is the 2030 Water Resources Group, a body on which the World Economic Forum has partnered with the World Bank and others. It aims to support and enable innovative solutions that support socio-economic development in all sectors connected to water.

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