Progress on drinking water and sanitation: special focus on sanitation

This report details global progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for drinking water and sanitation, and what these trends suggest for the remainder of the Water for Life Decade of 2005-2015. In recognition of the 2008 International Year of Sanitation, this document reviews the current status of sanitation and provides an assessment of progress towards the sanitation target included in the MDGs. The report also introduces a separate assessment of global, regional and country progress using a 4-step ‘sanitation ladder’: a new way of analysing sanitation practices. The report highlights that the world is not on track to meet the MDG sanitation target. Other key points include that although the world’s population was almost equally divided between urban and rural dwellers in 2006, more than 7 out of 10 people without improved sanitation were rural inhabitants. Only 62 percent of the world’s population has access to improved sanitation, and 18 percent of the world’s population practises indiscriminate or open defecation.