Ecosystem Services Approach and Nature's Contributions to People (NCP) Help Achieve SDG6

Volume PrefaceAccess to clean water and sanitation determines the health status of individualsand society. The right to clean water and sanitation is a fundamental humanright. Consistent with this, SDG6 aims to achieve universal and equitableaccess to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030. There are someworrying statistics, which attest the importance of SDG. For instance,• Around 892 million people in the world have no access to sanitation.• Approximately 1.1 billion people currently have no access to cleandrinking water.• Nearly 1,000 children die every day from diarrheal diseases caused bycontaminated water.• Around 11% of the world's population has no access to an improvedwater supply.Based on these trends, SDG6 also advocates adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all, paying special attention to the needs of women andgirls and people in vulnerable situations. It also points out the need to improvewater quality by reducing pollution, ending the discharge and minimizing therelease of hazardous chemicals and substances by 2030, halving the proportionof untreated wastewater, and significantly increasing recycling and safe reuseglobally.Apart from matters related to water quality and sanitation, SDG6 alsospecifies the need to substantially increase water-use efficiency in all sectors,and ensure sustainable abstraction and supply of freshwater to address waterscarcity and significantly reduce the number of people suffering from waterscarcity.The basis of SDG6 is the need to treat water with the respect it deserves, andtreat water resources with the care needed, so that it is available in the amountsnecessary to ensure human well-being and support economic activities such asagriculture.The implementation of SDG6 requires that a number of pre-conditions aremet. The first one is the need to ensure governments regard and treat cleanwater as a priority. This is very important since the health of populationsdepends on the access to, and the quality of, drinking water. Unfortunately,in many cases, this important element is overlooked, with negative consequences to public health and to the economy. Second, in order to support thedeveloping countries which are unable to upgrade their water treatmentviisystems, it is important to scale up international cooperation and capacitybuilding to support developing countries. This is especially needed for projectsand programs on water and sanitation activities, including water collection andstorage, desalination, efficient water use, wastewater treatment, and recyclingand reuse technologies. Third, it is also important to support and strengthen theparticipation of local communities in improving water management andsanitation.With this volume, we attempt to emphasize and also showcase the advantages of implementing SDG6, and describe some of the ways via which it isbeing pursued. We hope that the chapters in this volume will provide a timelysupport towards the implementation of SDG6 and help to foster the ongoingglobal efforts towards improving the quality of water and sanitation