Access to safe and affordable drinking water and sanitation facilities is recognized by the United Nations (UN) as a basic human right. Yet, currently, about 2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water and another 3 billion do not have access to handwashing facilities at home. The WASH sector is a field within international development where various stakeholders are making efforts to analyze and improve access to safe water, sanitation, and basic levels of hygiene.
Taking into consideration the importance of this sector in terms of wellbeing and the related challenges in achieving Sustainable Goal #6, DevelopmentAid and Akvo will host a thematic webinar to discuss how data-centric solutions can improve development efforts that implement WASH programs.
WASH and Sustainable Development
WASH is a term used for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene. It is the field within international development that is concerned with analyzing and improving access to safe water, sanitation facilities, and basic levels of hygiene. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that globally 829,000 people die every year due to diarrheal diseases – a direct consequence of the lack of proper sanitation. In this context, ensuring safe and sufficient WASH services and facilities for everyone is critical to reduce the high levels of such preventable deaths. The importance of ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation is also voiced and cemented by the UN as Sustainable Goal #6 – Clean Water and Sanitation. Achieving this goal and the related targets plays a fundamental role in public health and the future of sustainable development.
Fig.1. SDG 6 “Clean Water and Sanitation” targets
WASH statistics
- Nearly 2 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water today
- Another 3 billion people do not have access to handwashing facilities at home
- About half of the schools worldwide do not have adequate sanitation facilities while 40% of health care centers lack appropriate hand hygiene at points of care
- The global share of Official Development Assistance directed towards the water and sanitation-related projects amounted to US$9.3 billion in 2019
- UN-Water estimates that achieving universal access to adequate sanitation by 2030 will require a four-fold increase in the current rates of progress.
Data-centric approach
In many situations, WASH programs are developed and implemented without capturing and analyzing the necessary data. This greatly diminishes their impact and efficiency. Despite the rapid spread of technology and sensor-enabled monitoring, data-based decision-making remains rarely established among officials operating in the WASH sector. Akvo, a nonprofit software development foundation, is working on changing this deficiency by bringing data and digitalization to the forefront of the development sector.
Invitation to a Webinar
DevelopmentAid, in collaboration with the Akvo Foundation, invites you to attend the webinar on “How to improve development efforts implementing WASH programs” which will take place on 24 February 2022 at 4 pm (Brussels) / 10 am (Washington DC).
Speaker: Emeline Béréziat, WASH lead, Akvo Foundation
Emeline Béréziat is the WASH lead at Akvo, based in Amsterdam. She has been working for Akvo since August 2013 and started and developed Akvo operations in West Africa. In her work, she draws on her experience in the water sector as well as her experience in managing international programs. She graduated from the National School of Water and Environmental Engineering in Strasbourg, France, and from UNESCO-IHE in the Netherlands where she completed a Master’s Degree in water management. Before joining Akvo, Emeline held the position of research assistant at UNESCO-IHE and worked in Senegal, Ghana, and Tanzania. She was also the Deputy Director of a WASH program funded by USAID and managed by Florida International University.
Host: Ion Ilasco, External Relations & Events at DevelopmentAid
During the webinar, attendees will learn how data and technology are being applied to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 in the WASH sector, how to build country-wide water quality monitoring systems and how to predict water point status using machine learning.
