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The purpose of this indicator is to contribute to reducing multidimensional poverty and the achievement of universal access to basic service through tracking of safe drinking water services to the general public.

Proportion of population using safely managed drinking water services is currently being measured by the proportion of population using an improved basic drinking water source which is located on premises, available when needed and free of fecal (and priority chemical) contamination. ‘Improved’ drinking water sources include: piped water into dwelling, yard or plot; public taps or standpipes; boreholes or tube wells; protected dug wells; protected springs; packaged water; delivered water and rainwater.

BWS/SIB

BWS/SIB

Biennial

Percentage (%)

MDG target 7C called for ‘sustainable access’ to ‘safe drinking water’. At the start of the MDG period, there was a complete lack of nationally representative data about drinking water safety in developing countries, and such data were not collected through household surveys or censuses. The JMP developed the concept of ‘improved’ water sources, which was used as a proxy for ‘safe water’, as such sources are likely to be protected against faecal contamination, and this metric has been used since 2000 to track progress towards the MDG target. International consultations since 2011 have established consensus on the need to build on and address the shortcomings of this indicator; specifically, to address normative criteria of the human right to water including accessibility, availability and quality.

Improved drinking water sources include the following: piped water into dwelling, yard or plot; public taps or standpipes; boreholes or tube wells; protected dug wells; protected springs; packaged water; delivered water and rainwater.

A water source is considered to be ‘located on premises’ if the point of collection is within the dwelling, yard, or plot.

‘Available when needed’: households are able to access sufficient quantities of water when needed.

‘Free from fecal and priority chemical contamination’: water complies with relevant national or local standards.

Disaggregation by place of residence (urban/rural) and socioeconomic status (wealth, affordability) is possible for all countries. Disaggregation by other stratifiers of inequality (subnational, gender, disadvantaged groups, etc.) will be made where data permit. Drinking water services will be disaggregated by service level (including no services, basic, and safely managed services) following the JMP drinking water ladder.

The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (JMP) estimates access to basic services for each country, separately in urban and rural areas, by fitting a regression line to a series of data points from household surveys and censuses. This approach was used to report on use of ‘improved water’ sources for MDG monitoring. The JMP is evaluating the use of alternative statistical estimation methods as more data become available.

This indicator can be used to measure the population using an improved basic drinking water source.

Data on availability and safety of drinking water is increasingly available through a combination of household surveys and administrative sources including regulators, but definitions have yet to be standardized. Data on fecal and chemical contamination, drawn from household surveys and regulatory databases, will not cover all countries immediately. However, sufficient data were available to make global and regional estimates of safely managed drinking water services for four out of eight SDG regions in 2017.

All the metadata shown was gathered from United Nation Statistics Division. The metadata was extracted from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/.