'Even achieving the current SDG target will pose serious economic challenges, as expansion of wastewater treatment can be an expensive process,' Jones warns. So, while the SDG target improves water quality, it is not always enough.įinding an optimal way to manage these problems is a difficult puzzle, however.

This is especially the case for developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia,' Jones explains. 'Our simulations show that for a large part of the year, water quality in several regions would still exceed critical thresholds for human uses and ecosystem health. They applied their model to investigate how achieving the SDG target to halve the proportion of untreated wastewater entering the environment in 2030 would benefit global river water quality. The authors extended their focus beyond just past and current water quality. Conversely, the domestic and livestock sectors drive organic and pathogen pollution worldwide,' Jones says. 'For instance, large-scale irrigation systems for agriculture drive salinity issues in Northern India, while industrial processes are more responsible in eastern China. In addition to identifying hotspots of water quality issues, the model can help with attributing the source of pollution to particular sectors. In this study, the authors developed a new high-resolution global water quality model that can 'help to fill-in-the-gaps in water quality knowledge, particularly in world regions where we lack observations,' according to lead author Edward Jones. To illustrate, an estimated 829,000 deaths worldwide are attributed each year to diarrhea caused by the use of contaminated water for drinking or sanitation purposes. Yet, clean water is vital for our societal needs-such as public health, energy generation and crop production-and for protecting ecosystem health. Nevertheless, the quality of global water resources is increasingly coming under pressure due to population growth, economic development and climate change. Water quality issues are branded an 'invisible crisis' by the World Bank, being under-monitored, difficult to detect and often imperceptible to the human eye.

Sign in skype invisible