Global Water Security 2023 Assessment - Executive Summary

Midway into the Water Action Decade and the SDG era, this report – undertaken by the United Nations University Institute for Water Environment and Health (UNU INWEH), the UN’s only think tank on water – provides a preliminary By European Union quantitative global assessment that evaluates the state of water security for 7.78 billion people living in 186 countries. [...] This report aims to: • Quantify and compare current levels of the primary This report applies the UN-Water components of water security, by country, using definition water security: SDG-defined indicators and available datasets to reveal an explicit picture of global water security in the middle The capacity of a population to of the Water Action Decade and Agenda 2030. [...] livelihoods, human well-being, • Highlight the overall status of available water data rou- and socioeconomic development, tinely reported by countries within the SDG framework for ensuring protection against and indicators and identify data gaps that need to be filled to support accurate and confident analyses of waterborne pollution and water- water security moving forward. [...] These countries are severely available were for 2020, and unfortunately, over half of the impeded from achieving water security in seven of the water indicators had major data limitations that required ten components: low levels of access to safely managed the application of some sub-indicators and proxy values drinking water and sanitation services (Components 1 and from open-source datasets. [...] Global reporting on progress, allowing assessment and compari- water resource data is old, and many hydrological features son of the components of water security; ii) UN custodian are still considered as ‘constants’ even though almost all agencies supporting water-related national monitoring components of the water cycle are in flux in a changing and reporting efforts globally, highlighting data g.