Water crisis: how local technologies can help solve a global problem

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Water crises are worsening and need our urgent attention. Here's how local technologies can help solve a global problem

When the SDGs launched, there was optimism that the water goal could be reached, and progress has been made on some of its targets. Since 2000, an extra 2 billion people have gained access to safe drinking water, and by 2020, some 56% of all households had their waste water treated.

But overall progress has not been fast enough, and, as early as 2018, UN-Water, which coordinates the UN’s work on water and sanitation, warned that the world was not on track. Countries are not prioritizing this goal, either at the national or the global level. By the UN’s own estimates, to achieve SDG 6, the world will need to spend US$260 billion per year by 2030 — mostly in Asia and Africa, where the numbers of people without safe drinking water are highest.

Generations of water-stressed communities have applied the results of knowledge and innovation to get water. But there has been, at best, partial success for attempts to systematically share techniques that are, such as condensing water from clouds with giant nets, used in Chile and Peru, or storing snow for use in dry periods, as practised in parts of China.

It’s the same for newer technologies. For example, membrane distillation is a low-temperature method of desalinating water. It’s greener than existing methods because it uses less electricity, as chemical engineer Mohammed Rasool Qtaishat at the University of Jordan and his colleagues reported last year

 

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