Introduction

One billion individuals lack access to safe and affordable water, 2.6 billion individuals lack access to sanitation, and 1.8 million children die of water-related diseases annually. These hardships affect especially the poor in urban slums and marginal rural areas, who often are not connected to water and sanitation networks. Amongst the poor, women and children suffer disproportionately from water shortages. Given that the task of fetching water is mostly allocated to women and girls, they lose opportunities to engage in education, childcare or earning an income. While the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) sets the minimum daily amount of water for basic needs at 20 liters, many of the over 1 billion people who do not have proper access to water use as little as 5 liters, with the affluent in the same region using significantly more, and North Americans on average accessing over 400 liters and Europeans over 200 liters. On average, the poor – not connected to municipal systems and having to buy water from private sellers – pay ten times more for water than the more affluent. Increases in population and economic growth have been predicted to lead to increased water consumption and under a business-as-usual scenario it is estimated that in 2025 ‘some 3 billion women and men will live in countries – wholly arid or semiarid – that have less than 1.700 cubic metres per capita, the quantity below which one suffers from water stress’.