World Water Day

 In Europe, water is deeply embedded in the social, economic and institutional fabric of daily life. Safe, reliable and affordable access to water underpins human well-being and sustainable development. Significant infrastructure advances have provided many people in Europe with household water and sanitation access. However, gender disparities persist, particularly in decision-making, labour responsibilities, climate risk exposure and recognition in governance and knowledge systems. European water governance has developed under frameworks such as the European Union Water Framework Directive and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030. However, gender equality remains under-integrated in many national- and basin-level water strategies. Formal representation alone has not yielded substantive influence for women, particularly those from rural areas or minority backgrounds. Intersectional factors further shape this limited influence. For example, socio-economic stat...

  Water is essential for domestic and caregiving tasks. In Latin America and the Caribbean, these responsibilities fall predominantly on women, and are typically unpaid and unrecognized. Despite global and regional commitments to gender equality and sustainable development, water governance in the region continues to reflect deep structural inequalities. Women and girls – particularly in rural, Indigenous and low-income communities – bear a disproportionate burden of water-related responsibilities , which can restrict their access to education, employment and leadership opportunities. In 2014, in Panama, 63% of the households with the lowest incomes relied on women to fetch water, compared to only 30% in the wealthiest households. In addition, the lack of adequate sanitation facilities can expose women and girls to health risks and violence, including physical and sexual assaults when they travel long distances to collect water. In the region, 25% of schools lack basic drinking w...

  Global access to drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services improved significantly from 1990 to 2024, although major gaps remain. According to the World Health Organization (WHO)/ United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Joint Monitoring Programme report, between 2015 and 2024, 961 million people gained access to safely managed drinking water services, increasing global coverage from 68% to 74%. About 1.2 billion people gained access to safely managed sanitation services, with global coverage increasing from 48% to 58% over the same period. Despite this progress, as of 2024, 2.1 billion people still lacked safely managed drinking water, while 3.4 billion lacked safely managed sanitation services and 1.7 billion lacked basic hygiene services at home. According to the report, women and girls are most likely to be responsible for water collection. This can expose them to physical strain and safety risks, especially in remote or insecure areas. In addition, lack of privacy...

  This UNU-INWEH report has argued that the world is already living beyond its hydrological means. Many human–water systems have moved from stress to crisis and into water bankruptcy: a persistent postcrisis state in which long-term water use has exceeded renewable inflows and safe depletion limits, and in which irreversible or effectively irreversible damages make full restoration of the old baselines and past conditions unattainable. Recognizing this reality is uncomfortable, but it is also empowering. It replaces false hope of a simple return to the old normal with a clear-eyed understanding of the choices that remain. It shifts the focus from reacting to each new drought, flood, or Day Zero as if it were an isolated emergency, to transforming the underlying relationships between societies and water . The way forward is not to abandon mitigation or crisis preparedness, but to embed them within a broader project of bankruptcy management: preventing further irreversible damage; ...