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Professor Joseph Alcamo gave a keynote address on Thursday 18 April  at a session of the annual European Geoscience Union (EGU) general assembly in Vienna. (Alcamo is Director of the Centre of Excellence, Sussex Sustainability Research Programme.)

This year’s EGU was attended by over 18,000 scientists and stakeholders from 116 countries. One of Alcamo’s main messages was that experts were making a major error in estimating progress towards the global goal for making “Water available for all” by 2030. (The global water availability goal is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.) He asserted that much less water was available than usually assumed.

He pointed out that water availability studies usually only focus on the volume of water on hand for household needs, irrigation, or providing aquatic habitat. But this was not enough, he said. “Not only the quantity of water is critical, but also its quality because water pollution is making an enormous amount of water unusable worldwide.” Citing results from a global model, “WorldQual”, he said that water pollution restricted the use of between one-tenth and one-third of all river kilometers in all the river networks of Latin America, Africa, and Asia. He remarked, “It makes sense that the current priority in low-income countries is building wells, canals, and other infrastructure to ensure a safe water supply. But it’s ironic that while we build this infrastructure we continue to discharge raw wastewater into rivers and streams, making the water unsafe to use. Much safer water would be available if we also invested in wastewater treatment plants and source control of water pollution.” 

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