The UN’s 2017 World Water Development Report, published March 22, used several percentages to describe wastewater and sanitation. They answer different questions. Its estimate that over 80% of wastewater globally was discharged untreated was explicitly an approximation, not a fresh census. For readers considering the report by March 24, that figure describes wastewater discharge, not the share of freshwater being wasted. [S7]

The income-group figures measure treatment against municipal and industrial wastewater generated: about 70% in high-income countries, 38% in upper-middle-income countries, 28% in lower-middle-income countries and 8% in low-income countries. These report estimates concern treatment of any kind. They do not say how many people have sanitation facilities or establish that treated water meets a particular safety standard. [S7]

A separate measure concerns services. The report counted 26% of urban and 34% of rural sanitation and wastewater services as safely managed because they prevented human contact with excreta throughout the sanitation chain. Those are shares of services, not population. This is why the report cautioned against treating improved sanitation access as proof of better wastewater management or public safety: access and full-chain protection are different tests. [S7]

AFP’s March 22 account helps distinguish the activities behind the numbers. It described four policy components: limiting pollution where it originates, taking contaminants out of wastewater, using water again and recovering useful by-products. That account concerns the same UN report, not an independent statistical check. The components explain why a treatment percentage alone cannot describe the entire chain; they supply neither a new dataset nor a method for making these percentages comparable. [S6][S7]

Source documents

  1. 2017 UN World Water Development Report, Wastewater: The Untapped Resourcehttps://reliefweb.int/report/world/2017-un-world-water-development-report-wastewater-untapped-resource
  2. Wastewater key to solving global water crisis: UNhttps://www.geo.tv/latest/135145-Wastewater-key-to-solving-global-water-crisis-UN