The Sahrawi refugees who have been living in the Algerian desert for 46 years continue to face an uncertain future. The Spanish government’s recent policy shift has rescued one of the world’s longest-running humanitarian crises from oblivion. The short 22nd of April by Cesare Maglioni, finalist at the We Art Water Film Festival 5, shows how difficult it is to wash one’s hands in Smara, one of the five camps that host them, where a daily struggle for water, malnutrition, and hygiene is fought.

No path to sustainability is possible if women are not the focus of any actions. The Agenda 2030 will not be achieved without the participation of each and every woman in the world free from the injustices that oppress them. The access to water and sanitation reveals some of the most excruciating inequalities, which are often little known. We know that much remains to be done, but the path is becoming clearer: with them and for them. Here are some of the facts as of today.

The terms describing hygiene facilities are simpler than those for access to water and sanitation; they refer to the existence or lack of handwashing facilities and the availability of clean water and soap. Covid-19 has increased the value of these practices, which are fundamental to human health and dignity, and inaccessible to more than 2.27 billion people.

We are collaborating to bring water and create a vegetable garden for 1,000 schoolchildren whose families struggle with drought and famine in one of the most impoverished areas of Zimbabwe. These schoolchildren will be adults in 2030. The attainment of the SDGs depends on education and knowledge reaching them all. For this, they need water and knowledge.

Health systems in rural African regions suffer water, sanitation, and hygiene shortcomings. In the Senegalese Sahel, we collaborate in a project to help healthcare centers where Covid-19 has been added to diseases caused by poor water, chronic malnutrition, and the lack of medical assistance. As in the rest of the world, if we attain SDG 6, we will achieve SDG 3: guaranteeing healthy lives and promoting well-being for all ages.

A new aid project brings us closer to the plight of Honduran farmers who, more than a year after being hit by hurricanes, have still not been able to recover from the destruction of their crops and their precarious water supply and sanitation facilities. At the epicenter of Central American migration, Honduras faces a future compromised by political instability, violence, and the climate crisis.

On World Toilet Day, the UN calls for valuing this simple facility that is critical to attaining SDG 6 and enabling millions of people to move towards the eradication of poverty, the achievement of health, gender equality and dignity. The sanitation investment gap continues to divide rich and poor. If we do not close it, SDG 6 will remain a long way off.

The nomadic people spread throughout the Sahel are the ones who know best the harsh climate of the great sub-Saharan strip. The Fulani are a good example. Their ancestral shepherding, farming and food production methods and their deep-rooted sense of solidarity are the foundation of their resilience to poor management of land and violence. Now, climate change is added to the threats. The world must help preserve their ancestral wisdom.

Tourism is one of the key industries for international economic recovery after the pandemic, especially for developing countries. It is also key for the sustainability of the planet. Reducing the consumption of water is a priority first step.

Myanmar’s northern regions are subject to the climate variability that monsoon Asia is experiencing. Water stress increases, disrupting the supply in places that had never experienced any shortages. The short film Everyday Needs shows the solidarity of two water vendors that donate it to those most in need.

Africa’s largest island is facing a serious humanitarian emergency. Drought and sand storms have unleashed one of the worst food crises in the history of a country with endemic deficiencies in water infrastructures and with a governance that is incapable of adequately managing the territory. The short film Where to go?, finalist at the We Art Water Film Festival 5, provides direct evidence of a crisis that threatens to kill more than a million people.  

In regions with a lack of sanitation, DEWATS provides the possibility of a nature-based, low-cost and sustainable wastewater treatment without a sewage network. In partnership with World Vision, the Foundation is implementing it in a hospital in Chengelpattu, India.

Migration due to poverty, violence and neglect has led to the overcrowding of hundreds of thousands of people within a few kilometers of the center of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. The causes of the creation of slums follow a universal pattern that show us where to find the shortcomings of the universal justice we wish to create. The short filmRaindrops, by Stephen Okoth, finalist of the We Art Water Film Festival 5, recreates a real common story in Kibera and in all marginal neighborhoods around the world.

India is experiencing the worst wave of infections and deaths the world has seen since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The healthcare chaos overlaps poor medical coverage and the endemic problems of lack of access to water and sanitation in the marginal slums and in the neglected rural world. The solution of the pandemic in India is key for the entire world.

The acceptance of sustainability as an economic asset is spreading among companies. It transforms the concept of social responsibility and brings economy closer to citizens. Water use efficiency is increasingly present in sustainable business growth strategies and is critical to attain the SDGs.

Will algorithms and big data be able to control the 42,000 km³of usable fresh water all around the world? Will they be able to monitor its efficient use worldwide? Will they guarantee universal access to water? Will they create inequalities in decision-making to face the climate crisis? These are not science-fiction questions; in the smart world that is already underway, they point towards a future that is the goal of the current technological development based on big data and artificial intelligence.

The fight against the global eradication of trachoma needs a final push. The terrible disease, which causes blindness in 1.9 million people, requires surgery and antibiotics, but also clean water, hygiene and sanitation. The slowdown due to Covid-19 can be reversed in a joint and complementary move toward eradicating both diseases in the poorest and most disadvantaged areas in the world.

Nature is our most important asset. Not only is it the base of our economy, it is also an essential part of ourselves. If it gets sick, we all get sick. And its health has significantly deteriorated in the past few decades without traditional economy taking this into account. It is urgent to move forward so that economic advances include nature in the definition of wealth and water is a good indicator. Revising the concept of GDP is a first step.

When is a country known to be water efficient, and is its agriculture, industry or urban supply water efficient? The attainment of the SDG 6 by 2030 forces us to provide an answer to these questions. UN Water has developed certain indicators to help manage water efficiency and also to understand it.

Statistics have overlooked them until now, but they are the closest to people.  Scattered trees have been crucial for rural economies and vital for the survival in arid regions. We now have tools to know more about them and corroborate their importance in the environmental balance, the fight against desertification and soil management.

Floods caused by violent rainfall frequently exceed the capacity of the sewage system and spill all kinds of pollutants into rivers and seas. Adapting urban sanitation systems to these phenomena is vital for the health and preservation of the environment. It is one of the challenges of the smart age in the face of an increasingly urban future. Investments must reach all for results to be sustainable.  

The pandemic and the climate crisis have shown us that we do not react to warnings until we are faced with the evidence. We face a new age of uncertainty that forces us to adapt to the constant changes that will arise. Now, the existing warning is that risks will be collective and unavoidably shared. Science and solidarity are our key assets to move forward.

In all activities carried out during this hard year, we have been faced with human suffering, but we have also found hope. Hope generated by the knowledge of being understood and helped; the one generated by the enthusiasm and generosity of the institutions we collaborate with. These have redoubled their efforts despite all difficulties and deserve our admiration and gratitude. We will continue to be there, collaborating to overcome them, because we share the conviction that solidarity is a never ending asset.

The Foundation’s projects have provided water, sanitation and hygiene to more than 205,000 students and teachers in the most neglected regions of the world. The experience obtained in nine of the most disadvantaged countries corroborates the importance of schools as drivers of the development of hygiene and social justice. Now more than ever due to the pandemic, drinking water and adequate facilities are the base of the success of any educational goal. Mankind needs clean and healthy schools. Without them, no other SDG will be fully attained.

Peru is one of the countries with the greatest water contrasts. The sustainable development of its enormous farming potential depends on the adequate management of water and the territory. To achieve this, the country has the richness of the ancestral tradition that most cared for water as the main link to the land: the Incan culture. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of recovering this farming model based on the understanding of the laws of nature and their compliance.

Plastic is inherent in the lifestyle of most of the population and it is causing a disastrous environmental damage in which the duality garbage-water is at the same time cause and effect. The industry that has most changed our lifestyle is at a crossroads in which the future of the sustainability of the economy and the environment of the planet is decided.

Architecture and the building and tourism industries are key elements for the attainment of the SDGs. They must be a fundamental part of the model that will lead us to attain them and their international influence in the generation of social awareness is decisive. The “Smart Water Smart Reaction” debate showed there are plenty of ideas and initiatives in Mexico, Peru and Spain. The pandemic has strengthened the connecting thread of water as source of inspiration to overcome the global challenge we face and to appreciate the opportunities that appear before us.

Covid-19 deepens the drama of Venezuelan migrants in northern Brazil. The flow of those who leave their homes fleeing from poverty does not end and the pandemic has worsened the hardness and uncertainty of their exodus. The We Are Water Foundation has started a new project to provide basic handwashing facilities and hygiene training to those who survive in the worst conditions and to the citizens that take them in.

A new project of the Foundation brings water, sanitation and hygiene to Central American migrants who are crammed into unhealthy shelters in Mexico. They flee from poverty and violence and are trapped by politics and the pandemic.  

Smart Water extends its discussion forum to make the most of the opportunities offered by the profound change we are experiencing. Smart Reaction will help create a new model that will allow us to effectively attain sustainable development. Through water, a smart reaction is based on dialogue and cooperation to overcome the survival and justice challenge humanity is facing. The world that designs, creates and builds living spaces must evolve even more towards collective intelligence, which will face all problems and will include all those who experience them.

Despite the human and economic crisis posed by Covid-19, the attainment of the SDGs must not stop and needs to be resumed with renewed momentum. Governments and companies rally to avoid stopping the fight against climate change and move towards a sustainable economy. The indicators of the status of SDG 6, which refers to water and sanitation, require investments demanded by society, increasingly aware of the need to protect the environment.

Addressing awareness of nature and access to water and hygiene in the most forgotten areas of Madagascar is one of the objectives of the Foundation’s new project. The largest island in Africa presents one of the worst hygiene rates in the world, which together with the pandemic creates an alarming health situation. Its extraordinary biodiversity also deteriorates with deforestation and shows a relationship with poverty that must be reversed.

A new project of the Foundation promotes the access to water and hygiene in schools in Morocco’s most impoverished areas. The health and economic crisis unleashed by Covid-19 threatens the sustainable development of Magreb, one of the areas in the world most affected by desertification caused by climate change. The solidarity of its population is its strength.

During the most drastic months of lockdown we have observed forgotten or unusual aspects of nature, but satellites have seen much more, especially in the water. The pandemic has allowed us to obtain data from nature with less pollution and science has taken the opportunity to find more answers. We need them.

The termination of tourism activity due to the pandemic has driven many communities to extreme poverty and slowed down the rise of sustainable tourism. This is one of the keys to attain the SDGs in 2030 and a “green economy” model to face climate change. Amidst a severe crisis we must, more than ever, promote an activity that ethically distributes wealth towards people and the environment.

Combining the adaptation and mitigation of climate change through water is proposed as the most effective way to overcome the survival challenge humanity is facing. Water is part of the solution. Cooperation is the key to achieve it.

The fear of coronavirus infection has revealed the social scourge of stigma. Some health professionals and other groups that have been at the frontline with their work have suffered social rejection. This is an attitude that, beyond the pandemic, affects the poorest and most discriminated people, as is often the case in the world of access to water and sanitation. We must end this burden to attain the Sustainable Development Goals. Viruses, like water, know no borders, ethnicities or social classes.

The spread of the coronavirus pandemic has coincided with the confirmation of the increasing deterioration of climate data. Droughts, heat waves and violent phenomena are the source of famines, increase poverty and threaten to cause more damage than coronavirus in the long term. Both the health and climate crises, albeit with different time scales, are universal and require immediate action.

Women, who often suffer from exploitation, violence and neglect, play the most committed role in any crisis. Nowadays, those who suffer the lack of access to water and sanitation are also the most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The SDG 5 is in serious danger and we cannot tolerate this. No solution is possible without women being at the center of the response.

Covid -19 has shot to pieces all aid programs against global childhood malnutrition. The situation of extreme vulnerability in which millions of children in the poorest regions have been left is a collateral emergency to that of the virus which has already turned into a terrible humanitarian crisis. The difficulty of access to safe water, hygiene and sanitation always goes hand in hand with abandoned and malnourished children. The international reaction has already started and aid projects are greatly increasing. Together we will succeed.

What is the ideal location to build a latrine? How should it be ventilated? How to make it easy for children to use it? And what about the use by women? Which materials should be used? The answers vary depending on the culture, climate and training of users. These are factors that define the sustainability of sanitation where it is most needed: in the fight against open defecation. The Foundation’s expertise will be a guideline in Burkina Faso.

The Covid-19 pandemic has arrived in the Sahel amidst a humanitarian upheaval. The immediate threat of hunger, the lack of water and sanitation, epidemics and migrations coexist with the terrorist violence that is causing the vast African territory also known as the “hunger belt” to bleed out. It is a region where any emergency is added to others that the international community cannot tolerate.

The remote island of Nias accumulates the endemic disasters of Indonesia: earthquakes, tsunamis, lack of access to water and sanitation, malaria and dengue fever epidemics, and now Covid-19. A new project of the Foundation focuses on rural areas in one of the countries in the Pacific Ring of Fire most threatened by seismic disasters, climate change, diseases and the economic crisis. Indonesians are fighting on all fronts for survival.  

The outbreak of Covid-19 has reminded us that pandemics are also natural disasters, although much more threatening. They are universal, affecting all human activities everywhere and individual human behavior plays a decisive role in their spread. The humanitarian and economic crises they cause must make us more aware than ever of the need to invest in their prevention.

Refugees are some of the most vulnerable people in the world. Covid-19 has worsened their situation and added uncertainty to their future. At the height of the health crisis, those displaced by floods, droughts and pests are added to those fleeing violence and wars that have not diminished during the pandemic. Many of these conflicts seem to have been temporarily forgotten. It is time to remember them.

In order to survive it is better to share. On World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, a text by Jorge Wagensberg tells us how a simple palm tree provides us with a metaphor to face a global threat. 

A new project of the Foundation helps the most vulnerable schoolchildren to effectively fight Covid-19. In Nicaragua, where the government is heavily criticized for the way it has dealt with the pandemic, there is a serious lack of access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene in many schools. More than five hundred schoolchildren and some 3,200 inhabitants of the municipalities of Yalí and San Lorenzo are being empowered to face infections.

Crisis upon crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic has burst into a planet threatened by climate change and environmental degradation. On World Environment Day, mankind must return to action, aware that the fight to save the natural environment from degradation must continue. Effective communication is essential to modify behaviors and take advantage of the perception change of the territory we have had during the confinement.   

Covid-19 has led to the closure of educational activities. But the Internet has allowed rich countries to soften the impact. In poorer countries, with a more vulnerable educational system, this has not been possible. Mankind urgently needs to close the digital gap to maintain educational development. This is borne out by the testimony of those who are fighting for access to water, sanitation and hygiene.

The health emergency poses new challenges to urban planning. The criteria of sustainability are broadened with those of health, and the concept of healthy city radically changes if extreme poverty is not taken into account. The awareness that individual health is synonymous with collective health is one of the lessons of Covid-19 that we should not miss.

Beyond human tragedy, COVID-19 poses a reflection on how we relate to each other and to nature. And it leads us to another vision of the problems that beset the human species. The new society that is emerging from the crisis will have to integrate health emergencies into a more global vision with the values of proportionality and cohesion that are characteristic of the culture of the green economy. The path towards the SDGs must be aware of the fact that a pollution-free and ecologically balanced planet is synonymous with health.

Confidence in the safety and efficiency of the comprehensive water cycle has been reinforced during the Covid-19 pandemic, among those citizens who are guaranteed it. Most of them now have a better understanding of a key service that ensures their well-being. This knowledge should serve to reflect on the situation of the 2.1 billion people who do not have running water in their homes. The crisis unleashed by the pandemic threatens the plans of many countries with regard to the universal implementation of access to water and sanitation. Humanity cannot afford it.

The coronavirus has caused a global health crisis, which should help us to deal more effectively and efficiently with other serious diseases that plague the world. The fight against pandemics such as malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis must not be stopped, but must lead us to share knowledge and efforts.

Endemic water-borne diseases kill more than 10,000 children in India each year. COVID-19 now threatens a health system that has proved powerless to cover the 1.3 billion inhabitants of the second most populated country on Earth. The lack of sanitation and hydric stress are factors that increase the risks of the pandemic.

Epidemics and pandemics have marked African history. COVID-19 arrives in the continent overlapping with other endemic diseases, serious medical deficiencies and unmet goals in the access to water and sanitation. The African population is well aware of the power of community spirit. It is their most powerful weapon in the fight against the pandemic and we can all learn from it.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unavoidable crisis that threatens the health and work of each one of us. It is a disaster that compromises the attainment of the SDGs, affecting us all. Evolving from an individual perspective to a collective intelligence is what will allow us to overcome it. And we need to do it now, the virus leaves us no margin in terms of time.

The health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of handwashing with soap and water as one of the keys to halting the spread of the disease. However, only three out of five people all around the world have basic facilities for this elementary standard of hygiene. Deaths from failure to do so amount to hundreds of people every day, most of them children.

To learn to wash their hands and to be able to do it in school is the best lesson for those millions of boys and girls for whom diarrhoea can be lethal. It is a knowledge transmitted to the family, which creates a hygiene culture that is essential to overcome poverty.