The 17 goals of sustainable development (SDGs), adopted by the United Nations (UN) Member States at the 2015 UN Summit as part of the Agenda 2030, are interlinked and mutually non exclusive. One cannot achieve the rest of the 16 goals leaving any single one aside. “Ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” is the SDG 6 (sixth goal). Targets of goal six include a substantial decrease in water pollution and effective wastewater management and recycling.

Similarly, Goal 3 of SDGs highlights the need to ensure healthy lives and promotion of well-being for all, at all ages. Likewise, Goal 2 aims to eradicate hunger and ensure food security (for which clean drinking water is a prerequisite). For all these goals, the quality and quantity of water are integral. Water and sanitation’s link with sustainable development does not end at Goals 2 and 3. Other services they provide underpin poverty reduction, economic growth, environmental sustainability, and most importantly water’s role in promoting (or otherwise) peace, justice and strong institutions (Goal 16).

Rising temperature, floods, and drought due to climate change; indiscriminate exploitation; water pollution; and encroachment of water bodies have led to severe freshwater stress worldwide, and Pakistan is not an exception.

The good news is that according to the National Nutrition Survey 2019 (NNS2019), though with rural-urban and regional disparities, over nine out of 10 households (92.6 percent) in Pakistan have access to improved sources of drinking water. Among provinces, Balochistan has the lowest proportion of households with access to improved drinking water sources (75.3 percent).

The bad news is that 44 percent of the population of Pakistan lacks safe drinking water. Drinking water from more than half (56.1 percent) of households in Pakistan is contaminated with coliforms (a type of bacteria also found in human feces), with a slightly higher rate in rural than in urban areas. According to NNS2019, the highest prevalence of coliform contamination is in Islamabad Capital territory (92 percent) and the lowest in GB (12 percent). Another worrying news is that more than one-third (36.0 percent) of households in Pakistan drink water contaminated with E. Coli (coliforms that may cause food poisoning). The highest prevalence of E. Coli contamination is in KP-NMD (78.3 percent) and the lowest in Punjab (30.4 percent).

On sanitation, NNS2019 reports that almost 85 percent of households in Pakistan have access to an improved sanitation facility. However, here too, rural-urban and regional inequalities exist. Urban dwellers have more access to improved sanitation facilities than their counterparts in rural areas, whereas KP-NMD (57.9 percent) and Balochistan (67 percent) lag far behind the national average.

The above numbers are pre-Covid-19. The pandemic has aggravated the situation. As the focus of decision-makers is rightly on improving Covid-related public health infrastructure and rolling out vaccination, provision of clean drinking water and improved sanitation is somehow getting off the radar. Moreover, treatment of non-Covid-19 diseases, especially many waterborne diseases, is being compromised due to Covid-related restrictions in health care facilities. One may argue that Covid-19 is impairing access for millions of people to safely-managed drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene services – services desperately needed to prevent the virus from spreading.

However, coronavirus is not the only factor hampering the availability of water and sanitation services to all. Safe and affordable drinking water for all in Pakistan by 2030 requires that we invest in adequate infrastructure, conserve water, control water pollution, provide sanitation facilities, and encourage hygiene. Besides this, protecting and restoring water-related ecosystems is essential.

Take water pollution, for instance. Water pollutants include heavy metals, fecal coliform bacteria, phosphorus, sodium, nitrogen, sediments, and pathogenic bacteria and viruses. They deteriorate the water quality.

Domestic wastewater is one of the primary sources of pollution in urban waterways in Pakistan. While planned urban locales may have a sewerage line, the lack of operational treatment facilities means that it is discharged into the streams, ponds or open drains untreated. Older residences that rely on septic tanks or informal settlements deposit their wastewater into nearby pits or natural drains, and the rural areas that rely on open defecation contaminate the underground water quality. This is a cause of significant concern for communities and cities that depend on groundwater to meet their drinking water needs.

Wastewater from Lahore remains virtually untreated and is deposited into the River Ravi. Similarly, almost 80 percent of sewage from Karachi is deposited into the Arabian Sea without any treatment.

Untreated and unmanaged industrial wastewater disposal is another major source of surface and groundwater pollution in Pakistan. Through water logging, erosion, salinisation, and agrochemical leaching, agriculture is yet another reason for water pollution. At the same time, the presence of arsenic in groundwater in many parts of the Indus plain put millions of Pakistanis at risk.

In Pakistan, there is no dearth of laws and policies to control water pollution. However, some of the key hindrances in ensuring access to water and sanitation services include ineffective institutional arrangements for the effective implementation of relevant laws. Moreover, relevant departments lack the technical skills and capacities to sustain the efforts to curb growing pollution levels. Lack of data in terms of the sources of pollution and pollution levels also continues to hinder an effective response to the situation. Whereas an absence of local governments in all provinces and inadequate funds for water and sanitation services further aggravate the situation.

One needs to keep in mind that the quality of water that is commonly consumed defines the quality of our life. An estimated 250,000 children lose their precious lives in Pakistan each year due to waterborne diseases. 20 to 40 percent of the total hospital beds in Pakistan are occupied by patients suffering from waterborne diseases. The health costs of which are estimated at Rs 114 to 200 billion per annum. On the other hand, environmental degradation costs Pakistan Rs 365 billion a year, which is borne by the poor.

At the current population growth rate, Pakistan will be the fourth most populous nation in 2030. We are already a water-scarce country (per capita water availability is less than 1,000 cubic meters per year). With scarce, polluted, poorly managed, and increasingly contested water resources, meeting the water needs of the world’s fourth-largest population would be next to impossible if we don’t take our SDG-6 commitment seriously.

It is true that due to (rightly) divergence of funds and attention to Covid-19, the pandemic has turned the journey to achieve SDGs by 2030 difficult. However, there is a silver lining in it as well. The governments across the world are now more sensitised to the importance of the social sector development. They are learning that ignoring health, social safety nets, food security, and water sanitation issues is no longer an option.

The coronavirus might be a ‘black swan’ threat for many countries. However, water scarcity is a ‘grey rhino’ crash which would only spare those who are prepared for it. In our context, the way forward is to provide the required institutional and financial arrangements to implement environmentally just policies to ensure inequality and inequity in access to water and sanitation services is reduced. Failing on SDGs would be tantamount to us failing our future generations. Can we afford to be that selfish?

The writer heads    Sustainable Development Policy institute.

He tweets at @abidsuleri