Chapter 4: Beyond Sustainable Development Goal 6

It’s almost impossible to talk about all the other SDGs without talking about clean water
and sanitation, since the access to it is a limiting factor in almost every economic activity
thanks to which we can develop, such as agriculture, industry and energy. All of the SDGs
are cut across by three basic dimensions with which water intertwines too:

1. Society: In order to have peaceful, just and inclusive societies, the 2030 explicitly
mentions the right to have clean water and sanitation. This can be viewed from a
number of different perspectives, some of which are:

A) Water, Santitation, Hygiene and Health: In order to protect health all around
the globe, the access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation and
hygiene is fundamental. It’s only logical that if a society has access to clean
water, it will have less water-related diseases, and therefore, less deaths
caused by them.

B) Diarrhoea: This was the second lead cause of death for children under five
according to the WHO in 2017, and it directly links to the access of clean water
and sanitation. If not threated, diarrhoeal diseases can even lead up to cholera,
which will most likely kill within hours.

2. Environment: Water based environments are fundamental for the maintenance of

the conditions that allow mankind to survive on Earth, which include access to
drinking water, water to produce food and energy amongst others. When getting
into the environment, some of the factors to take into account are:

A) Water quality and Pollution: Industries that use water as their bases such as
the food industry, or the hydroelectric industry, are slowly but steady polluting
water all over the world. The effects they produce are small but constant, and
little by little these effects are becoming more notorious.

B) Water, cooperation and peace: When people start losing their access to clean
water, the most basic industries such as agriculture start to suffer, which could
lead up to the disagreement and eventual upraising of members of society that
believe that conditions are not fair amongst all the population.

3. Economy: As economy keeps on growing untamable, water access is a key factor

in this growth, for it supports most of the big industries that drive economy globally
speaking. Some of the fields in which this can be explained are:

A) Water and human capacity: There are neither lots of education fields that
focus specifically in the water problem, nor lots of professionals that want to
examine this issue, mainly because they feel more attracted to fields that are
better rewarded economically speaking.
B) Water and the manufacturing sector: Even if it’s true that some of these
industries use and then discharge the water they need, most of the times they
block the access to water for poor families.