Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation

What Goal 6 asks for

Goal 6 sets a higher bar than the earlier global commitments on water, and the wording matters. The drinking water target is universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water, which is measured as water that is available when needed, on the premises, and free from contamination, rather than merely a source that exists somewhere nearby. The sanitation target asks for adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and an end to open defecation, with explicit attention to the needs of women and girls. Both targets are about the quality and reliability of a service, not the presence of infrastructure, which is why a village can have hand pumps and toilets and still not meet them.

The rest of the goal covers the water system that supplies those services. One target is on water quality: reducing pollution, eliminating dumping of hazardous materials, halving the proportion of untreated wastewater and substantially increasing safe reuse. Another is on water-use efficiency and sustainable withdrawals, aimed at the fact that most of the world's fresh water is used in agriculture and industry rather than by households. A further target asks for integrated water resources management, including cooperation across borders, and one asks for the protection and restoration of water-related ecosystems: mountains, forests, wetlands, rivers, aquifers and lakes. The final target is explicitly about governance, asking that local communities participate in managing water and sanitation.

Goal 6 in India

Jal Jeevan Mission, launched on 15 August 2019 by the Ministry of Jal Shakti, is the largest single programme against Goal 6 in India. Its object is a functional household tap connection for every rural household, and the government reported that connections rose from 3.23 crore households, about 17 per cent, at launch to 15.44 crore, or 79.74 per cent of rural households, by 1 February 2025, with tap water also supplied to more than nine lakh schools and a similar number of Anganwadi centres. The mission treats supply and source together, making greywater management, water conservation and rainwater harvesting mandatory elements, and it is run partly through village water and sanitation committees, the Paani Samitis, with certification of Har Ghar Jal status requiring a gram sabha resolution rather than only a departmental report. On sanitation, Swachh Bharat Mission was launched on 2 October 2014; its rural arm completed a first phase focused on toilet construction and open defecation free status in 2019 and moved in April 2020 to a second phase on ODF sustainability and solid and liquid waste management, with the goal of all villages reaching ODF Plus.

Two things follow from that design for anyone giving toward water in India. First, coverage figures count connections and assets, while the goal counts water that is safe, sufficient and reliable; groundwater depletion, fluoride, arsenic, iron and salinity, and schemes that stop working for want of operation and maintenance, are the recurring problems. Second, sanitation outcomes depend on use and on faecal sludge management after the toilet, not on construction. Non-profits typically work on water quality testing and treatment, spring and aquifer recharge and watershed management, repair and community management of failing schemes, menstrual hygiene and school and Anganwadi facilities, and behaviour change so that toilets built are toilets used. Work on river and lake restoration and on wastewater sits under the same goal.