WASH Services in the Sustainable Development Goals

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In September 2000, eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were defined at the Millennium Summit. These goals, which were broken down into quantifiable targets, set out a global development action plan to lift people out of poverty by 2015. A key feature of this program involved identifying and implementing progress indicators to be monitored by the United Nations (UN) on an annual basis. The only reference to water was in relation to access to safe drinking water, included as a target of Goal 7 ‘Ensure environmental sustainability’. Sanitation was omitted from the initial version of the MDGs, with the target of improving access to basic sanitation only being added two years later. The purpose of this document is to review the context in which the SDGs were developed and to provide an insight into the way these SDGs address issues relating to water and sanitation. The aim is thus to enable sector stakeholders to frame their activities within the context of the SDGs. Please note that some of the propositions (in particular regarding indicators) haven’t been officially validated. The document will be regularly updated as international processes are moving forward.