Gibson, K. (2021, March 7). Is your company a water steward? BRINK News. https://www.brinknews.com/is-your-company-a-water-steward/

Herrera, V. (2019). Reconciling global aspirations and local realities: Challenges facing the sustainable development goals for water and sanitation. World Development, 118, 106–117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.02.009

The Global Goals. (2023, April 18). Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation. The Global Goals. https://www.globalgoals.org/goals/6-clean-water-and-sanitation/

United Nations Development Programme. (2023). The SDGs in Action. https://www.undp.org/sustainable-development-goals#:~:text=The%20Sustainable%20Development%20Goals%20%28SDGs%29%2C%20otherwise%20known%20as,ensure%20that%20all%20people%20enjoy%20peace%20and%20prosperity.

United Nations. (n.d.). Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2022/Goal-06/

United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). (2023, December 18). Clean water laws, regulations, and executive orders related to section 404. https://www.epa.gov/cwa-404/clean-water-laws-regulations-and-executive-orders-related-section-404

Billions of people lack safely managed sanitation services and even basic sanitation. More and more countries are experiencing water stress and increasing drought is worsening these trends. By 2050, it is projected that at least one in four people will suffer recurring water shortages (United Nations Development Programme, 2023).

By 2030, improvement in drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene must quadruple in order to meet targets. If we can reach this goal, we could save 829,000 lives annually (United Nations, n.d.).

By 2030, the globe will have attained 81% coverage compared to 74% in the year 2020 for safely regulated drinking water. If the trend continues, it will fall short of the goal and leaving 1.6 billion people without access.

The world will reach 67% coverage of safely managed sanitation by 2030, leaving 2.8 billion people without proper access.

In good news, open defecation has decreased by a third since 2015 and is on track to eliminate this goal by 2030.

Over 1 in 4 people lack access to handwashing facilities with soap and water at home.

The situation is being made worse by climate change, which is causing more frequent and severe flooding. These natural disasters can cause death and overloading already precarious water and sanitation systems, as well as more frequent and severe droughts (Gibson, 2021).

Of all ecosystems, wetlands are thought to have the highest level of biodiversity and serve as nursery grounds for around 40% of all plant and animal species worldwide. Not only can ineffective management of wetlands lead to the loss of ecological services, but it additionally can also spread disease (United Nations, n.d.).

Compared to species that depend on other biomes, 81% of species that are dependent on inland wetlands have experienced a faster decline.

Wastewater is a large danger to environmental water quality in the globally. Due to the extra nutrients that wastewater releases into rivers, lakes, and aquifers, it harms ecosystem function. 

One of the most ambitious United Nations targets and indicators is Sustainable Development Goal Number 6 (SDG 6) (Herrera, 2019). SDG 6 continues a global initiative of the Millennium Development Goal 7 to increase access to water that dates back a century.

This article looks at how these global goals are likely to lead to change, previous shortcomings in global monitoring efforts, formulation of SDG 6, local governance issues, and implementation barriers.

Global monitoring helps foreign development partners set priorities, examine progress over a period of time, and encourage larger funding commitments. Despite having several drawbacks, the MDGs were intended to be simple measurements that made cross-national comparisons uncomplicated. But due to their shortcomings, led to the creation of the SDGs.  The Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) who monitors water and sanitation revealed these flaws, such as the definition of water access. Which failed to take water quality into account and thus produced incorrect projections of safe water access. Therefore, a significant amount of the deviation in the quantity, quality, accessibility, and sustainability of water and sanitation management in poor nations was not adequately captured by this. One instance of this is when national level data and JMP data differ. In this case, in Tanzania, JMP data showed 77% of the population had access to safe drinking water in 2005, whereas national data stated the percentage was a mere 40%.

In order to address the weaknesses of the MDGs, SDGs were created. This piece presents the case that although SDG goals address these issues, they will still face difficulties with local governance and contradictions within targets. Firstly, the SDGs are better suited to each nation's particular situation than the MDGs were. They better convey variance in the direction of advancement and enable more detailed tracking over time.

Although expanding the scope of SDG 6's monitoring is a positive development, it also brings complexity and difficulties that may prove difficult for local governments. The difficulties associated with local governance are still not well recognized or appropriately taken into account in debates on how to successfully implement global monitoring. Implementation challenges include elected authorities not focused on fulfilling SDG 6 targets, citizens' struggles to have their views heard, and a lack of attention to local drivers of water governance due to the difficulty of maintaining communication with multiple nations.

Potential conflicts that might occur when different Sustainable Development Agenda targets interact with one another are contraindication barriers. Hydroelectric dams used to improve clean energy sources are one example of this. Long-term population growth in developing nations may benefit from the development of clean energy, but SDG 6's objectives to promote the preservation of water-related ecosystems may potentially be threatened. Although these dams are advantageous for clean energy, they can also be harmful to the environment. They have an impact on erosion, downstream consequences of altered river flows, and deforestation. People are additionally impacted by them. For example, in China, the construction of these resulted in the farmers who lived near these dams being cut off from the water supply and having to rely on sporadic rainfall to get their drinking water.