More than 4 billion people may not have access to clean water
Access to clean water is a human right — one that half of the world may not have. Out of the roughly 8 billion people on Earth, more than 4.4 billion lack access to safely managed drinking water, researchers report August 15 in Science. The estimate, based on computer simulations of data from low- and middle-income countries, is more than double the figure calculated by the World Health Organization (SN: 8/16/18). … The new estimate may not replace the official count, which is based on country-provided data rather than surveys and simulations, says water solutions researcher Gregory Pierce of the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s pretty unlikely that those who are producing the official estimates are going to be okay with just using these methods, because there’s a lot more projection involved in them.”
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