Water and the Millennium Development Goals
Progress Toward 2015 Targets
The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight goals that all 191 UN member states have agreed to try to achieve by the year 2015. The United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in September 2000, commits world leaders to combat poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. The MDGs are derived from this Declaration, and all have specific targets and indicators. One of the targets of Goal 7 — to ensure environmental sustainability — is to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. The World Is…
