'Significant' investment needed in global water infrastructure

Worldwide investment in water and wastewater infrastructure needs to be doubled in order to prevent widespread drought and disease, it has been claimed.

At an international congress held this week, it was argued that investment must rise from its current level of £45.5 billion to more than £90 billion every year, the Guardian reports.

Experts said this increase will be required even before the effects of climate change are taken into account, while one authority has called for spending to rise to 1.4 per cent of GDP - a thousand times the current level.

Dr Olcay Unver, director of the United Nations' Global Water Assessment Unit, said: "You can't justify the deaths of so many children because of lack of infrastructure or lost productive time of people [who are] intellectually or physically incapacitated because of simple lack of access to safe water or sanitation."

In 2000, former secretary-general of the UN Kofi Annan reported that global freshwater consumption has increased sixfold between 1900 and 1995, doubling the rate of population growth in that time.