Keynote, Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG 6), Climate Action (SDG 13)
Malawi’s strides in the implementation of sustainable development
Timothy T. Biswick Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Malawi
Access to safe, affordable and reliable drinking water and sanitation services are basic human rights. They are indispensable to sustaining healthy livelihoods and maintaining people’s dignity. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6 seeks to ensure safe drinking water and sanitation for all by the year 2030, with particular focus on the sustainable management of water resources, wastewater, and ecosystems, and acknowledging the importance of an enabling environment. Improved sanitation facilities are a key to environmental health, and latrine availability is very important to basic health standards in a home. Poor sanitation facilities coupled with unsafe water sources pose a serious risk to people from water-borne diseases. Despite various efforts and some progress in implementing SDG6, billions of people worldwide still live without safely managed drinking water and sanitation, especially in rural areas and least developed countries. Malawi is a landlocked country located in southern central Africa along the western part of the Great Rift Valley of Africa. It is bordered by Tanzania to the north, Mozambique to the east and south, and Zambia to the west. According to the 2018 Population Housing Census, about 85% of households in Malawi have access to safe water: an improvement from about 60% a decade earlier. Groundwater (mainly boreholes) was identified as the major source of safe water (61%) for most households in Malawi especially in rural areas. However, groundwater provision through boreholes is associated with a number of inherent challenges. The quality of water from boreholes is easily affected by several natural and anthropogenic factors such as the geology of the water bearing rocks, and contamination of the water sources from sanitary facilities, agricultural outflows etc. The other challenge arises from the fact that most boreholes in Malawi are drilled by private individuals or Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) with lack of basic knowledge regarding the hydrogeological conditions of the areas where they are working. This is exacerbated by the lack of Government supervision enforcement of existing regulation. This paper discusses the major steps that Malawi government has taken in the provision of potable water as a way of implementing SDG 6, the major challenges it is facing and possible solutions.
© The Author(s), 2023
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