For more than 884 million people across the planet today, the tasks of finding and gathering clean, safe drinking water are issues of daily survival. More than 2.5 billion people in the world lack access to basic sanitation facilities, such as a hygienic latrine. And these numbers are projected to increase greatly in the future.

Population trends, economic development, urbanization, industrialization, technological development, climate change, and increased flows of information and understanding will both improve and cause further deterioration of water access, water quality, and sanitation services. Shortfalls in these areas already significantly impact economic development, environmental security, and geopolitical stability across the world.

An estimated 40 billion working hours are lost each year in Africa to the gathering of water, implying huge costs in forgone productivity. The burden of disease caused by unsafe drinking water is yet another barrier to economic growth. Diarrheal diseases alone are estimated to cost $40 billion annually in disability-adjusted life years. The deteriorating water quality of China and India's countryside are poisoning nearby inhabitants, increasing the risks of social upheavals or stunted economic growth. Wang Shucheng, minister of water resources in China, was recently quoted as saying, "Hundreds of thousands Chinese are afflicted with various diseases from drinking water that contains too much fluorine, arsenic, sodium sulfate, or bitter salt."
Beyond internal strife, cross-border conflicts over shared water supplies are not far-fetched. In the last five years alone, according to the Pacific Institute's Water Conflict Chronology, water supplies have been at the heart of at least 31 conflicts ranging from attempted terrorist attacks to development disputes. Across the planet, 261 river basins are shared by two or more countries and 13 are shared by five or more countries. Many of those shared water resources are situated in regions, namely the Middle East and Africa, also facing the challenges of high population growth, stagnant economic growth, and political instability.