Around 2 billion people don’t have access to safe drinking water, a major United Nations report has found.

联合国一份重要报告发现，约有20亿人无法获得安全饮用水。

Several factors are to blame, says Richard Connor at the UN, the report’s lead author. Rising urban populations, expanding agriculture, a lack of waste water-treatment infrastructure and climate change all play a role, he says.

该报告的主要作者、联合国的理查德？康纳（Richard Connor）表示，这要归咎于几个因素，包括城市人口的增加、农业的扩张、废水处理基础设施的缺乏以及气候变化等。

The UN World Water Development Report is being published as the UN’s first major conference on water since 1977 gets under way in New York.

联合国世界水发展报告发布之际，联合国自1977年以来在纽约举行的第一次关于水的重要会议正在举行。

It is intended as an update on progress towards ensuring that everyone in the world has access to safe drinking water by 2030 – one of the UN’s sustainable development goals adopted in 2015.

这是联合国2015年通过的可持续发展目标之一，旨在确保世界上每个人到2030年都能获得安全饮用水。

This goal is severely off track, says Connor. “Achieving universal coverage by 2030 will require a quadrupling of the current rates of progress in the provision of water and supply services.”

康纳说，这个目标严重偏离了轨道。“要想到2030年实现全民安全用水，需要在提供水和供应服务方面，将目前的进展速度提高四倍。”

The report has found that the global demand for water has risen by 1 per cent each year for the past 40 years and will continue to rise at a similar rate for the next 30 years. “This growth in demand is concentrated in emerging economies and lower-income countries,” says Connor. In particular, urban water demand is projected to increase by 80 per cent by 2050.

该报告发现，过去40年来，全球水需求每年增长1%，并将在未来30年继续以类似的速度增长。“这种需求增长集中在新兴经济体和低收入国家，”康纳说。特别是，预计到2050年，城市用水需求将增加80%。

The provision of adequate waste water-treatment infrastructure isn’t keeping up with this increase in demand, the report found. It says 80 per cent of the world’s waste water flows back into the environment without being treated or reused. Consequently, at least 2 billion people use a source of drinking water that is contaminated with faeces, which puts them at risk of contracting various diseases, such as cholera.

报告发现，足量的废水处理基础设施跟不上需求的增长。报告说，全球80%的废水未经处理或再利用就流回了环境中。因此，至少有20亿人使用被粪便污染的饮用水源，进而面临感染霍乱等各种疾病的风险。

Climate change is likely to make it even harder to access clean water around the world, says Connor. Seasonal water scarcity will become more common in parts of the world that don’t currently experience such issues and more acute in regions where it is already a major problem, he says.

康纳说，气候变化可能会使世界各地获得清洁水变得更加困难。他说，季节性缺水将在世界上目前还没有遇到此类问题的地区变得更加普遍，在已经成为主要问题的地区变得更加严重。

The global urban population facing water shortages is projected to increase from 933 million people in 2016 to 2.4 billion people in 2050, with India projected to be the most affected country.

全球面临水资源短缺的城市人口，预计将从2016年的9.33亿人增加到2050年的24亿人，印度预计将是受影响最严重的国家。

The report also found that 46 per cent of the world’s population, making up 3.6 billion people, lack access to a toilet or latrine that disposes of human waste safely. Connor says the lack of access to water and sanitation around the world comes down to insufficient political will and priority-setting.

该报告还发现，世界人口的46%，即36亿人，缺乏安全处理人类排泄物的厕所。康纳说，世界各地缺乏水和卫生设施的问题，可以归结为政治意愿和优先事项设定不足。