It is not often that we can report that international environmental goals are met but this is a good one and it is five years ahead of the target. One of the Millennium Development Goals, agreed at the United Nations in 2000, to halve the number of people in the world without access to clean drinking water by 2015, has been met five years early. according to a just-released World Health Organization / UNICEF report.

The UN estimates that an estimated 89 per cent of the global population now use improved drinking water sources. Despite this enormous accomplishment, 780 million people remain unserved.

Progress on sanitation has not been so good. An estimated 2.5 billion people are still without improved sanitation; almost three quarters of them in rural areas.

A press release and the detailed report can be found at http://www.unep.org/newscentre/Default.aspx?DocumentID=2676&ArticleID=9068&l=en