Access to Clean Water

Water covers 70% of the Earth's surface, yet clean, safe drinking water remains out of reach for billions of people. Access to water is not just a health issue — it shapes education, economic opportunity, and gender equality. And as climate change intensifies droughts, floods, and extreme weather, the pressure on water systems is growing faster than the infrastructure to manage them.

Access to clean water is a deceptively complex problem. In low-income countries, the barriers are physical: no pipes, no treatment infrastructure, no reliable source within reasonable reach. Women and girls bear most of the burden of collection, spending an estimated 200 million hours every day fetching water — time taken from school, work, and rest. In wealthier countries, the challenge looks different: aging infrastructure, lead pipes, agricultural runoff, and industrial contamination compromise water quality in communities that believe they are safe. The crisis in Flint, Michigan, where a predominantly low-income Black community was exposed to lead-contaminated water for years, showed that water insecurity is not only a problem of the developing world. Climate change is adding pressure from all directions — droughts reduce freshwater availability, floods contaminate existing sources, and rising temperatures increase demand precisely when supply is shrinking. The business opportunity in water technology is enormous, but investment tends to flow toward markets that can pay, leaving the communities with the greatest need the least served.

Each dimension of the water challenge affects different populations in different ways. Pick the one your team wants to dig into, then take it to your worksheet.