On average women and children travel 10-15 kilometres per day collecting water and carrying up to 20 kilos or 15 litres per trip.

It is estimated that the average person in developed countries uses 500-800 litres of water per day (300 m³ per year), compared to 60-150 litres per day (20 m3 per year) in developing countries.

A child born in the developed world consumes 30 to 50 times as much water resources as one in the developing world.

In the poorest countries, 1 out of every 5 children fails to reach his or her 5th birthday, mainly due to infectious and environmental diseases that arise from poor water quality.

The Global Water Supply and Sanitation 2000 Assessment (WHO/UNICEF, 2000) shows that 1.1 billion people lack access to improved water supply and 2.4 billion to improved sanitation.

In Asia, almost 84% of the water withdrawal is used for agricultural purposes, compared to 71% for the world.

If children are taught proper hygiene, primary schooling can transform them into health educators for their families, passing on information and skills to reduce vulnerability to deadly diarrhoeal diseases by at least 40%.

An estimated 80% of the pollutants entering coastal waters, mostly from land-based sources, are transported via rivers, and there are clear links between upstream river basins and associated coastal zones.

Levels of suspended solids in rivers in Asia have risen by a factor of 4 over the last three decades.

Asian rivers have a biological oxygen demand some 1.4 times the global average, as well as 3 times as many bacteria from human waste as the global average.

In order for the Millennium Development Goal related to drinking water and sanitation to be met by 2015, 961 million urban dwellers must gain access to improved water supply, and 1 billion to improved sanitation.

Within 25 years, half the world's population could have trouble finding enough freshwater for drinking and irrigation.

Every 8 seconds a child dies from drinking contaminated water (that's 10,000 a day!)

During the 20th century the World's urban population increased more than tenfold, where as the rural population grew only twofold, propelling the water demand into scarce levels in some regions of the world.

Every year, around 10.8 million children die before their 5th birthday and, of these, 4 million die before they reach 1 month of age.

Freshwater ecosystems such as rivers, lakes and wetlands occupy less than 2% of the Earth's total land surface

Problems of poverty are inextricably linked with those of water - it availability, proximity, quantity and its quality. Improving the poor's access to water has the potential to make a major contribution towards poverty eradication.

The world’s population is growing by about 80 million people a year, implying increased freshwater demand of about 64 billion cubic metres a year.

Water has unique properties that make it the best solvent for the kind of chemistry that we need to start and sustain life.