Publishing targets for water-related disease control

Article 6(2) of the 1999 Draft Protocol on Water and Health to the 1992 Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes, states: the Parties shall each establish and publish national and/or local targets for the standards and levels of performance that need to be achieved or maintained for a high level of protection against water-related disease. These targets shall be periodically revised. In doing all this, they shall make appropriate practical and/or other provisions for public participation, within a transparent and fair framework, and shall ensure that due account is taken of the outcome of the public participation.

Except where national or local circumstances make them irrelevant for preventing, controlling and reducing water-related disease, the targets shall cover, inter alia: (a) the quality of the drinking water supplied, taking into account the Guidelines for drinking-water quality of the World Health Organization; (b) the reduction of the scale of outbreaks and incidents of water-related disease; (c) the area of territory, or the population sizes or proportions, which should be served by collective systems for the supply of drinking water or where the supply of drinking water by other means should be improved; (d) the area of territory, or the population sizes or proportions, which should be served by collective systems of sanitation or where sanitation by other means should be improved; (e) the levels of performance to be achieved by such collective systems and by such other means of water supply and sanitation respectively; (f) the application of recognized good practice to the management of water supply and sanitation, including the protection of waters used as sources for drinking water; (g) the occurrence of discharges of: (i) untreated waste water; and (ii) untreated storm water overflows from waste-water collection systems to waters within the scope of this Protocol; (h) the quality of discharges of waste water from waste-water treatment installations to waters within the scope of this Protocol; (i) the disposal or reuse of sewage sludge from collective systems of sanitation or other sanitation installations and the quality of waste water used for irrigation purposes, taking into account the Guidelines for the safe use of waste water and excreta in agriculture and aquaculture of the World Health Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme; (j) the quality of waters which are used as sources for drinking water, which are generally used for bathing or which are used for aquaculture or for the production or harvesting of shellfish; (k) the application of recognized good practice to the management of enclosed waters generally available for bathing; (l) the identification and remediation of particularly contaminated sites which adversely affect waters within the scope of this Protocol or are likely to do so and which thus threaten to give rise to water-related disease; (m) the effectiveness of systems for the management, development, protection and use of water resources, including the application of recognized good practice to the control of pollution from sources of all kinds; (n) the frequency of the publication of information on the quality of the drinking water supplied and of other waters relevant to the targets in this paragraph in the intervals between the publication of information under article 7, paragraph 2.