Untreated sewage threatens seas, coastal population.

• Position: Risks

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) called for Governments to back wastewater emission targets as a key step towards cleaning up the world's seas and reducing the number of people at risk of disease because of lack of access to basic sanitation services.

One way of dealing with the problem is to "set realistic but ambitious wastewater emission targets", UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said, stressing that they should be "linked to a timetable when the targets should be met". Doing this, he added, would "allow us to tackle this scourge once and for all, so that current and future generations can have access to safe healthy, drinking water and enjoy coastal areas free from contaminated bathing waters and polluted natural resources".

According to a UNEP report published on 3 October 2002, almost 40 per cent of world population lives in coastal areas less than 60 kilometres from the shore, most of which are being threatened by untreated sewage discharges. The report was compiled in response to a target agreed upon at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg, South...