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Chapter 3 - Track ing Zambia’s Environmental Per formance
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The percentage of land covered by forests in
Zambia decreased from 66 per cent in 1990 to
55.9 per cent in 2007, and this has been a serious
cause of concern.
High priority efforts to curb deforestation and to
regenerate forest cover are needed in order to
protect and enable more sustainable use of the
country’s rich natural resource base and to improve
resilience to the impacts of climate change.
With regards to sustainable access to drinking
water and sanitation, the proportion of households
Target: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies
and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources; reduce
biodiversity loss, achieving by 2010 a significant reduction in the rate of loss;
halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe
drinking water and basic sanitation, and by 2020, to have achieved a significant
improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.
Target 10: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water
and basic sanitation
WaterAid, 2000
without access to a clean water source was
reduced from 51 per cent in 1990 to 40 per cent
in 2006. However, this number grew from
26 per cent in 1991 to 36.1 per cent in 2006.
More work is needed in order to reduce the
proportion of households without access to clean
water to 25.5 per cent. This can be done through
improved access to boreholes, replacing old wells
in rural settings and increasing access to treated
municipal water in peri-urban areas (UNDP, 2012).