Municipal water accounts for less than a tenth of human water use, but clean drinking water is a critical need. Today, half of the world’s population live in towns and cities and one‐third of this urban population live without clean drinking water. These billion have‐nots are unevenly distributed across the globe: 700 million city dwellers in Asia, 150 million in Africa, and 120 million in Latin America and the Caribbean. In recent years, governments and city councils have begun to take an increasing interest in the opportunities for offsetting or reducing some of the costs of maintaining urban water supplies—and, perhaps even more importantly, water quality—through management.
