Qatar Ecuador world cup prediction based on access to water and sanitation
Using SDG 6 to predict the world cup:
During the FIFA World Cup, the expert team of Nazava is going to predict the outcomes of the games by comparing the countries performance on access to clean water and sanitation or Sustainable Development Goal number 6. For the sake of simplicity we only use
- The amount of people that can drink from a tap in their house, or phrased by the UN as the “proportion of the population using safely managed drinking water services” (SDG 6.1.1)
- The percentage of people having access to a proper sewer system or as the UN says The percentage of the population with access to a safely managed sanitation system
- The amount of people that can wash their hands, defined by the UN as the percentage of the population that has a hand washing facility at home.
- A wild card. This will be a totally subjective or maybe even somehow objective observation by the Nazava Word Cup Prediction team
Let’s quickly start with the opening match of the World Championship . Qatar, the host against Ecuador.
Match 1: Qatar – Ecuador
Qatar Country background. Very rich no rich football history.
Qatar is the 56th largest economy in the world and the richest country in terms of GDP per capita. It is currently ranked 50th in the FIFA country ranking. It never participated.
Ecuador. Ambitious Andean country.
Where Qatar is the richest country in the world per capita, Ecuador ranks 106th just below Indonesia. It ranks 44 on the FIFA country ranking . Ecuador has already been 3 times in the FIFA rankings. Their best performance was in 2006, where they were eliminated in the Round of 16.
Ok enough generalities who is going to win this match.
Percentage of population that can drink from a tap in their house
In Qatar according to the UN statistics 96 % of the population can drink from the tap in their house. Now we have to be a little strict here. 88 % of the population in Qatar is migrant and there have been ample reports of migrant workers not being provided with water. To be conservative we only count that 96% of 12 % has access to safe drinking water which is than 11.52 percent which we – generous as always – round to 12% .
We also run the google search – can I drink from the tap in Qatar. Also google says it is safe. Your correspondent has tested it and the taste is not great and it is a little warm, but hey, this is a desert country!
In Ecuador according to the UN website 67 % can drink water from the tap in their house. We think this is a little bit of a flattered figure. What we get from the web is that indeed some cities have good quality water. Urbanization rate is also nearly 67 % in Ecuador but not everybody in the city is connected to a water pipe so to be conservative we correct this to 51% which is still not bad at all. Generally travelers are advised to filter or buy bottled water in Ecuador. We recommend filtering of course (yes with a Nazava Water Filter ) because in 49 percent of the cases your water is not safe.
The winner on safe drinking water is Ecuador.
Amount of households connect to a proper sewer system
In Qatar 97% of households are connected to a proper sewer system. Qatar does a fair job in treating that water. The small state aims to reuse 90 % of its waste water for irrigation . Waste water is perfect for irrigation as it already contains some nutrients (fertilizers) hence also the word fertigation. Remember that one!
Again we have here the issue that migrant workers often do not have access to these toilets, they have to pay or their toilets are really dirty. We feel forced to cut the figure by half leaving 49%.
In Ecuador 42 % of the households have a proper sanitation system. This is a very high number for a country in this development stage. It might be a bit flattered by a lot of effort has been done to upgrade those facilities so we stick here with the official number
Result: A small win for Qatar
Percentage of households where you can wash your hands with soap.
For reasons that we do not know, please send us a message if you know, nobody can wash their hands with soaps in their house in Qatar. At least that is what the data says. It might be Qatar is not providing data or in a format that the UN does not understand. We have checked at Qatar Airport – which is not a household – running water & soap was widely available.
Ecuador’s official figure (is 87%) is very good and the same as the access to water figure. We think that the real figure might be a little lower but for the contest that is irrelevant.
Result: a clear win for Ecuador
Wild card on SDG 6 for Qatar or Ecuador?
This is a tricky one. On the one hand Qatar has come far. They hardly have fresh water sources available which makes it a great achievement to have almost universal access to water (for native Qataris that is). We also want to give a special mention to Qatar Airlines who kept on flying during the pandemic and also to Al Jazeera whose international station is a good addition to the other news channels. Al Jazeera also often discusses water and sanitation issues.
On the other hand, Ecuador has a lot less natural resources than Qatar but nevertheless made excellent progress. Of course, the Andean country has ample water sources.
With the homeland advantage we give this one to QATAR.
