The inability to provide the inhabitants of this world with sanitary solutions that prevent sickness and poor health, protect the environment and provide dignity and privacy might be our civilisations greatest failure. In this issue of Stockholm Water Front, we present an analysis of the 2006 UNDP Human Development Report, Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis, a report launched in November which SIWI contributed to by providing background information for its development.