A sprawling settlement of houses, cut by a single road, is seen on the dusty hillsides of Pachacútec, a desert suburb of Lima, Peru, 24 January 2015. Although Latin America (as a whole) is blessed with an abundance of fresh water, having 20% of global water resources in the the Amazon Basin and the highest annual rainfall of any region in the world, an estimated 50-70 million Latin Americans (one-tenth of the continent's population) lack access to safe water and 100 million people have no access to any safe sanitation. Complicated geographical conditions (mainly on the Pacific coast), unregulated industrialization (causing environmental pollution) and massive urban poverty, combined with deep social inequality, have caused a severe water supply shortage in many Latin American regions.
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