‘Progress on Household Drinking Water and Sanitation 2000–2024’ provides a special focus on inequalities and finds that, while there has been progress over the past decade, billions of people still lack access to WASH services creating health risks and greater social exclusion.

The report finds that people living in low-income countries, fragile contexts, rural communities, children, and minority ethnic and indigenous groups face the greatest disparities.

Key findings include that:

• Despite gains since 2015, 1 in 4 (1 billion people globally) still lack access to safely managed drinking water, including 106 million who drink directly from untreated surface sources.
• 4 billion people still lack safely managed sanitation, including 354 million who practice open defaecation.
• 7 billion people still lack basic hygiene services at home, including 611 million without access to any facilities.
• People in least developed countries are more than twice as likely as people in other countries to lack basic drinking water and sanitation services and are more than three times as likely to lack basic hygiene.
• In fragile countries safely managed drinking water coverage is 38% lower than in other countries.
• While there have been improvements for people living in rural areas, there is still a gap in service delivery. Safely managed drinking water coverage rose from 50% to 60% between 2015 and 2024, with basic hygiene rising from 52% to 71%. Meanwhile, drinking water and hygiene coverage in urban areas has stagnated.
• Data from 70 countries shows that while most women and adolescent girls have menstrual materials and a private place to change, many lack sufficient materials to change as often as needed.
• Adolescent girls aged 15-19 are less likely than adult women to participate in activities during menstruation.
• In most countries with available data, women and girls are primarily responsible for water collection, with many in sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Southern Asia spending more than 30 minutes per day collecting water.
• As we approach the last five years of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) deadline, achieving the 2030 targets for ending open defaecation and universal access to WASH services will require acceleration, while universal coverage of safely managed services appears increasingly out of reach.

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More than half the world’s population live in urban areas. Many growing towns and cities, especially in the Global South, are marked by inadequate sanitation, sewage and drainage facilities. With 3.5 billion people still lacking access to safe sanitation, most national and global sanitation drives have tended to focus on toilet construction, sewer connections and hardware. These have often ignored the second and third generation challenges of sanitation concerning water contamination, poor faecal sludge management, gender, equity and sustainability.

Yet, these challenges can also be an opportunity. Human waste is rich in water, nutrients and organic compounds, but, usually, this mostly goes down the drain. The increase of extreme weather events, water shortages, and weak infrastructure mean that ‘flush and forget’ systems are not always possible or desirable in off-grid settings. This is why the project ‘Towards Brown Gold’ sought to understand the potential for reuse of faecal waste and how marginalised communities experience sanitation in five rapidly urbanising areas across four countries: Nanded and Alleppey, India; Mekelle, Ethiopia; Wa, Ghana; and Gulariya, Nepal. The research was both inter- and trans-disciplinary, seeking to integrate the social sciences, engineering, microbiology and creative arts to understand the socio-political, technical, cultural and microbial processes and contexts of sanitation and waste processes.

A springboard for progress

Northern European countries have been piloting new approaches at increasing scale. According to the Toilet Board Coalition, the sanitation crisis can enable innovation and provide resources for a trillion-dollar global industry. In India alone, the predicted market for waste recovery and reuse is as large as $9–28 billion. 

Contextual challenges

Despite this potential, the ‘Towards Brown Gold’ project found that the challenges of resource recovery from human waste might have been underestimated. The potential for reuse was found to be limited by the combined challenges of the existing sanitation infrastructure, pervasive cultural perceptions, a lack of cross-sector collaboration, and a narrative that exaggerates the benefits of the circular sanitation economy and endorses a market driven approach to sanitation.

Moreover, for reuse efforts to be successful and perceived as relevant by communities, they need to happen in a context of high sanitation coverage or come with a wider push to ensure everybody has access to sanitation. In reality, access to safely managed sanitation services was found to be lagging across the countries studied. Progress is particularly slow among groups marginalised because of their caste, class, gender and migration history. 

Sanitation progress is often hampered by insufficient resources that are skewed towards centralised sewered systems, unclear roles and responsibilities, and poor intersectoral collaboration across water, health, urban and rural development. 

Steps to success

The policy brief from the ‘Towards Brown Gold’ research project highlights six ways decision-makers can realise the potential for resource recovery from human waste and accelerate progress towards universal, safely managed sanitation in rapidly urbanising areas:

Make safely managed sanitation a political priority

National and urban level governments need to create, reform and implement policies, strategies and regulations to ensure there is sufficient funding and resources so that everybody has access to a toilet at home, and that faecal waste is managed in a way that protects public health and the environment. Acknowledgment of the global prevalence of non-sewered systems is central to the revision of policies and plans. Particular attention should be put on reaching and involving communities and residents who are poor and marginalised by society, such as those living in informal settlements.

Facilitate inclusive sanitation planning

Urban planners and policymakers need to address the multifaceted challenges of sanitation in an inclusive way, recognising the historical and social contexts of sanitation issues, and how communities who are marginalised experience sanitation. These communities’ voices and demands must be central to the planning process, and to holding authorities and service providers to account.

Protect the rights of sanitation workers

Governments need to properly recognise the crucial roles of sanitation workers – those emptying septic tanks and pits, unblocking sewers or operating treatment plants – in keeping sanitation services running and their towns and communities clean and liveable. Recognising their work includes protecting their rights to fair wages, social security, safety at work and self-organisation (such as with unions). Sanitation efforts must always include the health, safety and dignity of sanitation workers, both formal and informal.

Cautiously promote the circular sanitation economy

Reusing treated faecal waste, such as for irrigation or as compost, has positive impacts for the economy, the environment and climate change mitigation and adaptation. This circular sanitation economy can help accelerate progress, but overselling its benefits can be counterproductive, undermining the message that public investment is critical to ensure sanitation services for all. The promotion of the circular sanitation economy should instead be: realistic about the benefits and the many challenges involved; aware of community priorities; and integrated into a wider sanitation push to close any gaps in access to toilets and to address the whole sanitation service chain.

Ground reuse efforts in the context

Those designing and leading sanitation circular economy initiatives should ensure that their efforts are grounded in local, economic, social and cultural contexts. This includes considering economic aspects such as where farmers buy compost, or whether other product types could be more profitable. This should also include social aspects such as cultural perceptions of waste, or how to effectively raise awareness of the benefits of reuse. Engaging an interdisciplinary team is an effective way of doing this, combining natural and social sciences, as well as art-based approaches to community engagement.

Reform policy to enable reuse

Decision-makers need to invest in understanding and improving the enabling environment for sanitation in general, and reuse in particular. Policies and regulations should create positive incentives to reuse and eliminate existing barriers.

Overall, there is a need for policy and political reimagination to radically consider alternative models and increase financial allocations and commitments to safely managed sanitation solutions that are sustainable and inclusive for all.

More information

washmatters.wateraid.org/publications/towards-brown-gold-challenges-opportunities-reuse-universal-sanitation-urban-areas

The authors:

Lyla Mehta is a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies and a Visiting Professor at Noragric, Norwegian University of Life Sciences; Andrés Hueso González is senior policy analyst – sanitation at WaterAid; Alan Nicol is principal researcher at the International Water Management Institute; and Ben O’Donovan-Iland is communications and impact officer at the Institute of Development Studies

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What are the key challenges for capacity building in the sanitation sector for amplifying/mainstreaming or institutionalising the Citywide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS) framework and principles?

Osward M Chanda, IUS Advisory Board member

To empower relevant stakeholders and organisations in general – and onsite sanitation in particular – advocacy and awareness campaigns should be the starting point for decision-makers to understand and prioritise onsite sanitation systems in addition to conventional sewerage systems.

Service providers do not consider non-sewered systems as part of their scope of responsibilities. New sanitation approaches, including non-sewered sanitation, and non-conventional approaches to sewerage services will require a change of mindset. Thus, there is a need to prioritise capacity enhancement around CWIS frameworks and principles for all sanitation professionals.

There are insufficient financial resources and incentives to undertake capacity building activities at local level. There is the need for a sustainable sanitation financing framework with specific allocation towards capacity building activities, and work must be undertaken to address the unclear legal and regulatory environment to improve action on capacity building.

Stakeholder coordination for mainstreaming CWIS principles is critical for the institutionalisation of CWIS principles among communities, community-based organisations, local authorities, service providers/utilities, funders and line ministries.

As little attention is paid to the poor and the most vulnerable in society – those who stand to benefit more from the CWIS framework and principles – for CWIS to be successful there is the need for advocacy and capacity building, so the people who stand to benefit the most are carried along in the mainstreaming process.

Engagement through mobilisation, sensitisation and advocacy (as part of capacity building activities with communities, including social and gender mainstreaming) would enable the CWIS framework to be better tailored to offer solutions that address the distinct requirements of communities.

Finally, data collection remains a challenge. Data is essential to drive the process of institutionalising CWIS, as the sanitation sector traditionally has lacked the technical capabilities and proper tools needed to gather, manage and analyse sanitation data across the sanitation value chain.

There is a need for robust data collection and management systems to provide a basis for evidence based policy decision-making, and ensuring that these data systems can inform and monitor city-level, sector and national progress of CWIS.

Annabell Waititu, IWA IUS Task Force member and Vice President of Programmes at Big Five Africa

CWIS is a significantly new shift from the traditional model of sanitation. In the past, everybody looked on sanitation as the responsibility of the household. Because of this, policies are inadequate to support institutions adopting CWIS. So, we need to be thinking where we should begin.

In terms of capacity building, it is very important for us to ask ourselves who needs what training and what policies are available. For example, in Kenya the regulator was only focused on water services, but now they must regulate sanitation as well – yet they don’t have standards for sanitation, and it is difficult for these to be decided upon. Regulation is difficult if the standards are not there, and it is unclear what the rules are for different organisations. Things are very unclear, and policies are needed to guide decision-makers.

Service providers such as the water utilities in Kenya were not dealing with civil sanitation previously, so we need to look at the kind of staffing and the skills we have – expertise in non-sewered sanitation for example. It will take time to come up with good policies that will address all the issues and all the interests of the individuals concerned, as well as introducing the different kinds of technologies that should be working to improve sanitation for communities. Water service providers have engineers who can deal with civil engineering, but they don’t have expertise in CWIS.

Please could you provide an example of success that would be valuable to others in the sector.

Chanda says:

Incorporating the CWIS approach in infrastructure planning has not only proven to be efficient, but has also provided a range of solutions/models that have shown a lot of positive impacts.

In Kenya, during feasibility studies for four water supply and sewerage projects, the approach led to the scaling up of CWIS integration in most programmes implemented by other water and sanitation development agencies.

The CWIS SAP tool for investment decision-making led to modelling of different investment scenarios, such as use of sewer only, mixed use (sewer and non-sewered sanitation) and onsite sanitation, to determine the best investment option.

The implementing agencies gained from additional data collected on the number and type of containment, transport and treatment systems, which informed decision-making. They then came up with service delivery mechanisms and different business models to incentivise the private sector and ensure there are options for revenue generation for the utility. Those agencies used the improved terms of reference that incorporate CWIS activities and qualified CWIS personnel in their new consultancy assignments.

In Zambia, the Lusaka sanitation programme has carried out a successful city-wide capacity building intervention, involving all actors and laying the foundations for understanding the city’s sanitation challenges, inculcating and equipping them with the essential knowledge framework and resources to plan, execute and oversee the CWIS approach as part of their day-to-day mandate.

The actors are the Lusaka City Council, Ministry of Health, and Lusaka Water and Sewerage Company (LWSSC). As part of capacity building initiatives, the project supported and operationalised the LWSSC sanitation monitoring system. This is fully integrated with other software systems of the Lusaka City Council and the Ministry of Health, enabling data aggregation, reducing duplication, and enabling actors to implement and manage their various programmes and projects in the sanitation sector. It also provides them with analytical tools to analyse and improve decision-making. At the strategic level, it enables government, through the Ministry of Water Development and Sanitation, to transparently see the performance of the sanitation sector.

Waititu says:

We have had quite a bit of success in Nairobi,because we have seen a few projects that are really addressing the issue of non-sewered sanitation, looking at the entire value chain and making sure that the construction of sanitation facilities is appropriate. These projects have worked with local communities to ensure that sewage is captured and contained. They have also provided education on the importance of appropriate containment. This environment has helped develop partnerships and improve opportunities for investment.

Attention is being given to the safe transportation of sewage for treatment. The waste is then treated and turned into fuel, with products produced for industrial and household use.

There is also work being done to professionalise manual sanitation work, providing better training, uniforms, PPE and other equipment, accompanied by education for communities about what is suitable to be disposed of in sanitation facilities, which has helped sanitation workers do their work more efficiently. This has made a huge difference. Manual sanitation workers are now professional and respected, and they are supporting the whole process of sanitation in informal settlements in urban areas. l

More information

iwa-network.org/projects/inclusive-sanitation

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Urban sanitation has come a long way since the turn of the century, with Citywide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS) providing a much-needed impetus since 2016. The CWIS approach incorporated various developments around equitable and sustainable service delivery, and redefined sanitation as a comprehensive service considering the entire service chain, embracing both sewered and non-sewered technologies. For water professionals, CWIS represents a crucial shift in how we approach urban sanitation, moving beyond a conventional infrastructure focused approach to welcome innovative service models.

CWIS is an approach built on the foundations of the Human Right to Sanitation that was ratified in 2012, and the sanitation related targets that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) introduced in 2016. CWIS emphasised that an enabling environment for sanitation – including policy, institutions and accountability, inclusive and equitable planning, financing, and capacities – were essential for any technological intervention to deliver results sustainably.

State of the art of CWIS

Since its inception, CWIS has evolved through various research and implementation experiences. From more than 75 scientific articles and practitioner-targeted reports that were labelled as CWIS – and that directly used the concept – an IWA paper discussing its ‘state of the art’ was published recently.

In this paper, four conceptual frameworks on CWIS are identified, which were developed by the Asian Development Bank, Eawag, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the World Bank respectively. There is considerable overlap and commonality between these frameworks. They do not explicitly contradict each other, but rather simply attach different importance to the various aspects of the concept.

Conceptual priorities

Most of CWIS publications reviewed covered institutions, regulations and planning, while technologies and public health have been given less coverage. This is not to claim that CWIS sees the latter as less important, but simply that the latter have had major coverage in conventional urban sanitation literature, and CWIS literature seems to have given more balance to the ‘software’ aspects of urban sanitation.

Despite the significant quantum of knowledge products related to CWIS, there is a lack of practical guidance on adopting the CWIS approach to effect holistic change. IWA’s Inclusive Urban Sanitation Stories have curated a valuable collection of examples that have demonstrated the CWIS approach through various policies and practices in low- and middle-income contexts.

Emerging issues that are highly relevant for urban sanitation, including climate resilience, integration with urban development, and sanitation worker safety, have been missed from much of the sanitation literature. The spirit of CWIS will keep evolving and, in time, incorporate new evidence, and so produce new concepts.

World Water Congress & Exhibition 2024

IWA’s World Water Congress & Exhibition in Toronto, Canada, served as an excellent platform for discussion. This was apparent from the increased prominence of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), and particularly sanitation, in the conference agenda.

During the event, several useful formal and informal discussions related to CWIS took place. One important thread that emerged was during a technical session that showed a combination of technologies at different scales could co-exist in the same city and be optimised to achieve multiple goals. For example, a city could have a mix of centralised and decentralised sewer-based systems, varied types of on-site blackwater and greywater treatment, and even reinvented household-level treatment. Such a mix could potentially be optimised for not only improved public health and environmental protection, but also for greenhouse gas emissions, and resource efficiency and recovery.

Another major theme that emerged was around the innovation of WASH systems – addressing both technology and service models. A wide range of innovations in regulations, financing and low-cost technologies were showcased in various sessions, showing the potential actors (or stakeholders) that may be involved in sanitation provision. Finally, several discussions in youth-driven sessions and university partnerships, such as ‘WASH Canada’, focused on enhancing capacities for the next generation of water and sanitation professionals, highlighting the critical importance of any new approach to WASH, including CWIS.

Developments in the sector

The CWIS approach has benefitted from the long-standing commitment of various sector institutions, which have supported its conceptualisation, the development of decision support tools, and capacity-building initiatives. The shift in the strategies of certain donors towards a more technology-driven approach will undoubtedly have an impact on the momentum of CWIS. Notwithstanding this shift, it is important to recognise that CWIS has gained considerable traction among key implementation actors over the years. Governments, multilateral development banks, and UN agencies have embraced CWIS principles, demonstrating the broader acceptance and sustainability of the approach.

As the sector evolves the focus should now be on consolidating the progress made thus far and building upon this foundation. Whether projects are labelled as ‘CWIS’ or not, the approach has given the sector a comprehensive set of factors to work with, bolstering a holistic view of sanitation. The approach should continue to evolve, incorporating the latest knowledge, and remain fluid in its contextual applicability.

More information

Discussion paper on the State of the Art of CWIS (IWA Publishing):

iwaponline.com/ebooks/book/934/Discussion-PaperCitywide-Inclusive-Sanitation

CWIS resources (Eawag-Sandec): www.sandec.ch/cwis

Sankara Narayan, A., Dorea, C., Willetts, J. et al. 2024. ‘A portfolio approach to achieving universal sanitation’. Nature Water. doi.org/10.1038/s44221-024-00336-0

IWA’s IUS initiative plans to support the evolution of CWIS through a global consultation process that aims to gather insights from diverse stakeholders. Emphasising input from local authorities, utilities and service operators, this consultation will compile ‘voices from the field’ to capture practical experiences and knowledge that inform the development of more effective and responsive global sanitation solutions. This effort will culminate in the CWIS Global Forum, scheduled for 2025 at IWA’s Water and Development Congress & Exhibition. Further information will be made available through IWA’s communication platforms.

To find out more, visit: iwa-network.org/projects/inclusive-sanitation

The author: Abishek S Narayan is a researcher at Eawag, Switzerland, and a member of IWA’s Inclusive Urban Sanitation Task Force

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Funding A Water Secure Future: An Assessment of Public Spending quantifies government spending on water and provides analysis of the funding gaps that are required to be filled if public needs are to be met.

The report finds that annual spending in developing countries amounts to $164.6bn, approximately 0.5% of gross domestic product. It also highlights low budget execution rates and inefficiencies as critical weaknesses of the sector and calls for increased private investment, more long-term investment, and a reform of the sector to support the UN’s SDGs.

Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia face the largest spending gaps.

The report underscores the importance of governments investing more in WASH services and using funds effectively. Key recommendations include:
● Reducing the inefficiencies of water service providers by prioritising cost-effective utility operations and improving investment planning for infrastructure development and technology upgrades.
● Minimising disparities in access to water services by targeting investments and water subsidies to poorer and rural communities.
● Catalysing the flow of long-term private and international finance by using risk-pooling arrangements, public sector guarantees, and catalytic capital to invest more, and more often, in water resources.
● Implementing reforms, including the improvement of cost recovery and demand management, developing government capacity and human capital, and strengthening data access, transparency and communications.

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Yvonne Magawa, Executive secretary of the Eastern and Southern Africa Water and Sanitation Regulators Forum (ESAWAS)

Improving access to and quality of sanitation services, alongside the supply of water for all, is the ultimate goal of Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS) regulation. Having recognised that most of the urban population relies on non-sewered sanitation, ESAWAS, as a network of WSS regulators, has begun a paradigm shift towards inclusive sanitation. In 2018, ESAWAS formulated a regulatory framework and strategy to incorporate non-sewered sanitation into regulation. This is now implemented in a number of countries.

The IWA Inclusive Urban Sanitation (IUS) Programme provides ESAWAS with a podium to share and learn how to improve sanitation services with a holistic approach. There is still a long way to go, but the IUS allows lessons to be transposed through the sharing of knowledge across countries and continents, highlighting what is working and what can be adapted to different contexts. This is accelerating uptake of concepts that improve access and the quality of services.

At regional level in East and Southern Africa, countries are beginning to make a difference by organising the sanitation sector and improving accountability. Strong public data systems remain a key challenge for most countries to support effective decision-making, coupled with concerns with regards to resilience. The IUS is playing a strong role in highlighting these areas that need addressing. As ESAWAS, we will continue supporting global efforts to roll-out IUS, with the aim of achieving safely managed sanitation for all.

Sylvain Usher, Executive director of the African Water and Sanitation Association

During decolonisation of most of the African countries in the 1960s, our newly designated heads of states were mainly concerned about giving access to potable water to the population of newly constructed cities, putting together potable water treatment plants and networks and creating the potable water utilities. Thinking about where the used water would go was not the main preoccupation so long as there was a river or sea where the wastewater could be disposed. No awareness was raised about the potential pollution of the environment.

The beginnings of collective sanitation came about through the impetus of the hygiene movement, led by doctors and chemists that had established correlations between stagnant water and certain infectious diseases.

The first steps of sanitation consisted of the installation of ventilated underground piping systems to allow the rapid drainage of water out of urban areas without stagnation. These were the first unitary systems that would constitute the bulk of sanitation during the 1960s.

At the beginning of urbanisation during this period, there was slow migration to the cities, and the population was growing at a rapid pace. These circumstances meant that sanitation had to be taken more seriously.

The World Bank estimates that inadequate sanitation costs African countries billions of dollars each year in lost GDP. This has raised awareness at national-level.

The concept of inclusive urban sanitation is spreading across Africa. Its urgent implementation is required to avoid a hygiene calamity exacerbated by the consequences of climate change. But the concept must be better explained to government and authorities if they are to take serious action.

Neeta Pokhrel, Chief of Water Sector Group, Asian Development Bank, Philippines

One of the challenges of delivering inclusive sanitation is that there is a very narrow focus on what sanitation means and looks like. Also, the drivers for sanitation are not being recognised by investors. The public are not putting politicians under pressure to invest in sanitation, and this is exacerbated by short political cycles. Because the demand is not there, the investment is not there.

Investment depends on cost recovery. There is a leakage of funds, which creates a vicious circle, where there is a small pot of funds, which is wasting away because there is no cost recovery. This means that there aren’t the funds for further investment. These issues are pushing us back and slowing us down.

Sanitation for many people means investment in sewers. Sewers are costly and politicians don’t press for them because they would rather invest in more visible things, such as water supply, bridges, roads, and railways. But if the concept of sanitation was widened to improving health and improving septic tanks, for example, we could grab the low hanging fruit and sanitation wouldn’t just be about huge investment programmes.

Better planning is required to ensure that funds are used effectively. We need to invest in awareness and planning. The ministries, cities and stakeholders can all play a part. We need to recognise that there is a cost to not investing in sanitation. We need to make stakeholders aware of the economic losses from the health impacts of poor sanitation. We need to address this with a coherent message and explain to stakeholders what they can do.

There is a lot of talk. But our messaging needs to be consistent across the development space. There is very fragmented messaging. We need to give politicians a really clear guide. We need to join and work to build investment-ready plans. We need to work upstream to reduce the time that planning takes, so all partners can come together to make delivery easier and accelerate inclusive sanitation.

Thammarat Koottatep, Co-director of Global Water & Sanitation Center, AIT Thailand

The United Nations (UN) has stated that the world is off-track to achieving universal safely managed sanitation by 2030. Progress is evident, but massive challenges remain in ensuring that wastewater treatment facilities are accessible and sustainable, and that discharged wastewater meets the required quality. Despite the challenges, there is a growing momentum where authorities, development partners and other stakeholders collaborate for inclusive sanitation.

The inclusive sanitation service framework strengthens three core public system functions at local and national/state level essential for sanitation services delivery. Those are: 1) Responsibility: a clear public mandate, 2) Accountability: monitoring the performance of authorities against their mandate, 3) Resource planning and management, to effectively manage resources.

The goal is to achieve inclusive sanitation outcomes: 1) Equity: services that reflect fairness in distribution and prioritisation of services, 2) Safety: services that safeguard everyone from risks to safety and health, 3) Sustainability: services that are delivered reliably and continually.

The Global Water & Sanitation Center (GWSC) at the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand has been actively promoting inclusive sanitation through its Technical Assistance Hub. In Madhya Pradesh, India, GWSC has helped to integrate citywide inclusive sanitation across the state’s planning, bidding, and budgeting system. This shift addresses social, economic, and environmental factors, laying a foundation for equity, safety, and sustainability. Tariff reduction strategies have been introduced promoting affordability for all residents, which eventually contributes to achieving universal coverage. The inclusion of urban poor is a significant indicator, as it ensures equitable access to sanitation facilities.

GWSC supports the government of Bangladesh in strengthening public data systems for sanitation in Bangladesh. Lack of data governance hinders the coordination of sanitation development efforts and data initiatives, leaving poor and vulnerable communities without access to water and sanitation services. The National Sanitation Dashboard data governance system will support planning and resources allocation where it’s needed, measuring performance of service delivery, and improving sector policy and regulatory reforms.

Another example is the Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) and the Water and Sewerage Authority (DWASA) in Bangladesh, which have reaffirmed their roles and accountability for delivering faecal sludge management within the city. Given the complexity of a mega city, Dhaka faces challenges in connecting every building to the sewer system and on-site sanitation containment. Both authorities have agreed on a scheduled desludging programme to ensure safety. DNCC oversees the emptying of septic tanks, transporting and disposal of waste to a wastewater treatment facility operated by DWASA.

The UN’s declaration that the world is off-track to achieving universal, safely managed sanitation is a reminder that we need to take the growing momentum for inclusive sanitation as an opportunity to secure functioning core public systems to address the issues that hinder equitable, safe, and sustainable sanitation services.

Item prepared with contributions from Kavinda Gunasekara, Chief Operating Officer, Isha Basyal, Deputy Chief Operating Officer, and Hendra Gupta, Knowledge Management Officer, all at GWSC.

Jennifer Molwantwa, Chief executive officer of the Water Research Commission in South Africa

There are a number of challenges to be addressed to enable the delivery of inclusive sanitation, including the high cost of building infrastructure; the big gap in reaching the unserved with improved technology to achieve the sustainable development goals; the availability of water; and climate change. These form a complex problem that requires a multi-disciplinary approach to be tackled alongside other humanitarian challenges, including access to clean, good quality drinking water, housing and homes, and economic activation, alongside a consistent and cost-effective energy supply.

To address this, funding must be prioritised. Service providers must understand that a blanket approach will not be effective and so seek to find localised solutions that have been found to work and to be acceptable to recipients. Traditional and cultural factors need to be taken into account. With climate smart approaches, new innovations in sanitation can be adopted to carry nations into the future. Equitable access is also essential. While the approaches to delivering sanitation across regions may be different, the human experience must be the same for everyone.

The cost of catching up and redressing the inequalities between the served and unserved will be high. Existing systems will need to be optimised and new operations invented to improve sustainability, make solutions climate smart, and streamline operations and maintenance. A change in the governance of sanitation institutions is required to ensure that sanitation delivery is guided by technical specialists, rather than being part of a broader government department. Sanitation must also be depoliticised.

A technical, commercial type of institution that links water supply and sanitation as key human rights would help to drive change, along with the prioritisation of funding, and investment in the skills of highly technical experts, scientists, engineers, and social scientists.

Mathi Vathanan,  Principal secretary of the government of Odisha in India

Odisha in Eastern India is the country’s eighth largest state by area and the 11th largest by population. In recent years the Odisha state government has worked hard to increase the availability and quality of WASH services in the state, with the aim of achieving city-wide inclusive sanitation (CWIS) that leaves no one out. The government’s policy puts people first, supporting the inclusion of women, transgender people, the urban poor, waste pickers and manual cleaners, and covers all sectors contributing to the delivery of sanitation services, including those managing water, solid and liquid waste, and storm water. The government is seeking to achieve sanitation delivery to cover the entire city area in all its cities, including formal and informal settlements, by securing tenure and implementing urban planning.

The city’s CWIS strategy covers the management and provision of tap water, faecal sludge and septage management, greywater management, decentralised solid waste management, the delivery of cluster and individual household toilets, and leveraging of grants under central and state finance commissions.

To ensure that the right to services is accessible to all sectors of society, the CWIS engages with women’s self-help groups (SHG) and the Slum Dwellers Association (SDA) to empower them to work at grassroots governance as service delivery partners.

Previously solid waste management (SWM) was poor, with a lack of door-to-door collection, source segregation of waste, or a sustainable model for waste management. Waste was managed on a contractor-driven centralised model, with high CAPEX and OPEX, high land requirement, and a ‘Truck and Dump’ approach, with low resource recovery. In contrast, the CWIS programme now achieves 98% collection of segregated waste, delivered to 250 wealth centres across the state, where 93% processing is achieved. With the aim of creating livelihoods and gender parity, 5061 women from 2650 SHG groups are employed across the Odisha SWM value chain for the operation and maintenance (O&M) of SWM assets and service delivery, with 80% of O&M costs going towards wages and incentives for the women from SHGs.

Sanitation workers are organised into groups, with priority given to the safety, dignity, and welfare of workers in the SWM chain. Attention is given to capacity building and the welfare of community partners is supported with the provision of a comfortable workplace lounge, timely payments, uniform, and safety equipment. This waste to wealth model is low tech and scalable, requires much less land than the centralised model, is sustainable and enables data management to support information communication technology tools.

Odisha’s faecal sludge management (FSM) adopts low tech, decentralised, non-sewered, nature-based systems for community led operations of treatment facilities, which are 100% operated and managed by women from SHGs and transgender groups.

In addition to empowering the community, the CWIS programme has improved the environment. In 2017, 19 river stretches were reported to be polluted. In 2022, 12 river stretches were reported as clean, and six river stretches moved from ‘highly polluted’ to ‘marginalised polluted’ status.

A decentralised greywater management system operates as part of a community partnership, incorporating constructed wetlands and lane level trench structures.

Odisha’s Jaga Mission, which is working for the slum dwellers, is empowering people living in informal settlements by granting in situ land rights to residents to mitigate the threat of forced evictions, with 226,000 land rights issued so far. Infrastructure has been upgraded to improve living conditions, with 98% coverage of in-house tap water, 100% coverage of in-house electricity and 87% provision of household toilets. All services are to be extended until saturation is achieved. SDAs are financially empowered for O&M services and SDAs now represent the fourth tier of governance.

Margaret Maina, Managing director of Limuru Water and Sewerage Company, Kenya

Inclusive urban sanitation (IUS) is crucial for cities to provide access to safely managed sanitation in respect to the sanitation value chain. It provides a variety of sanitation solutions to major cities and urban areas where sewered sanitation coverage is unviable due to numerous challenges such as financial constraints, unfavourable topography, and land tenure issues. According to the Impact 15 report by the Water Service Regulatory Board (WASREB), 16% of the Kenyan population have access to sewer connections. Based on these statistics, there is a need to provide alternatives to non-sewered sanitation that incorporates the full sanitation value chain. This will ensure that every Kenyan in urban areas has access to safely managed sanitation, which translates to improved hygiene and public health, ultimately ridding the population of water-related diseases.

Opportunities are many in IUS, since it incorporates different key stakeholders, especially the private sector. This creates an alternative source of funding, innovation, and collaboration between different players, especially considering that 75% of water used in a household is wastewater. There is also an opportunity to recover valuable products from faecal sludge, thus earning revenue from waste.

The greatest challenge in the WASH sector is that sanitation is less prioritised than water. Additionally, the perception of informal sanitation in Low Income Areas is poor and disconnected from the sanitation value chain. More so, there are no standard operating procedures or curriculums that can be used by manual pit workers, who are the main service providers in informal settlements.  l

For more information on IWA’s Inclusive Urban Sanitation initiative, including the new Inclusive Urban Sanitation

Champions programme, see https://iwa-network.org/projects/inclusive-sanitation/

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It started in 2014, when the International Water Association (IWA) assessed fifteen countries and identified a “staggering” skills gap and labour shortage in the water and sanitation sector. The Philippines requires 86,000 more technical field personnel. Mozambique needs another 11,900. In Ghana, 98 percent of the shortfall was in the sanitation sector.

That first-of-its-kind report, An Avoidable Crisis called for “concerted action to strengthen the evidence base” on which to build action plans and “strategies that have high-level political buy-in from multiple actors to ensure sustained, adequate professional and technical capacity.”

In November 2017, the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation answered the call by launching another first-of-its-kind response: a new Masters of Science Programme in Sanitation.

Mariska Ronteltap announced the new degree and diploma at the IWA Development Congress in Buenos Aires, in November 2017. “The MSc programme seeks to meet demand in the sector for overall sanitation experts with allaround capacity,” said Ronteltap, a lecturer on sanitary engineering at UNESCO-IHE, who helped design it.

“There’s been growing demand for more professionals, and this collaboration draws on considerable experience from all levels,” she said.

More than 100 top sanitation experts designed the rigorous curricula to be completed in twelve months, with an emphasis on problem-solving, field experience, and application of active learning methods. To ensure hands-on learning, the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education constructed a state-of-the-art faecal sludge laboratory.

The 12 months are broken into clearly defined weeks that immerse students in relevant topics. Focal areas go beyond the expected fields of sanitation technology, public health, finances and project management, to ensure students fully grasp the critically important social sciences, group dynamics, and behavioural change.

Initially, scholarships will be made available to attract fifteen talented, ambitious, young students to the Netherlands. But the long-term aim is to scale and replicate the programme to be made available at universities throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The programme encourages applicants from South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and women, irrespective of their geographical location.

Preparations have been thorough. Curriculum design appears rigorous and demanding. The resulting diploma should become a unique point of pride. But perhaps the strongest signal of future status for earning an MSc in Sanitation is how it now seems unthinkable that the world could have gone this long without it.

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That was the theme of the discussion on “Argentina Day” at last year’s International Water Association (IWA) Water and Development Congress and Exhibition held in Buenos Aires, where water professionals from around the world and Argentinian officials met to exchange knowledge, experiences, and strategies.

On behalf of the World Bank, I led a discussion on regulation, together with Emilio Lentini, Advisor to Argentina’s Water Resources Secretariat; Rui Cunha Marques, University of Lisbon; and Miguel Solanes, ECLAC, Chile.

Based on the findings of our recent work on Aligning Institutions and Incentives for Sustainable Water and Sanitation Services, I started my presentation by underscoring the interlinkages between regulation, policies, and institutions and the crucial role these factors play in creating incentives to sustainable universal access to water and sanitation services. I also discussed regulation in the context of the new paradigms resulting from the need for many countries to regulate public service providers, thereby shifting from the traditional approach to regulating private companies.

In Argentina, as in other Latin American countries, state owned water companies are more common than privately operated utilities. Publicly owned utilities have traditionally not been regulated—at least in an orthodox manner—as the common belief was that government, through its control of the utility, could strike the right balance between investments, cost recovery, and affordable tariffs. In the last decade, however, regulation of public water utilities has been growing in response to the return of service provision to the government after failed private sector participation (PSP) attempts. This approach has been found to have important advantages, such as the establishment of competent technical regulatory agencies and the increased transparency through independent oversight. Countries as different as Albania, Australia, Colombia, Peru, and Portugal are using regulation and regulatory institutions as part of the mix of policy instruments that seek to ensure that public utilities offer good value and sustainable services to the public.

In Latin America, regulation arose in the context of the wider sector reforms. This included PSP and decentralisation, which in many cases, mirrored the rationale for regulation in developed countries. However, I cautioned that this approach often entailed a mismatch between the needs of the countries and the regulatory model, which functions in the context of varying capacity levels and a different political and institutional culture, and welcomed the discussion on relevant regulatory experiences in Latin America.

Among those experiences, Mr. Marques discussed subsidies schemes in Chile and Colombia that facilitate access and enhance affordability for the poor, and highlighted how direct subsidies and cross subsidies can be effective in different circumstances. He also examined arrangements in place in different countries to regulate public service providers, and underscored the importance of addressing critical challenges associated with incentives, transparency, enforcement, equal treatment of different providers, and politicisation of the regulators. Mr. Solanes argued that strengthening the regulatory function would require a significant behavioural change in water sector institutions, and suggested to hold public service providers and their managers legally accountable for their actions.

At the emblematic Palermo water treatment plant, against the backdrop of a picture displaying the continuous performance improvements of Obras Sanitarias de la Nacion (the former national water utility of Argentina) during the first half of the 20th century, Mr. Lentini highlighted current efforts of the Government in this direction. This included revisions to the tariff structures to achieve cost recovery and design of subsidy schemes to better target the poor and vulnerable groups whilst providing adequate incentives to expand the services and improve their efficiency and quality in a sustainable manner. For that reason, he welcomed the exchange initiated with this session and invited the Bank and other partners to continue sharing regional and global knowledge with Argentina.

We hope the knowledge shared will further inform ongoing efforts by Argentina and other countries in Latin America to continue enhancing the policy, institutional, and regulatory incentives to achieve sustainable access to water and sanitation for all. Stay tuned for more news on our support to the government’s efforts to strengthen water supply and sanitation (WSS) service delivery and regulatory frameworks in Argentina through a comprehensive package of projects and other activities.

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The Public Water and Sanitation Company of Quito, EPMAPS Agua de Quito, has been providing water and sanitation services to Ecuador’s capital for 57 years. Today we serve more than 2.4 million residents of the Metropolitan District of Quito, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In doing so, we apply rigorous quality processes, something that has been recognised by the Ecuador Bureau of Standards, INEN. EPMAPS is the only company in the country to have obtained the INEN quality seal, after complying with 69 parameters of the institution’s Standard 1108.

I have had the good fortune to work for this pioneering company for 31 years, in many departments and projects. This has been personally and professional enriching, but nothing is more satisfying than to know that I’ve been able to contribute to improving the quality of life for my fellow residents.

In that time, we have experienced many challenges such as risks related to a possible eruption of Mt. Cotopaxi, climate change, and flooding, and seen many changes related to the city’s high population growth.

EPMAPS’ business model has Good Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility practices at its heart, and we combine this with short-, medium-, and long-term planning. This model is the foundation for our three pillars of service: sustainability, efficiency and quality. These are supported by one additional pillar: continuous improvement.

When I was appointed as General Manager my priority was to continue the company’s institutional reinforcement. This particularly focuses of governance, planning, ensuring best practices are followed, and striving to identify how and where we can continuously improve. We also focus strongly on delivering a solid Social Responsibility strategy that contributes to the water and sanitation section of the Sustainable Development Goals.

It was this vision that helped us became the first company on the planet to be evaluated using AquaRating. An international standard, AquaRating offers a comprehensive focus on the challenges water and sanitation utilities face, evaluating their performance through indicators and management practices, and providing a framework for improvement. The results can hopefully be replicated in other companies in the country and region.

Potable water and sewage networks serve 99 percent and 93 percent, respectively, of the Metropolitan District of Quito’s residents, an area that includes urban, suburban and rural districts. Since 2010, we have worked hard to reduce the the service gaps between the urban and rural areas, reducing them to 3 percent in potable water and 12 percent in sewerage coverage, in comparison to 7 and 20 percent seven years ago.

Behind these statistics are real people. Today, 371,371 more people have access to water and sewage services than in 2010. This decrease in service gaps has been achieved by pursuing our goal of providing services to the most vulnerable groups in the city, to improve their well-being and overall quality of life. Our success has been made possible by taking an approach that places greater emphasis on engagement with the community’s that we serve, resource stewardship, and investment decisions that consider the social, economic and environmental costs.

As a water professional, being able to share in the joy of the people we serve, having the opportunity to change lives for the better, is reason to feel a profound satisfaction even as we strive to achieve more.

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