Working through the private sector is one of the most promising approaches to solve the global sanitation crisis. Yet globally, few market-based sanitation programs have reached significant scale. Indeed, a forthcoming report from USAID’s WASH Partnerships for Learning and Sustainability (WASHPaLS) project identified only 18 single-country, market-based sanitation programs that had increased sales by at least 10,000 toilets.
This webinar from the DC Sanitation working group features a presentation and discussion on learning from market-based sanitation at scale.
With 2.1 billion people – mostly in rural areas – lacking safely managed drinking water and reported low rural water supply functionality rates, the Sustainable Development Goals pose a triple challenge: to reach unserved mostly rural population groups, to raise service levels, and to sustain existing and future services.
In Asia and the Pacific, widespread migration to urban centers is placing tremendous stress on urban water and sanitation services. Across Asian cities, 340 million people lack access to safe water supply and more than 680 million do not have sustainable sanitation services, leading to increased risks of waterborne illnesses and lost economic productivity. While decision-makers in the Asia-Pacific region achieved and are continuing to improve upon the U.N.
In the early 2000s, leading global stakeholders in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector, including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), began looking for innovative ways to engage the private sector in the provision of WASH products and services required to support key hygiene behaviors with proven health benefits. The private sector has the potential to become leaders in the promotion of the correct, consistent and sustained use of commercial products and services to generate sustainable markets for them and to maximize their public health impact.
In Cambodia, where 77 percent of the rural population lacks access to improved sanitation, people often think they cannot afford toilets. Providing access to affordable water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) products and services is critical in this country where, according to UNICEF and WHO, 8.6 million people practice open defecation, and research has shown that less than 10 percent of rural households properly wash their hands. However, equally as significant is maintaining these improvements for the long term.
