The Economics of the Sanitation Crisis
As established, many of the prevalent Sanitation issues exist in informal and insecure settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa. These prove to be huge challenges on which to base estimates for the implementation of technology and ascertaining who holds the right to what as these areas are often unregulated and circumvent tax systems meaning that citizens are undocumented and unaccounted for. I have introduced the possible solutions and approaches to the sanitation crisis in Africa and I will now go on explore a more complex issue behind these solutions which is the cost of sanitation and the obstacles around this that prevail.
We have established that a lack of safe water is central to the sanitation crisis, this water infrastructure (the water system life cycle), 'has four main activities: construction, operation, maintenance and demolition of the systems. Within the operation activity, there are eight life-cycle stages' (Jones et al 2012, 234*) already the complexity of the provision of water, without yet addressing the sanitation systems needed, is becoming evident. In an urban setting particularly, there are various approaches and solutions required meaning that a intricate system of costs must be calculated and subsequently, funded. Accurate data is crucial to the provision of adequate services for the urban poor and the financial planning to do so. In a recent report, WSUP have noted the difficulty of establishing a pattern in regard to the options for sanitation because of a striking data gap, 'very few studies provide comprehensive data on lifecycle costs across the urban sanitation chain, and most report on one city and only two or three types of sanitation systems.'
The available academic and grey literature on this topic is scarce, I will now summarise two of the principal international studies that have been carried out in relation to the cost of sanitation:
The IRC’s WASHCost Initiative was a study undertaken in rural and semi-urban areas in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mozambique and India. This is particularly useful due to the lack of accurate data that exists on sanitation systems in rural regions. Urban bias leads to the neglect of many rural areas which is why exploring rural water systems and the costs of implementing new infrastructure there as well as in cities is important. The outcomes of this study include the IRC developing a hygiene ladder and minimum cost benchmarks to implement the most basic of sanitation systems. It was concluded that the significant barrier in these areas was that 'rural water services are chronically underfunded and there is an inability to meet the costs required to provide and sustain a basic level of service, based on national norms and standards' (IRC)
Another study based in Kenya revealed the striking relationship between having access to sanitation facilities and rental prices. Simiyu et al (2017, 9) found that access to a toilet (shared by 10 households or less) in Nairobi’s informal settlements raised the monthly rent by 1.6% demonstrating how it has become commodified by landlords and used as a tool for exploitation rather than taken to be a basic right. Other reasons for the lack of sanitation in informal settlements include absentee landlords, expenses of operation and maintenance which leads to deterioration, and low willingness to pay often because people are not sufficiently educated about its importance - it was also found that those who were better educated often all paid more for sanitation in their compounds.
The studies concurrently point to the fact that limited data available brings about huge obstacles to the funding the solutions needed for the sanitation crisis. Loic: 2018, 192 concludes that studies do not sufficiently separate the urban and the rural, they do not use a range of metrics, they do not cover the full scope of the sanitation chain, and the various determiners of cost (type of technology, service level etc.) are not broken down. Loic (2018, 193) then goes on to suggest that 'considerable efforts must be made to build sanitation cost databases at country level and even city level' and that development actors could be central to driving this movement of new research.
* Jones, Abseen, Nicholas, Weir (2012) 'A Life-cycle Approach to Improve the Sustainability of Rural Water Systems in Resource-Limited Countries', Challenges, (3)2, 233-260
We have established that a lack of safe water is central to the sanitation crisis, this water infrastructure (the water system life cycle), 'has four main activities: construction, operation, maintenance and demolition of the systems. Within the operation activity, there are eight life-cycle stages' (Jones et al 2012, 234*) already the complexity of the provision of water, without yet addressing the sanitation systems needed, is becoming evident. In an urban setting particularly, there are various approaches and solutions required meaning that a intricate system of costs must be calculated and subsequently, funded. Accurate data is crucial to the provision of adequate services for the urban poor and the financial planning to do so. In a recent report, WSUP have noted the difficulty of establishing a pattern in regard to the options for sanitation because of a striking data gap, 'very few studies provide comprehensive data on lifecycle costs across the urban sanitation chain, and most report on one city and only two or three types of sanitation systems.'
The available academic and grey literature on this topic is scarce, I will now summarise two of the principal international studies that have been carried out in relation to the cost of sanitation:
The IRC’s WASHCost Initiative was a study undertaken in rural and semi-urban areas in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mozambique and India. This is particularly useful due to the lack of accurate data that exists on sanitation systems in rural regions. Urban bias leads to the neglect of many rural areas which is why exploring rural water systems and the costs of implementing new infrastructure there as well as in cities is important. The outcomes of this study include the IRC developing a hygiene ladder and minimum cost benchmarks to implement the most basic of sanitation systems. It was concluded that the significant barrier in these areas was that 'rural water services are chronically underfunded and there is an inability to meet the costs required to provide and sustain a basic level of service, based on national norms and standards' (IRC)
Another study based in Kenya revealed the striking relationship between having access to sanitation facilities and rental prices. Simiyu et al (2017, 9) found that access to a toilet (shared by 10 households or less) in Nairobi’s informal settlements raised the monthly rent by 1.6% demonstrating how it has become commodified by landlords and used as a tool for exploitation rather than taken to be a basic right. Other reasons for the lack of sanitation in informal settlements include absentee landlords, expenses of operation and maintenance which leads to deterioration, and low willingness to pay often because people are not sufficiently educated about its importance - it was also found that those who were better educated often all paid more for sanitation in their compounds.
The studies concurrently point to the fact that limited data available brings about huge obstacles to the funding the solutions needed for the sanitation crisis. Loic: 2018, 192 concludes that studies do not sufficiently separate the urban and the rural, they do not use a range of metrics, they do not cover the full scope of the sanitation chain, and the various determiners of cost (type of technology, service level etc.) are not broken down. Loic (2018, 193) then goes on to suggest that 'considerable efforts must be made to build sanitation cost databases at country level and even city level' and that development actors could be central to driving this movement of new research.
* Jones, Abseen, Nicholas, Weir (2012) 'A Life-cycle Approach to Improve the Sustainability of Rural Water Systems in Resource-Limited Countries', Challenges, (3)2, 233-260
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