Piloting a Market-Based Approach for Sustainable Urban Sanitation

Recent research suggests that under-investment in sanitation represents a major foregone poverty alleviation opportunity. For example, the economic losses attributed to poor sanitation exceed 6% of GDP in India and Bangladesh. Yet public and private investment in sanitation lags far behind that for water, telecoms, or electricity. As a result, some 750 million people in developing-country cities lack access to even a basic toilet, while more than 80% of excreta are discharged without treatment. New approaches for urban sanitation service delivery are urgently needed to address this looming public health crisis in cities of the global South. In this project, we will work with private- and public-sector partners in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to develop and test a model for the safe collection of excreta that is fully cost-recovering through user fees. The project can provide proof of concept for a service model that is financially sustainable and scalable, even in resource-constrained settings.