The existing state of sanitation in developing Asian countries fails to deliver a level of service that is adequate for meeting the human right to a standard of living consistent with dignity and health, or for sustaining the capacity for future generations to have access to clean water resources and healthy ecosystems. We argue that translating the current neo-centralised technologies and institutional arrangements mainstreamed by industrialised countries would not resolve the problem in the context of developing countries. Instead it is necessary to 'leap frog' to the emerging technological and institutional arrangements that are responsive to current needs and contexts and to potential risks. The sustainability focus and often decentralised technologies of this emergent stage in sanitation present many opportunities for new actors to enter the urban sanitation industry. At the same time, there are many barriers to entry, particularly from the perspective of conventional business management focused on increasing shareholder value.We propose that perspectives from the corporate social responsibility discourse have the potential to provide both the 'pull' for seizing the business opportunity for profit while serving social needs, and the 'push' to overcome the barriers in order to serve a wider social purpose for corporations. The wealth of nations, at least as reported in ubiquitous GDP terms, has greatly increased through the activities of corporations driven by a profit motive; but the increased poverty, injustice and ecosystem degradation that has resulted from economic activity suggests that corporations perhaps ought to have regard for broader concerns beyond shareholder value. We explore how the alternative relational view of a corporation, as a metaphorical person within society who adopts a moral code consistent with both Buddhist economics and Adam Smith's philosophy, may facilitate profitable corporations that provide better economic, ecological and social outcomes in serving the need for sustainable sanitation services in developing Asian countries.

No abstract

No abstract

Abstract:The economic principles and tools that are commonly applied to recover costs for urban water and sanitation arise from the dominant perspective of neoclassical economics. In this paper we argue that this perspective, with its emphasis on 'full cost pricing' based on the 'user pays' principle, is too limited for sustainability. We examine two other qualitatively different economic perspectives to demonstrate how they lead to different approaches: ecological economics takes a more holistic approach explicitly committed to sustainability, while Buddhist economics brings ethics to the fore and opens the possibility for cooperation between the various actors in creating solutions to benefit individuals, society and the environment. We propose a set of interconnected guiding principles based on an expanded economic perspective that integrates all three perspectives, to enable water and sanitation services for developing countries to align with sustainability.