Measuring transformative WASH: A new paradigm for evaluating water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions

Abstract

Progress toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6, clean water and sanitation for all, is behind schedule and faces substantial financial challenges. Rigorous water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) interventions have underperformed, casting doubt on their efficacy and potentially undermining confidence in WASH funding and investments. But these interventions have leaned on a narrow set of WASH indicators—linear growth and diarrhea—that reflect a 20th‐century prioritization of microbiological water quality as the most important measurement of WASH intervention success. Even when water is microbiologically safe, hundreds of millions of people face harassment, assault, injury, poisoning, anxiety, exhaustion, depression, social exclusion, discrimination, subjugation, hunger, debt, or work, school, or family care absenteeism when retrieving or consuming household water. Measures of WASH intervention success should incorporate these impacts to reinforce the WASH value proposition. We present a way forward for implementing a monitoring and evaluation paradigm shift that can help achieve transformative WASH.This article is categorized under: Engineering Water > Water, Health, and Sanitation Human Water > Value of Water Human Water > Methods

Household water insecurity experiences and their perceived determinants in a low-income community of Cartagena, Colombia, during a water service expansion project

“…The findings of this study underscore opportunities for water utilities and WASH practitioners to improve service delivery by working with communities to develop contextually relevant measures, engage communities in the upgrade process, and use more holistic WASH indicators [34]. Broader WASH evaluation criteria can also help to identify prevalent water insecurity burdens and help utilities to improve measurement of return on investment for WASH interventions [35].…”