The sanitation and hygiene targets of the sustainable development goals: scope and challenges

Abstract

The sanitation target of the Sustainable Development Goals is that everyone should have a ‘safely-managed’ sanitation facility by 2030 and that open defecation be eliminated. The scale of this target is unprecedently large: ∼5.6 billion additional people will require safely-managed sanitation by 2030 (∼1 million per day), and ∼1.3 billion people will need to switch from open to fixed-defecation in a sanitation facility by 2030 (240,000 per day). Safely-managed shared sanitation and container-based sanitation are both likely to be part of the solution, particularly in urban slums. The SDG hygiene target covers facilities for handwashing with soap, menstrual-hygiene management, and food hygiene, but only handwashing with soap is monitored by WHO/UNICEF. In 2015, the percentage of people with handwashing-with-soap facilities at home ranged from 15% in Sub-Saharan Africa to 76% in Western Asia and North Africa. The costs to meet these targets are around US$46 billion in urban areas, and US$25 billion in rural areas, per year during 2016–2030. Benefit-cost ratios are ∼18 in rural areas. There is a correspondingly considerable need for training local sanitation and hygiene professionals, so that they can plan and design interventions to meet the SDG target.

Future Developments Without Targeted Policies

“…Especially the sanitation challenge is a pressing one. Between 2015 and 2030, around 5.6 billion people will require safely managed sanitation and around 1.3 billion people will need to switch from open to fixed point defecation (Mara and Evans 2018). Improved access to safely managed WASH would lead to a significant reduction in the number of children suffering from related ill health.…”

“…Achieving the targets on drinking water and sanitation will require increased investment in infrastructure, especially sanitation (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development 2014; Hutton and Varughese 2016). Due to population growth, an additional 3.4 billion people will require access to sanitation by 2030, or 620,000 per day, 2.5 times the number of people served during the 2001-2015 period (Mara and Evans 2018). The current levels of investment are likely to cover the capital costs of basic service provision for access to WASH by 2030, but not enough for safely managed service provision.…”

“…Towards Universal Electricity Access in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Quantitative Analysis of Technology and Investment Requirements. http://www.pbl.nl/ sites/default/files/cms/publicaties/pbl-2017-towards-universal-electricity-access-in-sub-saharanafrica-1952.pdfMara, D. and Evans, B. (2018).…”

Realizing the Circular Economy for Sanitation: Assessing Enabling Conditions and Barriers to the Commercialization of Human Excreta Derived Fertilizer in Haiti and Kenya

“…The model is based on a rental and servicing fee, making it affordable but also aiming to build a lasting relationship with the service provider, as well as the appropriate and safe management of the toilet waste [13]. Container-based sanitation has been recognized as a promising solution to sanitation in densely populated areas but has not been studied extensively yet [17][18][19].…”

Remote Sensing, Mobile Applications and Open Data Science Tools for Better Monitoring of Sanitation Systems

“…[2, p. 25]. In order to reach target 6.2 by 2030, based on current estimates, one million additional people per day will need to gain access to a safely managed sanitation facility [3].…”