Prioritising finance for urban sanitation: funding progress towards citywide inclusive sanitation

Sustainable services for improved and safely managed sanitation are universally considered to represent a good public and social return on investment: providing access to toilets and collecting and treating human waste has a range of social, environmental and health benefits that exceeds the associated costs. Progress towards universal sustainable services has been unequal between regions and countries in Sub-Saharan Africa face the biggest challenge in coming years because of their slower rate of the progress, higher proportions without access and greater forecast population growth.
Current available funding is insufficient to provide universal access to safely managed sanitation. Government tax bases are stretched, customers can not universally afford the fees required for full cost recovery, and development finance is insufficient to this affordability gap. Despite optimism around the potential contribution from private finance it is unclear what the contribution that fully mobilising household finance and minimising service costs would make to closing this affordability gap. Households in informal settlements typically do not have access to safely managed sanitation: their waste is uncollected and enters the environment untreated. This is partly because they do not have the ability to pay (related to lower incomes) or the willingness to invest (related to rental status) but also because managing collection and treatment requires centralised coordination that is uncommon in informal settlements.
Three groups lack sufficient information about sanitation services to make effective investment and planning decisions: service providers including government, utilities and the private sector; users such as households, community-based organisation and politicians; and donors and financiers who support service delivery. In addition, the role of local service providers has been undermined post-independence by the international development community who have not achieved their own capacity building objectives in failing to localise their work. Academic and grey literature in WASH is heavily biased towards Western research institutions, development agencies and iNGOs who do not proportionately promote or represent the perspective of service users or stakeholders. This research will seek to be more inclusive by design in an effort to provide better information to inform decision making.
The project will explore how progress towards CWIS could be funded, and financing and investment prioritised. This will be achieved by answering:
-What are the knowledge gaps and research questions around funding CWIS as identified by local stakeholders?
-What is the affordability gap for CWIS?
-What are the most efficient funding mechanisms for different sections of the sanitation value chain?
-How should investment be prioritised when making progress towards CWIS?
This PhD project will be completed with a minimum four publications. The first publication will focus on capturing perspectives from stakeholders under-represented in academic and grey literature to minimise bias in future research design. This participatory process will also seek out informed perspectives from other stakeholders including experienced WASH sector professionals, representatives from pro-poor groups, and financiers. Subsequent publications will be informed and directed by the insight gained from this initial research, building on the research themes previously identified.
The output from this project will be evidence demonstrating how limited available finance can be used more efficiently to make progress towards achieving universal safely managed sanitation. The research will support the concept of citywide inclusive sanitation.

Water-WISER will train a cohort of 50 British research engineers and scientists and equip them to work in challenging environments both in the low-income settings of rapidly growing poor cities and in the changing urban environment of the UK, Europe and other regions with a historic endowment of aging infrastructure. The vision is for a generation of engineers with the skills to deliver the trans-disciplinary innovations needed to ensure that future water, waste and sanitation infrastructure is resilient to the stresses posed by rapid urbanisation, global climate change and increasingly extreme natural and man-made disasters. Our alumni will address the urgent need to re-imagine urban spaces as net contributors to ecological and environmental well-being rather than being net users of vital resources such as energy, nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon. These new leaders will be an essential resource if the UK is to deliver on its commitment to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 6 which calls for universal access to safely managed water and sanitation services, within planetary and local ecological boundaries. This next generation of research engineers will enable UK-based engineering consultancies, manufacturers, and utility companies to grow their share of the expanding global market for water and waste services, for example; in the water services industry from 3% to 10% (an increase of £33 billion per annum) by 2030, and attract significant inward investment.
The research which Water-WISER cohorts enable will form the basis of new innovations in the design and delivery of resilient infrastructure and services. Innovations developed by Water-WISER graduates will inform how growing cities are designed and built in the global south and will be used to inform the re-engineering and replacement of the aging infrastructure on which the UK's water and waste services are currently reliant. Our alumni will form the new generation of leaders who will play a central role in securing a larger share of the international water and waste management consultancy market to UK consultancies. The network of expertise and skills created by Water-WISER will enhance potential for collaborations between major UK players (for example strengthening links between UK consultancy, the Department for International Development, and leading UK water agencies such as WaterAid and Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor) and between UK companies and partners in the global south including international investors such as the World Bank, European Investment Bank, African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation. Graduates of Water-WISER will enter industry, academia and development agencies having spent a substantial period (minimum of six months) embedded in an industry or development partner organisation delivering their field-based research. Water-WISER students will thus gain a unique combination of trans-disciplinary training, field experience and cohort networking; they are destined for leadership roles in UK and international engineering and development consultancies, academia, international development banks, international agencies such as the United Nations and international non-governmental organisations.