Lessons In Financing City Wide Inclusive Sanitation

At a World Water Forum event, Islamic Development Bank and UN Habitat shared lessons on upscaling the delivery of Community Wide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS). The CWIS approach aims to shift the paradigm on sanitation delivery, opening the space to respond to some key realities of urban, semi-urban and rural areas.

In Senegal for instance, 45% of the population lives in urban areas and the rate of growth of urban areas is 2.5% per year. Soon the majority of the population of Senegal will live in urban areas.

This rate of growth is, however, not matched by the development of basic sanitation services or wastewater management, and the effects of climate change serve to increase the frequency of extreme weather events and reduce water quality.

The CWIS approach requires a frank assessment of the reality that while some spatial development has taken place in a planned fashion and includes both sanitation and wastewater, there is also extensive and unplanned development.

In order to leave no-one behind, a range of different solutions needs to be provided which include sewered and unsewered and centralised or decentralised services. 

CWIS provides a range of different technologies as well as different business models: in many areas households do have the resources to invest in sanitation, in other areas the value chain needs to be analysed in order to assess whether there are activities that are possible that generate revenue to cover investment costs.

Based on positive experiences with the CWIS approach, the Islamic Development Bank is embracing a mixed and tailored approach to sanitation in Dakar.