Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Africa Water & Sanitation & Hygiene May -June 2017 | Page 14

NEWS in brief
STWI,” said Elin Larsson, Sustainability Director for
Filippa K.
STWI started as a pilot project in 2010, and has been fully
operational since 2013. In 2016, the initiative expanded
from 72 to 119 factories in India, China, Bangladesh,
Turkey and Ethiopia. In 2017, STWI plans to expand to
Hong Kong, Myanmar, Pakistan, Indonesia, Cambodia and
Vietnam.
2017 GLAAS report stresses need for increased
efficiency and new sources of funding
Countries are not increasing spending fast enough to meet
the water and sanitation targets under the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs), says a new report published
by the World Health Organization (WHO) on behalf of
UN-Water – the United Nations inter-agency coordination
mechanism for all freshwater-related issues, including
sanitation.
“Today, almost
two billion people
use a source of
drinking-water
contaminated
with faeces,
putting them
at risk of
contracting
cholera,
dysentery, typhoid and polio,” says Dr Maria Neira, WHO
Director, Department of Public Health, Environmental
and Social Determinants of Health.
“Contaminated drinking-water is estimated to cause more
than 500 000 diarrhoeal deaths each year and is a major
factor in several neglected tropical diseases, including
intestinal worms, schistosomiasis, and trachoma,” added
Neira.
The report stresses that countries will not meet global
aspirations of universal access to safe drinking-water and
sanitation unless steps are taken to use financial resources
more efficiently and increase efforts to identify new
sources of funding.
According to the UN-Water Global Analysis and
Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS)
2017 report, countries have increased their budgets for
water, sanitation and hygiene at an annual average rate
of 4.9% over the last three years. Yet, 80% of countries
report that water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) financing
is still insufficient to meet nationally-defined targets for
WASH services.
In many developing countries, current national
coverage targets are based on achieving access to basic
infrastructure, which may not always provide continuously
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Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene • May - June 2017
Global Highlights
safe and reliable services. Planned investments have yet to
take into account the much more ambitious SDG targets,
which aim for universal access to safely managed water and
sanitation services by 2030.
In order to meet the SDG global targets, the World Bank
estimates investments in infrastructure need to triple to
US $114 billion per year – a figure which does not include
operating and maintenance costs.
While the funding gap is vast, 147 countries have
previously demonstrated the ability to mobilize the
resources required to meet the Millennium Development
Goal target of halving the proportion of people
without an improved source of water, and 95 met the
corresponding target for sanitation. The much more
ambitious SDG targets will require collective, coordinated
and innovative efforts to mobilize even higher levels of
funding from all sources: taxes, tariffs (payments and
labour from households), and transfers from donors.
“This is a challenge we have the ability to solve,” says Guy
Ryder, Chair of UN-Water and Director-General of the
International Labour Or