Accelerating Progress towards Universal Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH): Governance, Technology and Data for Urban Settings

Tang, T. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2867-9241, See, L. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2665-7065, Wada, Y. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4770-2539, Hofstra, N., Patel, A., Setiawati, S., Wibowo, D., Rahut, D., & Seetha Ram, K.E. (2022). Accelerating Progress towards Universal Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH): Governance, Technology and Data for Urban Settings. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science 49 (8) 2038-2043.

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Abstract

Access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) continues to be a universal challenge that affects human health and well-being. The latest global reports from the Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have highlighted the global scale of WASH issues, particularly in the least developed countries (LDCs). In 2020, it was estimated that there were 2 billion people that did not have access to safe drinking water, 2.3 billion people who lacked access to basic hygiene services, and 3.6 billion people who did not have safe sanitation in their households (WHO/UNICEF JMP, 2021). In addition, more than 500 million children still lack basic WASH services in their schools (WHO/UNICEF JMP, 2022). This is also common in health care facilities, which are fundamental for the prevention and control of diseases such as diarrhoea, and more recently COVID-19 (WHO/UNICEF JMP, 2020). Moreover, those living in slums and informal settlements, which are characterised by the lack of durable housing, insufficient living space, lack of access to clean drinking water, inadequate sanitation and insecure tenure (UN HABITAT, 2010), have a disproportionately higher disease burden due to the lack of access to safe WASH. Slums and informal settlements also reinforce gender inequalities and gender-based violence, due to the higher vulnerabilities of women and adolescent girls, in part because of their menstruation and sanitation requirements (Goddard and Sommer, 2020).

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