Body
Improve Area-Wide Sanitation Services
Body
Focus Area Key Findings
- Carefully designed subsidies, even in the context of Community-Led Total Sanitation, result in more durable latrines, provide spillover benefits to non-eligible households, and slow reversion to open defecation.
- Read more
- An effective business strategy requires performance analyses of key viability drivers. Commercial viability of sanitation enterprises can be improved with sales of other products and services.
- Read more
- Durability – particularly the structural soundness of interfaces and pits – requires robust construction materials that are both affordable and readily available.
- Read more
- High-performing market-based sanitation programs often assume (or share) the costs of field sales agents. These programs make sure that active field sales remain part of the enterprise business model, including accounting for their cost.
- Read more
- Communities with smaller populations were consistently associated with higher achievement of Open Defecation Free status across programs and countries.
- Read more
- Successful market-based sanitation interventions regularly take more than 5 years to scale. Developing focal point enterprises, sales and marketing, product systems, delivery models, and financing mechanisms can require years of iteration beyond a typical USAID 5-year project cycle.
- Read more
- Sometimes the most essential personnel – community health volunteers and champions – are the only participants in Community-Led Total Sanitation programs that do not get compensated for their services. Carefully designed financial incentives for these workers can improve program performance and result in greater success at reducing open defecation.
- Read more
- Good latrine product designs reduce input materials and incorporate lower-cost alternatives to maintain durability, improve efficiency, simplify installation, and increase desirability.
- Read more
- In the business of building and selling latrines, a level of profit sufficient to justify the risk, time, and investment is most often achieved by entrepreneurs in adjacent sectors like construction, cement product fabrication, etc. The seasonality of demand as well as upfront investments required for latrine production and installation limits its appeal as a standalone business venture.
- Read more
- Interventions in the broader business environment, such as enacting supportive market rules and fostering open-source product system designs, are important for allowing markets to evolve and grow. Supportive (and well-enforced) market rules include public health regulations that encourage installation of latrines, requiring promotion by health workers, and tax/tariff exemptions.
- Read more
- Regardless of the actors driving progress, nine additional common characteristics drive inclusive water and sanitation services: clear performance indicators and incentives, pro-poor subsidies, customer feedback mechanisms, economic and political alignment between government and donors, democratic or participatory practices among elected officials, public support, and leveraging existing or expected environmental crises and pollution concerns to spur reform and treatment approaches.
- Read more