Finance

A large financing gap has been identified as one of the greatest barriers to achieving the water, sanitation and hygiene-related targets of the SDGs.

Money is needed not only for the construction of water, sanitation, and waste infrastructure but also for the people and the institutions that maintain and expand services to a growing population.

The World Bank has estimated that to meet Targets 6.1 and 6.2 alone, capital financing would need to triple to US$ 114 billion per annum and operating and maintenance costs need to be considered in addition. Maintaining existing assets would require 1.5 times the amount needed for the construction of infrastructure.

There are large variations in financing needs from region to region and country to country, hence financing strategies are needed based on evidence and realistic proposals for how to fill the gaps. There are ultimately only four main sources of finance (Figure 1).

^{Figure 1: Potential sources of financing for the SDGS}

^{Source: Djeneba Doumbia and Morten Lykke Lauridsen, 2019, Closing the SDG Financing Gap—Trends and Data.}

Attracting more finance, and ensure better use of existing financial sources is highly depended on foundational issues. These need to be urgently addressed if countries are to meet their SDG promises (Figure 2).

^{Figure 2: Foundational issues to mobilise finance for WASH}

^{Source: Leslie Pories, Catarina Fonseca, and Victoria Delmon, 2019. Mobilising Finance for WASH: getting the foundation right.}

SWA Role

There are several ways in which the SWA partnership is making the business case for investing in water, sanitation and hygiene and advocating for more efficient use of existing funding.

We co-organize the SWA Finance Ministers’ Meeting, which regularly gathers ministers of finance from around the world to discuss the political and institutional reforms required to achieve SDG6.

SWA partners also develop tools and materials to support the collection of evidence and advocacy around the funding of water, sanitation and hygiene. For example, the WASH SDG Costing Tool, an Excel-based cost model to estimate the costs of achieving the SDG6.1 and 6.2 targets, is being used in 140 countries. The Collection of Resources on WASH Financing, a collection of resources around planning, implementation, and review of progress on SDG financing. The SWA Tools Portal has several tools specifically around financing.