An emerging roadmap to regulating sanitation services

Upon the launch of the State of the World's Sanitation report in 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) along with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Eastern and Southern Africa Water and Sanitation (ESAWAS) regulators association and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) shared a blog entitled “Regulating sanitation services as a public good”.

That post outlined the service failures inherent in a household-led retail-based approach to urban sanitation. It made the case that, if goals of inclusion and public health were to be achieved, governments needed to craft and apply regulatory and accountability tools to mandated sanitation authorities and associated service providers.

However, while the case for sanitation regulation is strong, in practice coherent regulation across the sanitation service chain is often absent or unenforced. This is particularly universal in non-sewered service contexts. 

Two years on, this new blog post, hosted by WHO, summarizes current themes from the WHO drinking-water and sanitation regulators network and outlines an emerging roadmap to regulating sanitation services.