The University of Colorado Boulder has been selected to lead a $15.3 million effort to improve the sustainability of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions in the developing world.
Karl Linden, Amy Javernick-Will and Rita Klees of the Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities will coordinate the efforts of seven organizations in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.
Globally, more than 2.4 billion people lack access to improved sanitation facilities, and 660 million people are without access to safe drinking water. The Sustainable WASH Systems Initiative aims to develop, test and document high-potential approaches to engaging local water, sanitation and hygiene systems across multiple countries. The goal is to determine which systems can be sustained by local stakeholders beyond the life of the project and inform future development assistance efforts.
The group wants to ensure that water or sanitation services financed by government or donor investments maintain results in the long term. For instance, over the past 20 years, failed hand pumps in Africa represent a total lost investment of between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion; 30 to 40 percent of rural water systems have failed prematurely; and more than half of all subsidized toilets are unused, misused or abandoned.
CU Boulder will also partner with local universities, providing analysis of the groups’ efforts and publishing their findings.
“The opportunity to work with the partners on this program, in the international spotlight, is tremendous, and we are excited to get our students in the field and put into practice what they’ve studied,” Linden says.
