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Published on: 16/08/2015

Urban Sanitation SuSanA discussion-650x334.jpg

"Urban sanitation is not a local issue to be solved by a few pennies. Instead, urban sanitation is the responsibility of government and requires leadership and appropriate long term finance."

This was one of the statements made during the second SuSanA thematic discussion "Urban Sanitation Finance – from Macro to Micro Level" that ran from 23 June to 21 July 2015 on the SuSanA Discussion Forum.

The discussion focused on raising finance for urban sanitation at the macro, meso, and micro level, looking in detail at their advantages and shortcomings and how they can be combined.

It was led by sanitation finance experts: Catarina Fonseca, IRC and Guy Norman, WSUP (Theme I); Sophie Trémolet and Goufrane Mansour, Trémolet Consulting (Theme II); and Antoinette Kome, SNV and Kumi Abeysuriya, ISF-UTS (Theme III).

This three week thematic discussion which attracted more than 3,000 viewers, addressed the role of finance for achieving successful sanitation outcomes for urban areas. In particular, the role of taxes both at the national and local level was examined, microfinance models for households and small businesses were evaluated and the question of how cities can achieve full cost recovery of sanitation services by blending different forms of finance was discussed. Moreover, participants highlighted how the different levels can come together to sustainably finance every part of the sanitation chain. Finally, they located finance within the broader eco-system that is required to achieve sustainable sanitation outcomes.

Read the synthesis report of the SuSanA Forum and the background papers that were used to introduce the theme on Public Finance listed in the Resources section below.

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