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Key messages from applying the life-cycle cost approach to sanitation

Research conducted by WASHCost has highlighted just how little is known about what communities invest in toilets, sanitation and hygiene. The analysis of costs and service levels is providing the best available data based on expenditures of governments, programmes and households – as illustrated with findings from rural and peri-urban areas and small towns in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Mozambique.

Published on: 31/08/2011

WASHCost shared 11 key messages on sanitation at the AfricaSan 3 conference held in Kigali, Rwanda from 19-21 July 2011. These messages emerge from research that includes household surveys and studies of data available from official sources at local and district level in the research areas. Briefing notes are being written by each team with further details and will be available through the WASHCost website.

Address all the costs of sustainable sanitation services

The life-cycle costs approach referred to in these key messages means addressing all the costs that are involved in delivering and maintaining an effective sanitation service so that it is sustainable and does not “slip back” (slippage) from the levels that are initially achieved. These costs go beyond the capital costs involved in constructing toilets and include the “software” costs of motivation, mobilisation and training, as well as the costs of sustaining toilets and good hygiene practices once adopted. It includes, for example, the costs of soap, hygiene awareness raising, pit emptying, and ensuring that toilets and community awareness remain sound in the long term.

This research is not therefore about costs in isolation: the WASHCost project seeks to understand the links between service levels that people receive and the costs involved.

Eleven key messages from the three WASHCost countries are:

  1. The life-cycle costs approach offers a different perspective to look at problems in the water and sanitation sector, which entail complex and unpredictable change processes which have no easy solutions. Service level analysis which encompasses access, use, reliability and environmental protection provided to users – can lead to a more nuanced understanding of where underlying problems of coverage and slippage may lie.
  2. In sanitation interventions, if capital expenditure is the only cost factor used for planning and implementation, we are ignoring half the costs and, as result, the value of investments and potential impact on services will be severely diminished.
  3. Recurrent costs: operation and maintenance, capital maintenance and expenditure on direct support (including post construction support) for sanitation is at present very low and this could lead to investments in capital expenditure not producing the desired health benefits.
  4. Sanitation expenditure is almost completely covered by households, with the single exception of hygiene awareness campaigns.
  5. Analysis of one of the sanitation service level indicators - reliability1of the sanitation service – indicates that peri-urban households are more likely to spend on recurrent expenditure.
  6. There is no difference in expenditure by households that received a subsidy for sanitation hardware and those who did not.
  7. In Mozambique and Ghana, there is high household expenditure on soap and low expenditure on latrines.
  8. Lump sum capital expenditure for traditional pit latrines and VIP may not be affordable to the poorest in rural areas.
  9. Sophisticated sanitation technologies do not necessarily result in better sanitation service levels, and reliability and use are important indicators of actual services received.
  10. Poverty analysis shows that the very poor receive lower levels of sanitation services. This is against a background where the general levels of services are low for very many people.
  11. This is the best financial data available on costs linked with service levels and it can be improved if simple accounting and reporting procedures are adopted by the sector

Strengthen financial management and accountability

Many households could not remember the costs incurred constructing their latrines and often could not identify who donated materials, such as cement slabs for their latrines or what these cost. Historical information on costs is dispersed through the sector in fractured memories or different documents with no central repository.

A general recommendation across the WASHCost project is that (financial) data management should be strengthened at all levels. In addition, a general commitment is recommended for greater transparency and freedom of access to information. By improving accounting and the management of financial information, sector actors can be better equipped to plan for sustainable sanitation services, supporting financial mechanisms and targeted subsidies for the poor.

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