On World Water Day, the WASH Alliance International is sharing 5 key lessons every WASH professional should learn, in order to realise SDG 6: “Universal access to water and sanitation”. To enable actual achievement of this goal for everyone, forever, we need to take into account 5 crucial approaches: acceleration, environmental sustainability, finance & business approach, social inclusion and sustainability. 

It’s been since 2015 that the 17 highly ambitious Sustainable Development Goals have been formulated. Now the first hurdle of the SDGs has been taken, a new challenge arises: how on earth are we going to realise them? On World Water Day 2017, the WASH Alliance International is sharing its toolkit with concrete tools, manuals, trainings and more, containing everything a WASH professional needs to know to ensure: 

1) Everybody has access to safe water and sanitation before 2030 

Achieving access for all requires acceleration-thinking, so we can provide everyone with sustainable WASH and are able to scale-up. Therefore, we need to facilitate the development of a system in which all stakeholders work effectively together and in which the system automatically takes over. 

2) We do not degrade the environment while making sure everybody has access to water and sanitation 

This approach takes into account the mutual interdependence between the ecosystem and the community, so we do not only realise sustainable WASH for current, but also for future generations. It shows how environmental services can be used to sustain WASH services. 

3) Everybody has access to safe water sources and sanitation locally financed 

Looking from a business perspective, landscape can add value to its users in many different ways. To integrate this into WASH development and programmes, we developed the Finance & Business case approach. 

4) Really everybody has access to safe water and sanitation 

In order to “leave no-one behind” we need to understand dimensions of inclusion and exclusion and empower everyone to have a fair game. This approach reaches beyond the barriers of gender, race, poverty, religion etc.

5) Everybody remains to have access to safe water and sanitation after 2030 

To maintain and improve current functionalities that are set up, we need to understand the 5 principles of sustainability and monitor if they are sufficiently secured, so that WASH services can become continuous.

All tools, manuals, publications and more will be published on our website shortly. Find more about our 5 WASH lessons in our publication below.