One-Third Of World Doesn't Have A Toilet. Here's What It Will Take To Change That
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Katy Daigle of Associated Press published an article entitled “One-Third of World Doesn’t Have a Toilet. Here’s What It Will Take to Change That”. The article delves deeper into the challenge of open defecation facing many countries, citing our findings on the smartest post-2015 targets for water and sanitation as well as quoting Bjorn Lomborg.
Addressing sanitation and water woes, for example, is a clear priority but is relatively pricey at $45 billion a year, according to a Copenhagen Consensus evaluation done in recent months. It could potentially save around 350,000 people from premature deaths caused by infection and disease, and in economic terms provide $144 billion a year in benefits in terms of limiting health care costs or sparing losses in income. That works out to about $7 of benefit for every $1 spent. The less ambitious goal of just getting people to stop defecating in the open, however, would cost just $13 billion and yield $84 billion in economic benefits, or $6 for every $1 spent, the group concluded."
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If you want to know more the Guardian has published an new article entitled “Access to clean water and sanitation around the world – mapped” in which you can see how exactly the Millennium Development Goals have affected water issues.
Historically all the effort has gone into water, and sanitation has taken a bit longer to be prioritized,” says Brewer. “Combined, UK aid flows to water and sanitation make of 2% of the money donated, but most goes to water. It’s also easier for a politician to stand in front of a water well for a photo than a latrine.”
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After reading these articles, it is no wonder that our economist rank eliminating open defecation in rural areas as the smartest bang-for-the-buck target for the post-2015 development agenda in terms of water and sanitation targets.
See how all the proposed targets for water and sanitation are ranked according to cost-benefit analysis by visiting our research page here.