Multilateral development banks (MDBs) play a pivotal role in financing water and sanitation infrastructure projects and thus have a major impact on the development of basic services. Although information about the MDBs' investments is publicly available, it is dispersed and not easily comparable. A comprehensive compilation of MDBs' water and sanitation investments has long been lacking. To address this gap, we assess water and sanitation financing by the three MDBs most relevant to Africa and Asia between 1960 and 2020: the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. We compile a new dataset by drawing on 3,639 water and sanitation projects and assess territorial trends, technology choices, distribution of financial burdens, and reforms to institutional arrangements. We find that MDBs' investments align with changing patterns of urbanization and increasingly finance sanitation infrastructures including non-sewered technologies. However, our results also suggest that institutional reforms have addressed utility efficiency through investment in equipment and skills rather than through increased commercialization and private sector participation. The leverage effect of MDB investment on private financing is negligible, whereas co-financing from local governments dominates.
Citywide inclusive sanitation (CWIS) is becoming the dominant paradigm for achieving safe sanitation for all by 2030. Its technical benefits have been explored, but the bargaining over financial and organizational changes CWIS entails have not yet been adequately addressed. Our case study explains the stalled rollout of CWIS in Dhaka, Bangladesh. We analyse policy pathways over the past 30 years through a combined territorial political economy and power perspective to understand their effects on equality. We highlight how donors link the introduction of CWIS to the organization of sanitation through a market; how the utility uses CWIS as an opportunity to avoid costly responsibilities in non-sewered sanitation; and how service co-production through community-based solutions is neglected. CWIS has successfully overcome the dogmatic technological focus in the sanitation system, but for citywide sanitation to be scaled inclusively, the dogmatic focus in the organization and financing of the sanitation sector must also be overcome.
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