The United Nations Millennium Development Goals have called issues of water and sanitation to the forefront of international development efforts. Engineers and other development workers are answering this call in increasing numbers. In order to achieve these goals it is necessary to overcome the historically low sustainability rates of development projects. This paper presents a logical framework for identifying and analyzing the factors that affect sustainable development of water and sanitation projects. It identifies five sustainability factors that are common in development literature and the policies of international aid organizations:(1) sociocultural respect, (2) community participation, (3) political cohesion, (4) economic sustainability, and (5) environmental sustainability. A life-cycle thinking approach is used to assess how project sustainability can be improved throughout the project life. Five life stages are identified to represent the life of a development project: (1) needs assessment, (2) conceptual designs and feasibility, (3) design and action planning, (4) implementation, and (5) operation and maintenance. Using the defined sustainability factors and life-cycle stages, an assessment matrix is developed. A series of guidelines for each matrix element are given for scoring the sustainability of a project. The guidelines are derived from best practice approaches to effective international development. The proposed sustainability matrix can be used as a guide for project planning or as an evaluation system to identify strengths and weaknesses in project approaches.

The sanitation ladder is a useful tool that is being used to monitor progress towards the sanitation target of the MDGs. This tool could be even more useful if it can be refined to be based on the functions of sanitation systems rather than on a hierarchy of predefined sanitation technologies. This paper presents a seven-rung function-based sanitation ladder where the functions can be broadly divided into health functions and environmental functions. The proposed ladder is intended as an inspiration for nations, and the JMP, to move towards a function-based rather than technology-based monitoring of sanitation progress. A functional approach to monitoring of e.g. the sanitation target of the MDGs would require some major shifts in the monitoring methods used but it is argued that such an approach would: (i) actually monitor the public good, which is desired from a sanitation system; (ii) stimulate donors, governments and municipalities to think beyond the provision of certain sanitation technologies; (iii) allow for local solutions to the sanitation problem to be developed; and (iv) spur innovation within the sector.

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Urban sanitation presents one of the most significant service delivery challenges related to poverty alleviation and sustainable development in the developing world. The past decade has witnessed innovations in service delivery approaches for unserved rural and urban settlements with a clear policy shift to community-based approaches that attempt to overcome the supply-led, over-engineered sanitation solutions of the past decades. This article presents two examples of new developments: the urban-focussed household-centred environmental sanitation (HCES) and the rural-focussed community-led total sanitation (CLTS) approaches. The internationally renowned CLTS approach has achieved considerable success since its introduction, by harnessing community and small private sector capacity to solve sanitation problems locally. Experience with validation of the HCES approach in a variety of urban sites in Africa, Asia and Latin America is presented in the second part of the article highlighting some of the lessons learned. The article closes by arguing that a combination of HCES and CLTS, two field-tested methodologies, has the potential to improve the sustainability of sanitation service interventions.

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