The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as articulated in Target 6.1, aims to achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water, using the proportion of population using safely managed drinking water services as the associated indicator (UN, 2015). Despite the progress in increasing "access" to technologically improved sources as part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), as of 2017, over 2 billion people lack safely managed drinking water and 785 million do not even have "basic" services (WHO/UNICEF, 2019). Progress to improve water security is most challenging in contexts where financial and institutional resources are limited and where water resources are threatened by chronic (e.g., groundwater contamination) and acute (e.g., floods and cyclones) threats. Bangladesh typifies these chronic and idiosyncratic water security risks, particularly in the coastal region, where around 20 million people live precarious lives with uncertain futures (M. A. Hoque et al., 2016;Shammi et al., 2017).The financial resources that are available for investment of water supplies are inevitably scarce, so governments and development organizations face difficult prioritization problems. Should they adopt a utilitarian approach to maximize for the greater good for the greatest number of people or a Rawlsian social justice approach which prioritizes the "most in need" (Sen, 1974)? The question is complicated by the interaction between public works to provide water supplies and private actors who are willing and able to pay to satisfy their own water needs. In this case, actions by the state may actually crowd out private investments. These competing policy choices are not irreconcilable but present a sequencing and prioritization problem compounded by identification and measurement issues. Without information on the welfare or infrastructure distribution, information asymmetries can lead to perverse outcomes in the spatial distribution of infrastructure, as has been documented in arsenic affected areas in Bangladesh (van Geen et al., 2016). New
Small island developing states face particular challenges to ensure their infrastructure promotes social, economic, and environmental well‐being. Closing the achievement gap for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) involves prioritization and coordination across multiple sectors. With an application to the country of Saint Lucia, this paper develops a stakeholder‐driven analysis framework integrating four interdependent infrastructure sectors (electricity, water, wastewater, and solid waste). Drawing on extensive consultation with decision‐makers in‐country—134 stakeholders from 18 government ministries, agencies, academia, or the private sector—the analysis identifies specific interventions that could be implemented over the next decades to meet future needs for sustainable infrastructure services. These interventions are congruent with the government's development plans. Long‐term, cross‐sectoral portfolios of investments and policies (“strategies”) are developed which demonstrably reach the targets of the SDGs and Saint Lucia's emissions reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement. The sequencing of these investments or policies is designed to optimize their efficiency and impact over time, identifying “quick wins” while ensuring that there is sufficient action to provide services in the long‐term sustainably. A comparison of costs associated with each strategy suggests that accounting for interdependencies and taking a long‐term perspective can save costs over the life of infrastructure investments. This process of infrastructure assessment is applicable beyond the small island context, allowing practitioners a means to undertake systematic assessment of a country's future infrastructure needs and to develop appropriate solutions aligned with its national objectives and international commitments.
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