Challenges in infrastructure sectors go beyond financing and can benefit from a rethink. Behavioral economics has encouraged a broader understanding of human decision making that can be applied to bottlenecks...
Despite considerable efforts to reach the sustainable development goal (SDG) target 6.2, about 2.3 million people globally still lack basic sanitation services and only 39 percent of the global population...
The sustainable development goals (SDGs) for water are a greater challenge than the millennium development goals (MDGs) before them. In addition to the addressing the funding gap, existing investments...
Urbanization combined with climate change are exacerbating water scarcity for an increasing number of the world’s emerging cities. Water and sanitation infrastructure, which in the first place was largely...
Nepal is rich in water resources with a dense network of glaciers, lakes, rivers, and springs that originate in the Himalayas. However, only an estimated 15 billion cubic meters (BCM) of the 225 BCM water...
This paper examines the impact of return migration from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf on the transfer of gender norms to the Indian state of Kerala. Migration to countries in the Middle East has led to significant...
Tariffs are essential but not the only pathway to cost recovery, addressing affordability, and managing water conservation. To maximize their potential, they must be well designed, complemented by appropriate...
In the past two decades, insights from behavioral sciences, particularly behavioral economics, have been widely applied in the design of social programs such as pensions, social security, and taxation...
The South Asia Human Capital Plan acknowledges the great strides the region has made in investing in human capital but highlights the deficits that remain. Given current quality, coverage, and effectiveness...
The water supply and sanitation sector remains heavily subsidized around the world. Yet, the accounting of water supply and sanitation subsidies globally has proved challenging due to utility-level data...
This study reports the findings of a large-scale, multiple-arm, cluster-randomized control study carried out in rural Punjab, India, to assess the impact of a flagship sanitation program of the Government...
This paper provides new evidence on how effectively piped water consumption subsidies are targeting poor households in 10 low- and middle-income countries around the world. The results suggest that, in...
Water has always been at the heart of Bangladesh’s remarkable development story. Avoiding flood-induced famines and attaining food security were the defining motives in Bangladesh’s water management since...
Sri Lanka has the 14th-largest gender gap in labor force participation (LFP) globally. LFP rates among Sri Lankan women age 15 years and older were 36 percent for 2015 and 2016, versus 75 percent for same-age...
Despite Bangladesh's notable progress toward the eradication of open defecation, the country still faces severe deficits in the availability of improved sanitation. This paper analyzes the impact of exposure...
In this paper, the impact of salinity on maternal and child health in Bangladesh is analyzed using data from the Bangladesh Demographic Health Surveys. A U-shaped association between drinking water salinity...
Water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions are increasingly recognized as essential for improving nutritional outcomes in children. Emerging literature describes the negative effects of poor sanitation...
Using data from the International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities, this paper on the water sector in pourashavas (municipalities) in Bangladesh provides an analysis of the trends...
Adequate water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in health care facilities plays a critical role in ensuring improved health care utilization and reducing disease burden due to reinfection. WASH in health...
Groundwater currently provides 98 percent of all the drinking water supply in Bangladesh. Groundwater is found throughout Bangladesh but its quality (that is, arsenic and salinity contamination) and quantity...