Australian Development Gateway

The Australian Development Gateway (ADG) strives to support members of the development community in their efforts to reduce poverty and enhance sustainable development in the Asia Pacific region. The site has been created with participation from members of government, private, academia and non-government organisations. User feedback mechanisms have been incorporated to guide future directions of the site. The site is optimised for low bandwidth access to enable the widest participation throughout the Asia Pacific region.

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Global costs of attaining the Millennium Development Goal for water supply & sanitation (pdf 300kb)

This study estimates the global costs of attaining the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target - by 2015, to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. It analyses data on households' use of improved water and sanitation for 1990 and 2004, and calculates the population that needs to be covered to attain the MDG target taking into account population growth.

Findings include the following:

- Estimated spending required to increase coverage of access to safe drinking water and sanitation is US$42 billion for water and US$142 billion for sanitation, a combined annual equivalent of US$18 billion

- The cost of maintaining existing services totals an additional US$322 billion of water supply and US$216 billion for sanitation, a combined annual equivalent of US$54 billion

- Additional programme costs of between 10 per cent and 30 per cent are required for effective implementation

- There is an enormous overall financing gap at the global level with the greatest shortfalls in investments occurring in rural areas in Africa and Asia

 

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