There are multiple pressures and calls on finances
and, in the past, wastewater management and water
quality have not been seen as a priority. Indeed, it has
been estimated that there is an annual global shortfall in
funds (between 2002 and 2025) for municipal wastewater
treatment of US$ 56 billion (Camdessus, 2003 – cited by
Hutton and Wood, 2013). To date, few countries have put
in place sector financing strategies for urban sanitation and
some governments are reluctant to allocate funds because
improvements (often assuming sewerage as the norm) are
perceived as capital intensive, rarely generate significant
revenue, do not always deliver the intended benefits and
are relatively ‘invisible’. One reason for the unfavourable
view of sanitation and wastewater management is the de-
velopment paradigm of the last 50 years which typically
involves the “building of infrastructure and service capac-
ity, with major emphasis on getting the money out of the
door within the project cycle and on having a ‘handover’ of
infrastructure to governments” (Hutton and Wood, 2013).
This approach gives very little attention to factors that en-
sure sustainability, efficiency and affordability of services
related to governance, behaviour change, operations and
maintenance and capacity building.
Traditional financing sources are commonly categorised
as the 3Ts, namely: taxes, tariffs and transfers, which refer to government, private sector and donors/
non-governmental organization sources, respectively. As noted by Hutton and Wood (2013), “in general, taxes and transfers are subsidies spent primarily with the aim of enhancing social welfare and producing services that people need or demand, even in the absence of the people’s ability to pay. There are many types of subsidy that can be chan