WASH financing barriers in the global south a systematic review of trends, system bottlenecks and ways forward for Nepal

Abstract

Despite commitments under Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) progress seems slow in most countries where financing has surfaced up as a critical bottleneck. This systematic review incorporates current evidence on WASH financing gaps, barriers and potential solutions adopting a structured systematic review approach informed by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework for identifying, screening and synthesizing relevant literature.Global estimates suggest that WASH capital investment is more than three times the current investment and the bottlenecks are multidimensional, key barriers including ineffective governance mechanism and institutional fragmentation, limited fiscal space, low creditworthiness of service providers, inadequate cost recovery and data gaps. Evidence across the reviewed literature consistently identifies strengthening public finance, improving utility operators and their performance, achieving optimal balance between tariffs, taxes and transfers and other innovative financing mechanisms results improved financial effectiveness. The paper concludes, a coherent combination of system strengthening and innovative financing mechanisms is required as a single financing instrument is not sufficient to close the gap. For Nepal, the findings suggest that WASH financing bottlenecks should be analyzed across the WASH system on how financing is planned, allocated and executed.