Economic Effects of Sustainable Sanitation - SuSanA

Sustainable sanitation
Hutton (2001, p. 344), for instance mentions increased amenity value for recreational uses as
positive effect due to improved aesthetics.
Even though Table 2 does not present a comprehensive list of averted costs the individual
items can be added up to 28.06 EUR per person and year 31 . The aggregated averted costs can
be either compared to the value of time, which equals approx. 16 days 42 . On the other side,
they can be contrasted to the annual costs of providing universal basic access to water supply
and sanitation, which amount to 6.42 EUR per person for the African Region and are thus
considerably lower. Calculating the BCR based on these two values results in 4.37 32 – in other
words, the return on investment of 1 EUR would be 4.37 EUR. Hence, apart from the benefit
of the gained income, the BCR is likely to positively influence decisions to invest in
sanitation infrastructure helping to promote its implementation from family- to international
level.
For the purpose of comparison Hutton et al. (2007) is cited here, who modelled BCRs of
conventional water supply and sanitation interventions in the African Region, such as meeting
the water supply MDG, meeting the water supply and sanitation MDG, universal basic
access, universal basic access and disinfection at point of use and regulated piped water
supply and sewer connection. The calculated values ranged from 2.1 to 6.3 (cf. Hutton et al.,
2007, p. 494). Hence, the BCR calculated for sustainable sanitation in Table 2 can be ranged
well in this spectrum. However, recalculating the BCR including a more comprehensive data
set would likely yield in results that rate sustainable sanitation superior in comparison to
conventional solutions.
31 The total amount also considering not measureable- or not measured items, such as costs of premature death
(included in the health category) or environmental quality is likely to be higher.
32 Considering footnote 31 , the BCR is also likely to be higher.
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