The Analysis " Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH): the evolution of a global health and development sector" was originally published in the BMY Global Health Journal, and can be found here
Despite notable progress, achieving universal access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) by 2030, as mandated under Sustainable Development Goal 6, remains unlikely in many countries. Policymakers and sector implementers face the challenge of charting a new course that addresses persistent gaps.
This study reviewed seven decades of global WASH evolution through policy documents, scientific literature, programmatic records, and 19 expert interviews. It situates WASH within broader global health and development trends, highlighting how transnational flows of expertise, concern, and resources from high‑income to lower‑income countries shaped the sector.
- a focus on technologies (technicalisation),
- a search for generalised solutions (universalisation),
- attempts to make recipients responsible for environmental health (responsibilisation) and
- the shaping of programmes around quantifiable outcomes (metricisation).
These themes reflect pragmatic strategies to depoliticise poverty and inequality, enabling action but also obscuring alternative solutions. The sector’s reliance on such orientations has produced what the authors term “uncomfortable knowledge”—recognition of the limitations, silences, and trade‑offs embedded in WASH practice. This resonates with ongoing concerns about deep inequalities, shrinking budgets, and the persistent gap between ambition and achievement.
