An Avoidable Crisis. WASH Human Resource Capacity Gaps in 15 Developing Countries

Shortages of human resources in the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector will undermine the progress of many countries over the last two decades to increase access to water and sanitation. It will impede socioeconomic development of those countries that remain off-track to meet the MDG water and sanitation targets, and raises questions about how realistic WASH targets under the Sustainable Development Goals will be.
In this report, the first of its kind, the IWA provides an overarching recommendation for the development of national capacity development strategies that have high-level political buy-in with involvement from multiple actors to ensure sustained, adequate professional and technical capacity. The report also calls for concerted action at regional and global level to collect relevant human resources data, and perform further research to strengthen the evidence base on which action plans and strategies can be built.