Exploring funding for sustainable sanitation in Mongolia: perceptions from stakeholders and communities

One of the major challenges for scaling up sustainable sanitation (SuSan) technologies and services is the sources of finances. Perceptions of stakeholders and communities may trigger them to overcome this challenge by exploring viable financing mechanisms and sources for widespread replication of SuSan technologies and services from the local to the global scale. This approach was studied through household surveys combined with semi-structured key informant interviews among various SuSan users and institutional stakeholders in the peri-urban Ger areas of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The results showed that the existing technologies and services are highly subsidized and still partly shared by the households. Micro-finance organizations (including banks), government subsidies, private companies and community fundraising through building social capital may be considered as potential sources of finance for SuSan projects in Mongolia. A re-invented idea of ‘Corporate Responsibility’ is an interesting direction in which to explore possible financial sources and an effective mechanism for sustainability in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector.