Sanitation is in crisis. Two billion people lack access to safe sanitation. The crisis is especially prevalent in unplanned, densely populated urban areas, where the current gold standard of flush toilets – large scale sewer networks and centralized treatment plants – is neither affordable nor implementable.

Numerous calls for international action have been stirred to address this sanitation crisis and reach SDG6.2 by 2030. Governments, UN agencies and even sector leading corporations have come together in joint missions to outstrip the one size fits all design of centralized sanitation infrastructures and call for city wide and inclusive approaches to sanitation. However, to date, low-cost technologies and adaptive planning approaches have failed to scale. There is little attention amongst scholars and policy analysts to the strong economic and political forces that perpetuate the urban sanitation crisis. Thus, this multidisciplinary and collaborative project asks:

• Why and how do centralised sanitation infrastructure persist despite continued crisis?
• What is the international political economy of defining and implementing SDG 6.2?
• What is the role of multilateral development banks in the provision of urban sanitation infrastructure?

Starting from an international political economy perspective this project focuses on multilateral development banks, which are key intermediaries through funding, knowledge brokering, and project implementation under SDG 6.2. Methodologically the project links automated large scale document analysis with in depth case studies to grasp the multilevel dimensions of persistence in the urban sanitation crisis.

The team brings together academic researchers, international and local organizations and combines expertise in international political economy, global power, SDGs, urban sanitation, and interdisciplinary research.

The proposed U-STASIS research project aims to explain the persistence of centralized Urban Sanitation Infrastructure (USI) from an international political-economy perspective. The expected results will provide new entry points for overcoming the deadlock and advancing the implementation of SDG6 and the more rapid expansion of inclusive urban sanitation coverage.