8. Readiness of South Asian Countries to Achieve SDG 6 Targets by 2030 in the Sanitation Sector

In 2015, the United Nations Member States adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) with the intent of bringing the world to a state of life-changing zeros—zero poverty, hunger, AIDS, and discrimination against women and girls. Historically, it has never been easy to achieve global targets and available estimates show that before COVID-19 pandemic, progress remained uneven and most countries were not on track to meet the goals by 2030. Some gains were visible including the decline of many communicable diseases, decline of the share of children and youth out of school, and improvement in access to safely managed drinking water. In spite of these gains, many Asian countries are behind other developing countries, in terms of key indicators for SDG 6 targets. The purpose of this paper is to review and examine the current progress of SGD 6 targets among selected countries in South Asia. The paper will specifically examine how these countries are working to achieve sanitation-related SGD targets 6 by 2030. We use a case study approach as our analytical framework, which is suitable for studying a contemporary situation to which local “real-life” context is intrinsically linked and where the research team has little or no control. We conduct a cross-country analysis to illustrate strategies that other countries can potentially adopt to move toward achieving their SGD targets and propose effective recommendations for the sanitation sector in these countries.