Water and Sanitation Program

The Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) is a multi-donor partnership of The World Bank. Our goal is to help the poor gain sustained access to improved water supply and sanitation services (WSS).

We work directly with client governments at the local and national level in 27 countries through 4 regional offices and in The World Bank headquarters, Washington D.C. Our aim is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals of halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation by 2015.

For almost thirty years, WSP has led or supported many of the advances made within the water and sanitation sector. We are able to share best practices across regions and place a strong focus on capacity building by forming partnerships with nongovernmental organizations, governments at all levels, community organizations, private industry, and donors. Our work helps to effect the regulatory and structural changes needed for broad WSS reform.

Our challenge is to replicate successful approaches, continue targeted learning efforts, and support reforms that will ensure the adoption of sustainable investments in the sector that in real terms help people rise from poverty.

Our History

The Program began in 1979 as a cooperative effort between The World Bank and the United Nations Development Program to look at cost-effective technologies and models for providing safe water and sanitation to the world's poor.

Its basic purpose of providing safe water and sanitation hasn't changed, but its governing structure and methods have evolved along with the world's views on how those services should be provided.

1980s

During the 1980s, much of the effort of WSP's forebearer—the UNDP-World Bank Water and Sanitation Program—involved testing technologies, such as handpumps and latrines. By the end of that decade, however, many of the world's governments and international relief organizations were looking at the broader picture of how to develop effective models and strategies that would have a broader effect of mobilizing communities to help themselves.

1990s

In 1992, the UNDP-World Bank Water and Sanitation Program developed a strategy replacing supply-side thinking with the pursuit of ways local communities could access water and sanitation services according to their own demands. At the same time, the concept of sustainable services—services that the communities could operate into the future—took hold in the water and sanitation sector. By the end of the 1990s, UNDP-World Bank had split its activities between field projects in regions across the world and research and evaluation efforts that could compile successes and spread the knowledge.

Today

WSP is an independent unit within the Department of Energy, Water and Transport in the newly created Sustainable Development Network Vice Presidency of The World Bank. Take a moment to see our Publications, News, and Events to discover what WSP is doing today.