SDG6: Clean Water and Sanitation
Why it matters
SDG 6 aims to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. Despite recent improvements, billions of people still lack access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene. Based on current global rates of progress, achieving universal coverage by 2030 will require a sixfold increase for access to drinking water, a fivefold increase for sanitation and an eightfold increase for hygiene.[26]
The industry’s contribution
Mobile technology improves many aspects of water delivery and sanitation provisioning. Effective metering and revenue collection are central to a healthy, functioning water utility, but many utilities struggle to collect their tariff revenues. IoT solutions such as smart water meters can help break the vicious cycle of low revenue collection and poor service.[27] Beyond the economic argument, ensuring public health and environmental standards are also strong drivers for IoT adoption in the water sector.
IoT solutions can also improve access to safe sanitation services. Many sanitation value chains are fragmented, with waste collected from households and then centralised for safe treatment and disposal. Here, IoT can be combined with platform models for coordinating and tracking waste for safe disposal. As with other use cases, the benefits of preventing harmful discharges of waste extend beyond the balance sheet of a single organisation, as there is a multitude of public health reasons to financially support deployments.
Growth of digital payments (in particular, mobile money services) can support IoT growth. For instance, mobile-enabled PAYG water solutions allow low-income customers to pay for what they consume in smaller amounts, rather than a lump sum at the end of a billing cycle (especially for a service that previously may not have provided a steady, timely and safe supply of water).[22]
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Maximising mobile’s impact by 2030
Maximising mobile’s impact on SDG 6 by 2030 will rely on IoT solutions being scaled up. GSMA Intelligence forecasts that smart utilities IoT connections will total 3.5 billion globally by 2030, up from 1.7 billion in 2021. In cases where government entities are also major service providers, for example in centralised energy and water, there is an opportunity for public procurements to act as an accelerator of IoT adoption through large-scale deployments. Governments can also support IoT adoption by formulating national standards and specifications for IoT devices, such as smart meters.
Case Studies
