Can we meet the costs of achieving safely managed drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene services under the new sustainable development goals?

In September 2015 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution titled ‘Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, which brings universal access to drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) within our sights. Now, there is the opportunity to finish the half completed job from the Millennium Framework that produced the Target 7c on water supply and sanitation. This historical pronouncement should certainly be cause to be positive, considering the billions of dollars of benefit per year that will flow from universal WASH access. However, the WASH targets (SDG #6 Targets 6.1 and 6.2) are, by any standard, extremely ambitious.