WASH Innovation Problem Statements
Mapping solutions
Problem Statements
Problem statements are used to guide the selection of key solutions for innovation portfolio management. They represent significant challenges to achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 and help highlight areas UNICEF can add value to the existing landscape, offer support or management for existing solutions and opportunities for brokering, enabling, and developing an impactful, scalable and sustainable business model.
By focusing on innovative solutions addressing the biggest WASH challenges, innovation could be a catalyst in accelerating access to universal access to safely managed WASH services at scale.
Lack of adequate and climate-sensitive groundwater mapping and development leads to poor drinking water quality, challenges in locating sustainable water sources, and impedes progress towards child development and Sustainable Development Goals, especially affecting Small Island Developing States.
Insufficient climate-sensitive data and understanding of integrating climate change impacts into WASH programming presents challenges to WASH practitioners modeling long-term sustainability of water resources, impacting the resilience of the service.
A lack of supportive environments for WASH SMEs, characterized by limited access to finance and unfavorable governmental policies is limiting the capacity of SMEs to expand and flourish, hindering their ability to effectively contribute to WASH governance and services.
Complexities in innovative finance options make it difficult to implement, scale, develop and identify investable programme/ project pipelines and to replicate effective solutions, which is exacerbated by the increasing challenges to secure finance for WASH projects in a resource-scarce environment.