The all-inclusive sustainable development goals: the WASH professional's guide (or should that be ‘nightmare’?)

The sustainable development goals (SDGs) are now upon us. An initial reaction might be ‘too little time, too much to do’. This is, of course, somewhat dangerous as it might lead some professionals, some ministries, and some governments, to decide that nothing (or, at best, not much) can be done − after all, progress towards the sanitation target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was weak or very weak in many developing countries (Luh & Bartram 2016). However, we, as WASH professionals, cannot think like this and we have to face the enormity of the SDG challenges head-on. And enormous these challenges most certainly are. SDG #6 is all-water embracing (United Nations General Assembly 2015a, 2015b). It includes, for example, affordable safely-managed water and sanitation, and hygiene (notably facilities for handwashing with soap, menstrual hygiene management (MHM), and food hygiene), for...