This paper challenges the conventional wisdom that water and sanitation improvements and other preventive health interventions are always a wise economic investment. Costs and benefits are presented for six water, sanitation, and health programs—handwashing, sanitation, point-of-use filtration and chlorination, insecticide-treated bed nets, and cholera vaccination. Model parameters are specified for a range of conditions that are plausible for locations in developing countries.

This study identifies the determinants of households’ willingness to pay for an improvement in solid waste-collection services based on 381 households in Kampala.

Water resources are essential to human development processes and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals that seek, inter alia, to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal literacy, and ensure environmental sustainability.

This book provides economic guidance on the matter through valuable comparisons of different estuaries.

Given the overwhelming evidence available on the significance of freshwater inflow to estuary functionality in South Africa, it is clear that an important component of catchment management is the allocation of river water into estuaries.

Wetlands are commonly understood to have the capacity to reduce the loads of excess nutrients, pathogens, sediments, and other contaminants generated by various activities in their catchment areas. However, quantifying these “services” is difficult and most research in this field has concentrated on artificial treatment wetlands. Understanding the value of their water treatment characteristics, as well as the other services they provide, is increasingly recognized as essential to achieving a balance between conservation and activities that degrade or replace wetlands.

The authors examine the performance of community organizations that provide safe drinking water in rural Costa Rica.