NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

An Australian project that aims to revolutionise water delivery and sanitation in urban slums has been awarded $27m in funding.

Prof Rebekah Brown, the director of the Sustainable Development Institute at Melbourne’s Monash University, has been awarded a $14m research grant by the Wellcome Trust’s Our Planet Our Health awards in the UK. A further $13m from the Asian Development Bank would cover infrastructure and construction costs.

The large, multidisciplinary project – with contribution from Stanford and Emory universities in the US – aims to revolutionise water delivery to slums in urban areas, and will help rebuild 24 settlements in Indonesia and Fiji over five years.

More than 600 groups from around the world applied for funding from Our Planet Our Health, of which only four were successful. Brown’s study was one of only two relating to urbanisation. Josh Frydenberg, Australia’s minister for the environment, was due to announce the funding at Monash University on Tuesday morning.

Brown said she and her team were “thrilled and so privileged” to receive the money. The project’s aim was to address challenges in ensuring access to water and sanitation for the world’s urban poor, which, Brown said, now cost more than $100bn in global aid.