A/HRC/30/39 4% (four per cent) of the income of subscribers”.16 For some households, however, even a small proportion of their expenditure will be too much, and water and sanitation must be available for free in these instances. 28. It is impossible to set a generally applicable affordability standard at the global level. Any such standard would be arbitrary and cannot reflect the challenges people face in practice and the context in which they live, including how much they need to spend on housing, food and the realization of other human rights. The affordability of water and sanitation services is highly contextual, and States should therefore determine affordability standards at the national and/or local level. The human rights framework stipulates important parameters for the process of doing so, in particular in terms of participation. 17 B. Reconciling affordability with environmental and economic sustainability 29. When seeking to ensure affordability in practice, measures to implement human rights often need to be reconciled with broader considerations of ensuring environmental and economic sustainability. “Social sustainability” in the form of affordable access must not be jeopardized in favour of measures that aim to secure economic and environmental sustainability. To be environmentally sustainable, there must be sufficient water resources of good quality available to serve existing and future users. Water tariffs should be designed to allow for access to sufficient water for essential purposes but, where necessary, to limit use for luxuries. Water resources must be protected from pollution, which means that sanitation services must include appropriate collection, transport, treatment and disposal of wastewater to protect both public health and the environment. However, sanitation tariffs must not be so high that people avoid using the service, which could put a strain on public health. 30. To ensure economic sustainability, some have argued for full cost recovery through tariffs, i.e. for water and sanitation service providers to charge full operational costs (and in some cases also construction and rehabilitation) to existing and future users. Where there are sufficient numbers of well-off people compared to those who are unable to pay the full cost of a service, full-cost recovery may be possible, with some cross-subsidization between the former and the latter. However, even in countries with a relatively well-off population, for sanitation services in particular, governments frequently provide significant amounts of public funding in order to make the service financially viable and to protect public health.18 31. In many developing countries, there are insufficient numbers of people who are well-off to provide a cross-subsidy. In these situations, full cost recovery only through tariffs will not be a feasible option. Public finance may be needed in such instances to ensure affordability for all households. To make such financing available and achieve affordability for all, as a first step States should make better use of budgets already allocated for water and sanitation, specifically to reduce inequalities in access to services. 16 17 18 Indonesia Minister of Home Affairs, “Technical guidance and procedures for regulating tariff of drinking water in regional administration-owned drinking companies”, regulation No.23/2006, 3 July 2006, Article 3.2, available from http://faolex.fao.org/docs/pdf/ins67962.pdf. For interesting insights of participatory process to decide on their own poverty lines, see Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, “Housing by People in Asia” No. 19, September 2014, available from http://www.achr.net/upload/downloads/file_16102014142111.pdf . International Water and Sanitation Centre report 2015, available from http://www.publicfinanceforwash.com. 9