ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF SUSTAINABLE SANITATION IN RURAL SETTLEMENTS

This paper presents discussion of the problem of rural sanitation economic sustainability, affecting the overall investment agreement with the principles of sustainable development. In our opinion, economic aspects of sustainability, understood as affordability and profitability of the investment are crucial because they affect the social acceptance and willingness to pay by the members of rural communities. Additionally, it was proposed to use the well-known decision-making indicators of cost efficiency to assess the economic sustainability of rural sanitation. Four different variants of rural sanitation, centralized and decentralized, utilizing up-to-date state of art and technologies, were developed and tested with use of NPV, BCR and DGC indicators. The performed multivariate analysis using Weighted Sum Model showed the low profitability of centralized systems of rural sanitation, thus their sustainability may be questioned from economic and social point of view.