SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Water
Sec. Water and Human Systems
This article is part of the Research TopicInclusive Co-Governance of Water: Addressing Socio-Ecological Challenges and Sectoral InterdependenciesView all 6 articles
FISCAL POLICIES INTERTWINED TO PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP INVESTMENT IN WATER AND SANITATION FOR ACHIEVING SDG 6: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW
Provisionally accepted
- 1Chinhoyi University of Technology School of Entrepreneurship and Business Sciences, Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe
- 2Chinhoyi University of Technology, Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe
- 3School of Wildlife and Environmental Sciences, Department of Freshwater and Fishery Science, Chinhoyi University of Technology, Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe
- 4School of Engineering Science and Technology, Department of Environmental Engineering, Chinhoyi University of Technology, Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe
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Alone, the public sector cannot help nations achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6 target by 2030 due to financial constraints. Studies indicates that shifting water financing policies creates unequal social and economic impacts across different regions and timeframes. These disparities stem from the uneven natural distribution of water and the ongoing competition between different sectors for limited resources. Complex, ostensibly, synergistic public-private partnerships in water financing distends and intersperse with geopolitical dynamics disenfranchising fragile livelihoods in least developed nations with contrasting patterns for the developed world. A caveat looms in synthesizing, developing, decoding and integrating fiscal policies to incentivise multifaceted stakeholder financing, participation and uptake and mainstreaming holistic water and sanitation projects for sustainable livelihoods. This contemporary systematic and bibliometric literature review used a derivate SPAR-4-SLR model to evaluate the contribution of financial paradigms and fiscal policies towards the attainment of SDG 6 targets by 2030 for Africa, Asia, and South and North America. Extensive research highlights a persistent financing gap in the water and sanitation sectors, which fundamentally aligns with global patterns of systemic poverty. While developed nations have successfully leveraged functional public-private partnerships to address these shortfalls, lower-income regions remain trapped by a lack of investment capital. Future research imperatives delegate towards evaluating the stochastic impacts of capital markets, in tandem with tailored water market instruments buttressed by donor funding and innovative localized funding mechanisms to achieve SDG 6 by 2030.
Keywords: financing, Fiscal policies, Hegemony Investments, Public-Private Partnerships, water and sanitation
Received: 11 Sep 2025; Accepted: 06 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Madzivanyika, Utete, Mabvure and Sango. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Cuthbert Madzivanyika
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