Natural Treatment Systems and Importance of Social Cost Benefit Analysis in Developing Countries: A Critical Review

Indranil De, Rooba Hasan and Mubashshir Iqbal
Additional contact information
Indranil De: Institute of Rural Management Anand, Anand 388001, Gujarat, India
Rooba Hasan: Independent Researcher, Anand 388001, Gujarat, India
Mubashshir Iqbal: Independent Researcher, Anand 388001, Gujarat, India

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 7, 1-15

Abstract: This review article attempts to analyse the social issues that impact the performance of natural treatment systems (NTSs). An NTS is a decentralised wastewater treatment system found to be appropriate in developing countries due to its affordability and lower technicity. However, if socio-economic and institutional issues of community are ignored then NTSs may turn out to be unsuitable for developing countries. The article also takes a critical view on the extant literature which ignores the social cost of NTSs. The social cost of NTSs may be high as a decentralised system requires the engagement of various governmental agencies, research institutes and the community. The cost of engagement may make NTSs a socio-economically unattractive proposition. The article discusses the variables to be considered for the social cost-benefit analysis. It also discusses the implications of social cost-benefit analysis for appreciating the incentives and net benefits for collective actions at the community level. Social cost-benefit analysis can help overcome the initial difficulty of high financial cost and usher sustainability.

Keywords: natural treatment systems; social cost-benefit analysis; collective action; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/7/3913/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/7/3913/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:7:p:3913-:d:779965

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().