The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) funded the "SanRes R&D programme" during 1993 to 2001 which lay the foundation for the subsequent "EcoSanRes programme" carried out by Stockholm Environment Institute (2002–2011). A publication by Sida called "Ecological sanitation" in 1998 compiled the knowledge generated to date about ecosan in a popular book which was published as a second edition in 2004. The book has also been translated into Chinese, French and Spanish.
The German government enterprise GIZ also had a large "ecosan program" from 2001 to 2012. Whilst the term "ecosan" was preferred in the initial stages of this program, it was from 2007 onwards more and more replaced by the broader term "sustainable sanitation". In fact, the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance was founded in 2007 in an attempt to broaden the ecosan concept and to bring together various actors under one umbrella.
Research into how to make reuse of urine and feces safe in agriculture was carried out by Swedish researchers, for example Hakan Jönsson and his team, whose publication on "Guidelines on the Use of Urine and feces in Crop Production" was a milestone which was later incorporated into the WHO "Guidelines on Safe Reuse of Wastewater, Excreta and Greywater" from 2006. The multiple barrier concept to reuse, which is the key cornerstone of this publication, has led to a clear understanding on how excreta reuse can be done safely.