despite progress on many fronts including on reaching the millennium development goals on water and sanitation in an estimated million city dwellers and million rural dwellers remained without access to an improved water source and an estimated billion people without access to sanitation governments must put in place the conditions to ensure that the actions of all stakeholders different categories of users multiple responsible authorities financiers and various service providers contribute to the longterm objectives of environmental sustainability and enhancing social welfare it also often means generating sufficient information and support for policy change by making the case for reform answering the question of what is in it for society and individuals