THE CHALLENGE OF SANITATION FOR THE FUTURE. John M. Kalbermatten

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1 THE CHALLENGE OF SANITATION FOR THE FUTURE John M. Kalbermatten Kalbermatten Associates, Incorporated 3630 Garfiels St. N.W., Washington, D.C., USA telephone (1-2022) ; telefax (1-202) WHY FOCUS ON SANITATION? Historically most large cities grew up where there was an assured supply of good water; whether they had any adequate means of disposing of their wastes was very much a secondary consideration. This bias has persisted to the present day: there are still serious imbalances between water supply and sanitation 1 in less developed countries (LDCs). The latest data available (WHO, 1996) has certain inevitable limitations (not all countries responded; not all the data is current; private investments are probably undercounted; inoperable systems are probably still counted as serviceable; the availability or effectiveness of wastewater treatment is not reviewed, etc.), but it paints as accurate a picture as is likely to be available:? 82 per cent of urban dwellers have access to water supply, leaving 279 million unserved; and 1 Sanitation refers only to the management of human excreta and wastewater. Environmental sanitation may, depending on context and user, also include an adequate supply of safe water, good household hygiene, etc.. Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 1

2 ? 63 per cent of urban dwellers have access to sanitation, leaving 589 million unserved. The situation is probably worse than the statistics suggest, since many schemes fail to perform properly, or go out of commission and are never repaired. Regrettably, the impact of the absence of related infrastructure services on human health and productivity is largely overlooked: the classic definition of sanitation does not include solid waste management and storm water drainage; despite the fact that their lack is often as detrimental as the lack of sanitation. There is a clear need to approach infrastructure planning and delivery on a more holistic basis which includes the heretofore neglected subsectors: i.e., sanitation should become Environmental Sanitation (ES), defined as wastewater and excreta disposal (WWED), municipal solid waste management (MSWM), and stormwater drainage (SWD). At the same time, some of the basic assumptions, such as using vast amounts of water to transport small amounts of wastes over great distances only to then separate them again at great costs, need to be re-examined and better and less expensive methods found. For solid waste and stormwater management, information about coverage is more elusive than for water supply and sanitation. Probably between one-third and one half of urban MSW generated is not collected (O Meara, 1999); there appears to be no consolidated data on stormwater drainage coverage. These ES deficiencies have appalling consequences. People are surrounded by filth, they and their children suffer from a host of diseases that leave them malnourished, debilitated or dead; their homes are inundated by floods during the rainy season that are little better than raw sewage; and their water supplies are polluted by the grossly contaminated environment. Perhaps what is worse is that these living conditions have often come to be accepted as the unavoidable norm by city planners and sector professionals - and even to some extent by the people who suffer from them. Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 2

3 The sanitary revolution in the 19 th century was meant to put an end to the abysmal squalor of the cities of the industrial revolution. Industrialized countries have made amazing progress, but their solutions, when applied in LDCs, have proven to be too expensive to be affordable or sustainable. This situation will certainly worsen unless present approaches are radically changed because the urban population is expected to increase from the present 40% to more than 50% of total population by 2020 (United Nations, 1998). What is worse, these cities will bear little resemblance to the planned cities of the past: over half the households will be living there illegally (Ingram, 1997), and extension of organized services to evolving illegal areas with no formal road system poses a major challenge. INTEGRATED WATER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Following the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in June of 1992, increasing attention has been paid to integrated water resources management. This approach was suggested by the conference participants in chapter 18: Protection of the quality and supply of freshwater resources: application of integrated approaches to the development, management and use of water resource. To implement this approach, Governments, International and National Development Agencies have created new institutional tools. Since Rio de Janeiro conference, two organizations have been created to address issues of integrated water resources management. Both of them were founded in The World Water Council is intended to serve as the Global Think Tank for water resources. The Global Water Partnership has been designed to be action oriented in promoting integrated water resource management by means of collaborating and supporting Governments and Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 3

4 stakeholders through information exchange, development of more effective solutions and policies and helping to identify necessary resources. Both organizations have specific tasks with a common objective: to increase the efficiency of water use and reuse through integrated water resources management so as to ensure that the increasingly scarce water resources can adequately serve the needs of the ever increasing population while protecting the environment. As a start, the World Water Council is developing a World Water Vision 2 to provide guidance for water resources development in the next century. THE VISION FOR THE 21 ST CENTURY The world water vision project is an attempt to find solutions for the water crisis and to alert Government decisionmakers to the dangers it poses. The project involves thousands of professionals in three thematic areas: i) Water for People; ii) Water for Food; and iii) Water for Nature. Stakeholders in all the regions of the world have been consulted to ensure that specific regional problems would be addressed. The Vision will be presented at the Second World Water Forum and Ministerial Conference to be held in The Hague in March of the year Overall responsibility for guiding the Vision s development is vested in a World Water Commission created especially for this purpose by the World Water Council. Water for people deals not only with water, but such sector issues as water conservation and 2 Information about the World Water Vision can be obtained via Internet at about the World Water Council at and the Global; Water Partnership at Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 4

5 reuse, wastewater disposal and pollution control. Responsibility for this part of the Vision has been given to the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council created at the end of the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade. The consultative process implemented by the Collaborative Council to ensure that stakeholders around the world had a chance to be heard and make contributions to the vision is unprecedented in its comprehensiveness and probably unique in the history of the water and sanitation sector. MEETING THE CHALLENGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL SANITATION FOR THE 21 ST CENTURY Global Water Partnership Initiated Activities In Water Supply And Sanitation At a meeting of the Global Water Partnership s Technical Advisory Committee in Copenhagen in 1997, the assembled experts unanimously selected two issues that required priority attention in the Water Supply and Sanitation Sector: i) Urban Environmental Sanitation 3 ii) Institutional Performance Monitoring (performance indicators and benchmarking Other sectors, namely Water for Food Security, and Water for Environment and Ecosystems, also selected priority themes for actions. The meeting participants proposed the establishment of a Urban Environmental Sanitation Network (UESNET), which is now being developed by the UNDP/World Bank Water and Sanitation Programme with financial support from the United Kingdom s 3 Defined as wastewater and excreta disposal, stormwater drainage and municipal solid waste management, with water is to be considered part of environmental sanitation to the extent it affects excreta disposal and the local environment. Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 5

6 Department for International Development. The objective of the UESNET are to assist service providers to: 1. Develop and share with others on a continuous basis knowledge about how to deliver urban environmental services effectively and efficiently 2. Provide assistance in building the capacity to facilitate sustainable expansion and delivery of service to the urban population, especially to low-income communities, thus improving the quality of the environment and the health of the citizens; and 3. Reorient the mind and attitudes of service providers from simple service provision to a consideration of the sustainability of water resources and their integrated management for the benefit of all stakeholders. The principal audience of the UESNET is expected to be municipal managers and professionals responsible for the provision of urban environmental services, and decision- makers who have to create the environment which empowers the managers to take the actions required to improve service delivery. The development period leading to the permanent operation of UESNET consists of two phases. Phase 1, which has started in May 1999, will concentrate on the early stages of the development of the UESNET in one region, and on the promotion, planning and establishment of the UESNET at the global level. Phase 1 is expected to end in February 2000 with a proposal for the implementation of the UESNET at the global level and in one region and selected countries during the early part of Phase 2. The proposal would also include details of the work planned for the establishment of the UESNET in the remaining regions by the end of the 3-year Phase 2 of the development period, and the establishment of a trust fund for research and pilot activities. By the end of Phase 2, the global network should be fully operational, although not yet financially self- Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 6

7 supporting. The time required for achieving financial viability will be investigated during Phase 1. UNDP/World Bank initiated Activities In parallel to the UESNET development, the UNDP/World Bank Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) is implementing two related projects, the preparation of a: i) Study to identify Gaps, Issues and Constraints in Urban Environmental Sanitation, funded by the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom; and ii) Resource Guide in Urban Environmental Sanitation, funded by the Dutch and Swiss Governments The Gaps Study This study s purpose is to identify gaps in knowledge that are hindering the provision of urban environmental sanitation services in developing countries. In general, it appears that most of the necessary technical information is available, although not necessarily easily accessible. There are however, some surprising omissions or disagreements, for example in comparative costs of alternative approaches and even on basic design criteria. In view of the impending water scarcity in many countries, it is also surprising that there has not been more serious consideration of sanitation systems that use little or no water, and of water recycling. The study is expected to not only identify gaps but to propose measures, ranging from case studies to applied research, to fill the identified gaps. Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 7

8 The Resource Guide For at least the past two decades there have been intense national and international efforts attempting to devise solutions to environmental sanitation problems. Attention was focused initially on the technical and economic aspects of sanitation, and it was found that alternatives to conventional solutions did indeed exist, at very much lower cost. Similar research into MSW management, and to a lesser extent, storm drainage, followed. The focus then shifted to the institutional aspects of sustainable programs, and to the ways in which the community concerned could be involved in improving its situation. As a result, significant progress has been made in developing approaches which offer a much better hope of sustainable and affordable service. There are already a number of such sourcebooks either in existence or under preparation, all of them addressing single sectors (water supply, solid waste, stormwater drainage and sanitation). There are, however, no readily available guides that treat environmental sanitation holistically. To avoid duplicating previous efforts, the Resource Guide, directing the reader to other sourcebooks as far as possible, focusses instead on non-technical aspects that affect each of the UES sub-sectors (so called cross-cutting issues ). The intended primary audience for the Resource Guide is the people in LDCs who have responsibility for UES service provision in medium and smaller cities, who at present do not have easy access to the information they need to do their jobs. Of course, it is hoped that this information will also be of use to the larger cities, which in many countries have the largest informal unserved settlements, to Government policymakers, and to the ESAs. Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 8

9 Collaborative Council Environmental Sanitation Initiatives The Collaborative Council, the most prominent and effective organization with institutional and individual members from all parts of the world interested in advancing water supply and sanitation, has sponsored many activities in water supply and sanitation. It s Working Group on Promotion of Sanitation published documentation justifying greater attention to sanitation and providing practical suggestion on how to increase sanitation services and providing a cleaner environment with the objective to reduce peoples exposure to disease. At its fourth Global Forum in Manila, the Collaborative Council established an Environmental Sanitation Working Group (ESWG) to develop recommendations for actions leading to increased coverage of Environmental Sanitation Services. At its first meeting, the working group considered different approaches to accomplish this goal, and agreed on the development of a planning process it calls Household Centered Environmental Sanitation. At the same Global Forum, the Collaborative Council also endorsed the development of an initiative proposed by UNICEF, the Global Environmental Sanitation Initiative. The initiative s objective is to create a network promoting environmental sanitation through educating and motivating political and government leaders to give greater priority to environmental sanitation. Household Centered Environmental Sanitation During its deliberations, the ESWG concluded that many effective and successful initiatives (technological, institutinal, finacial, participatory) of the various environmental sanitation subsectors (wastewater and excreta disposal, stormwater drainage, solid waste disposal) exist. The group also concluded that these individual subsector Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 9

10 initiatives have not yet been combined into a unified strategic planning tool which could be used for a comprehensive analysis of urban environmental sanitation needs and the systematic planning of service improvements. The group therefore the Household- Centered Environmental Sanitation (Kalbermatten, 1999) model aims to fill this gap. The model has been developed in the context of environmental sanitation, but could equally be applied to water demand management, and indeed to integrated water resources management. The HCES model is based on the following principles:? Stakeholders are members of a zone, and act as members of that zone ( zones range from households to the nation).? Decisions are reached through consultation with all stakeholders affected by the decision, in accordance with the methods selected by the zone in question (for example, votes at national level in a democratic system, town hall meetings at local level, or informal discussions at neighborhood level).? Problems should be solved as close to their source as possible? Decisions, and the responsibility for implementing them, flow from the household to the community to the city and finally to the central government. Figure 1 below presents graphically the methods which have tended to govern the environmental sanitation sector in the past, and the approach proposed under the HCES model. Each circle represents a different zone, from the household to the nation. The fundamental difference between past practice and the HCES model graphically presented in figure 1 is that people become the focal point. HCES does this by using the smallest organizational unit established to serve people s common interest, the household, as the core of the planning process. The HCES model ensures that decisions on service delivery and technology selection are made by stakeholders, rather than central decision makers.. As a consequence, the HCES model promotes Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 10

11 sustainable solutions and self-sufficiency at every level of the decision-making process (that is, within each Zone). External assistance is provided, by the next zone or (rarely) by central government organizations, only for those functions which are clearly beyond the capacity of the implementing community. Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 11

12 Figure 1 DECISION MAKING IN THE PAST THE FUTURE LEGEND: I Household II Neighbourhood/City Ward III Town/City IV District/Province/River Basin V Nation Flow of Decision-Making Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 12

13 Figure 2 demonstrates another aspect of the HCES planning model, holistic planning to achieve the benefits of synergism. Most of the principles of the HCES planning model have been used separately, but rarely in a holistic and consistent manner. As a consequence, the benefits of holistic planning and synergism have rarely been achieved. Fortunately, integrated water resources management is becoming more important as many more locations experience water scarcity, and so there will be considerable pressure to think in holistic terms rather than on narrow sectoral lines. Providing water service without provisions for wastewater disposal (by limiting the quantity to accommodate on site disposal or by providing off-site systems), waste water disposal without treatment (which negatively affects water resource development) will become a thing of the past. Basically, this requires substituting the circular for the linear model in environmental services planning. This has not generally been done in the past, with one notable exception. The circular system was described by J.R. Sheaffer in Figure 2 below The linear system imports water and other goods into a community, uses them once and discharges them from the community. The circular system imports water and other goods into a community, manages demand for maximum efficiency, reuses and recycles water and other goods to reduce waste volume and optimize environmental benefits. Sheaffer, J.R. and Stevens, L.A.: Future Water. William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, USA, graphically presents the linear and the circular systems. Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 13

14 Figure 2 Linear Model Circular Model Implications of applying the HCES model However the boundaries of each zone are defined 4, implementation of the HCES model requires stakeholders within the zone to plan and implement environmental sanitation infrastructure and service delivery in a manner that is sustainable with the resources which are available to them within the zone (or which can be made available from another zone). The approaches that should guide them in arriving at such sustainable solutions within each zone include some or all of the following:? Water demand management, in order to minimize wasteful use of water, and so reduce the need for new source development and limit the production of wastewater;? Reuse and recycling of water, in order to minimize the need for wastewater collection, treatment and disposal; 4 It should be noted that the boundaries appropriate to each of the various sub-sectors may not be identical. A fundamental exercise in establishing the HCES model is therefore to determine how best to treat the study area in terms of zones and sub-zones, as well as of sectors and sub-sectors. This is probably best resolved through an analysis of actual case studies, rather than as an abstract theoretical concept. Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 14

15 ? Solid waste recycling, in order to reduce the burden of collecting and disposing of solid wastes;? Nutrient recovery, whether at the household level (for example, ecosanitation), or on a wider scale (for example, urban agriculture);? Improved rainwater management, reducing runoff by on-site or local measures, including detention and treatment, and the reuse of stormwater to benefit the community, such as storage for fire fighting and recreational or amenity use, thus reducing uncontrolled discharge to surface waters;? Strong emphasis on intermediate technologies, so as to encourage household- and community-level construction, operation and management of facilities, and permit reuse and/or disposal at the local level;? Institutional arrangements and mechanisms that stress the involvement of the users, encourage the participation of the private sector, facilitate cooperation across zone or sub-zone boundaries (such as wholesale retail relationships for service delivery), and ensure the provision of technical assistance across zone boundaries where needed;? Economic analysis procedures that clearly illustrate the economic benefits of good planning as well as the consequences of sub-optimal development (for example, in terms of environmental damage; wasteful use of water, energy or other resources; or relying on imported skills and equipment and so failing to make the best use of local resources);? Effective and sustainable financial incentives to encourage the adoption of economically-desirable alternatives;? Financial procedures that determine whether problems should be solved within the zone itself, or whether a joint solution should be selected to serve more than one zone (for example, a city-wide system serving a number of wards). Where economic and financial considerations indicate that a shared solution is preferable, appropriate cost-sharing mechanisms need to be established. Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 15

16 ? Cost recovery practices (predominantly user charges in Zones I and II; tax revenues elsewhere) that ensure financial viability, are socially equitable, and promote the circular system and the productive use of wastes. The Global Environmental Sanitation Initiative GESI s objective is to raise awareness on ongoing sanitation programmes and current thinking, and bring together professionally in an advocacy campaign. The methods and mechanisms for doing so are presently being developed. They are likely to include country pages in order to make the programme directly relevant to specific countries. WHO Initiative supporting Environmental Sanitation. Among WHO s many activities in water supply, sanitation and health, the most immediately relevant is the planned establishment of an Environmental Sanitation Clearing House (ESICH). Environmental Sanitation Information Clearing House At a meeting of Governments in Washington, D.C., in 1995, which adopted the Global Programme of Action (GPA) for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land based Activities, UNEP was instructed to establish and coordinate a Sewage Clearing- House. The Clearing-House proposed by UNEP includes several sector specific Clearing-Houses to be coordinated by different UN or UN related organizations. One of them is the Sewage Clearing-House, for which responsibility was accepted by the WHO General Assembly. At a meeting of interested parties called by WHO to consider the establishment of the Clearing House, the participants recommended to WHO to extend the scope of the Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 16

17 Clearing House to cover all aspects of Environmental Sanitation, not only the previously suggested sewage impacts on marine environment. The suggestion was accepted, and planning for the Environmental Sanitation Information Clearing House (ESICH) is about to begin. ESICH s purpose is to provide the user of information with the most efficient (quickest) access to the information sought. I practice, this would mean that with whatever network or clearing house a search for information begins, by the fourth click the information would be identified and available for downloading. Initially, ESICH service will be restricted to electronic data searches via web sites, and exclude response to requests. Assuming that this first phase proves successful, a second phase could include response to requests, possibly using a help desk format. That would require budgetary support that presumably would be easier to promote after a successful phase 1. Other Environmental Sanitation Initiatives There are a number of ongoing environmental sanitation related activities. They include electronic networks, databases and projects, usually with specific and limited objectives. WHO document EOS/98.11 Development of a Sewage Information Clearing House includes an extensive list of ES related web sites and is available from WHO Geneva. Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 17

18 REFERENCES WHO, 1996: Water Supply and Sanitation Sector Monitoring Report, 1996: Sector status as of 31 December WHO/WSSCC/UNICEF document WHO/EOS/96.15, WHO, Geneva, Switzerland. O Meara, Molly, June 1999: Reinventing Cities for People and the Planet. Worldwatch Paper No. 147, Worldwatch Institute, Washington, DC, USA. United Nations Population Division, 1998: World Population Prospects: The 1998 Revision. Volume 1. United Nations Population Division Department of Economic and Social Affairs, New York, NY, USA. (See also United Nations Secretariat, 1998: World Urbanization Prospects: The 1996 Revision. Population Division, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, New York, NY, USA. Ingram, Gregory K., November 1997: Patterns of Metropolitan Development: What Have We Learned?. Policy Research Working Paper No. 1841, Research Advisory Staff, The World Bank, Washington, DC, USA. Kalbermatten, John M., R.N. Middleton, and Roland Schertenleib, July 1999: Household-Centred Environmental Sanitation, EAWAG-SANDEC, Duebendorf, Switzerland. Los retos del saneamiento para el futuro 18