While
there has been a great deal of attention paid to improving the supply of water
in developing countries, sanitation has been sorely neglected. The link between
sanitation and poor health, leading to a high mortality rate, is seldom
understood. Water-borne diseases as a whole are by far the biggest threat,
claiming 2.2 million lives a year, but it is the contamination of water by
excrement that takes a particularly terrible toll. Diarrhea alone kills 6,000
children every day.
Overcoming
considerable resistance, experts were able – at the World Summit on
Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg
in 2002 – to get sanitation included in what are known as the UN’s
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Under these, specific targets have been set
for providing basic needs to developing countries by 2015. The UN wants to halve
the present number of people without access to safe drinking water – 1 billion
– by this date.
However,
the number of those without a clean, private place to defecate and urinate is
two-and-a-half times bigger. People use every available space to meet their
daily ablutions and most of this human waste finds its way back into water
sources. Halving this huge number is going to be virtually impossible by 2015.
Listening
A
new document titled "Listening", brought out by the Water Supply &
Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSCC), a Geneva-based multi-stakeholder agency
under the aegis of the World Heath Organization, points out that contrary to
public perception, it is not the lack of resources that is responsible for this
abysmal state of affairs. Rather, it is the failure of governments and
development agencies to examine the methods of providing low-cost but effective
sanitation that have succeeded in several countries and to adopt these on a
bigger scale.
As
Dr. Jan Pronk, who chairs the WSSCC, says in the foreword, “Indeed, even a
very significant increase in the funds available would be unlikely to bring the
goals within reach. This judgment is based on the fact that almost all of
those who work with communities to promote water, sanitation and hygiene believe
that conventional approaches are fatally flawed – and that ‘more of the
same’ will lead not to the achievement of the goals but to more years of
failure and frustration.”
Lesson
1: Community Participation
For
the most part, the thrust of “Listening”, which was released globally on
World Water Day on March 22, lies in learning about methods that have been
implemented by communities themselves. One of the lessons is that it is simply
not enough to provide information to people: on the contrary, it is only when
they demand sanitation that things begin to fall in place.
"The
first task is to wake the people up." |
|
As
Nelly Guapacha, the leading campaigner for the new water system in El
Hormiguero, a town in
Colombia
, points out, “Poverty breeds a kind of apathy, a resignation…The first task
is to wake the people up – to get the community moving, get people to see the
filth and see what they can do about it. Without that, there will never be any
of the famous community participation.”
The
people there decided to clean up their own streets, leading to the formation of
women’s committees. This gave them a sense of pride in keeping their
neighborhoods free of garbage. After an outbreak of cholera, the people agitated
for supplies of clean water and over the next three years, participated in many
meetings to decide what the best system was for them. They opted for digging a
better well and a whole new network of pipes to bring water to homes. Everybody
took part in the digging, including women and children. Ms Guapacha believes
that people won’t be motivated to demand sanitation only to tackle water-borne
diseases but to change their living conditions as a whole.
Lesson
2: Initiative
Another
lesson is that the very notion of community participation needs to be redefined.
Traditionally, the authorities have devised projects in which people are
expected to participate. True participation basically is a political process,
where people made decisions from the very beginning, or were at least consulted.
As
another Colombian community activist observes, most water and sanitation
projects have failed because they are primarily engineering solutions. Sheela
Patel, who heads a Mumbai-based slum dwellers NGO which has also done pioneering
work in the nearby city of
Pune
, says, “Communities have shown themselves to be capable of delivering
sanitation facilities that are properly thought through, well built and
efficiently run.”
Lesson
3: The Role of Women
Men
should be excluded from sanitation projects
|
|
A
third feature is the essential role of women, prompting Jockin Aruputham, a
Magsaysay award winner who heads the National Slum Dwellers’ Federation in
Mumbai and is associated with Patel, to suggest that as a rule, men should be
excluded from sanitation projects. Nelly Guapacha also remembers that the
formation of the women’s committee “was the match that struck this community
alight”.
Lesson
4: Measuring Progress
A
final lesson which the report drives home is that new indicators ought to be
employed to measure progress on water and sanitation goals. It is not a matter
so much of counting the number of taps and latrines installed and dividing them
by the populations served “but by recording changes in use, behavior, and
above all, improvements in health”. In countries like
India
, the government merely keeps track of these numbers but seldom checks whether
the taps have run dry or the toilets are unusable.
"This
movement should be marching under the banner 'No Open Defecation'" |
|
Dr.
Sujya Kanta Mishra, a minister in the Indian state of
West Bengal
, points out that “This movement should be marching under the banner ‘No
Open Defecation’. Ultimately we’re aiming to create an even more profound
change – ‘Sanitation as a Way of Life’. The phrase implies psychological
adjustment that will lead not just to the use of latrines but also to the
washing of hands, the cutting of nails, the safe preparation of food, the
refusal to spit in open places and the vigilant protection of local water bodies
from all sources.” He has been associated with the Medinipur project where
this strategy has been implemented.
“Listening”
looks to NGOs to act as a catalyst in this process of change but recognizes that
they are inadequate to deal with halving the number of people in the world –
2.5 billion – without sanitation by 2015. Ultimately, it will have to be up to
governments and international agencies to meet the challenge. UNICEF and the
World Bank, for instance, have already been funding community-driven sanitation
programmes.
*
Darryl D’Monte is the founder President of the International
Federation of Environmental Journalists and is serving a second term till 2003.
He is also the Chairperson of the Forum of Environmental Journalists of
India
(FEJI) and a syndicated columnist and freelance writer. He has published two
books: “
Temples
or Tombs? Industry versus Environment: Three Controversies”, Center for
Science & Environment,
New Delhi
, 1985 and “Ripping the Fabric: The Decline of Mumbai and its Mills”,
Oxford
University
Press,
New Delhi
, 2002. He was previously the Resident Editor of the “Indian Express”
(1979-1981) and of the “Times of
India
” (1988-1994) in Mumbai. Your emails will be forwarded to him by contacting
the editor at: ScienceTech@islam-online.net
