According to UN SDG Progress report (2022), at the present moment no targets for SDG 6 are expected to be met by 2030. In 2022, 2.2 billion people had no access to safe drinking water and 3.5 million lacked safe sanitation. Approximately 50% of the world’s population was reported to have been under resourced in enough water for part of the year and a quarter of that population was living under “extremely high” water stress. Add to it, droughts have affected over 1.4 billion people between 2002 and 2021.
Other interlinked issues like climate change and urbanization have worsened the situation and are likely to irritate the existing social-ecological order. For example, though 153 nations share lakes and rivers that produce about 40% of the world’s population, the effective management of their shared water resources in all cases is placed in less than 20 percent of these countries. Similarly, the SDG6 Target 6.2 aims by 2030, to achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations. Will it be possible to achieve globally? locally? To make progress towards the target of achieving access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and ending open defecation, first water availability needs to be ensured. In order to do so, improving integrated water resource management and the governance of transboundary waters is crucial, besides addressing the impacts of climate variability and urbanization on freshwater systems are essential.
The Session
The Wednesdays.for.Water session organised by WforW Foundation on, ‘Future of Sanitation: challenges and potential solutions’ focused on the ongoing sanitation challenges around the world and its solutions particularly drawing references from across Asia and Africa and finding patterns with India. The session is a part of IASC Asia Series and co-organised by The International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC). The speakers for the session are François Bernard Brikke and Florence Laker. Francois Brikke is a sanitation engineer with over 30 years of experience in water and sanitation sector. He is now leading the inclusive Urban sanitation initiative at the International Water Association (IWA) based in London, after holding senior positions at the World Bank as regional team leader of the water and sanitation program in Latin America, at the UNICEF as wash Chief in Indonesia, at Matt McDonald as country lead, and many programs especially with Global Water Partnership. Florence Laker is a senior officer at IWA where she supports the implementation of inclusive Urban sanitation initiative and diversity, equity and inclusion agenda. With over 10 years of experience in the water and sanitation sector and expertise in urban WASH programme, she has worked with governments and international NGOs across various context. She is passionate about transformative Urban Sanitation Solutions and approaches and has successfully managed multi-year WASH projects focused on systems and strengthening public private partnership, stakeholder engagement, capacity building, and climate change. Nikhil Kumar, is the session discussant and he is a Master Student at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, TISS, Hyderabad Campus. The session is moderated by Mansee Bal Bhargava.
The talk is available at the WforW website and YouTube channel. The essay is a part of the excerpts taken from the conversation and substantiated with Indian context.
The SDGs and Sanitation
The Sustainable Development Goal (17 SDGs) Goal 6, Target 6.2 aims by 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations (also in WHO website). The sanitation goal in SDG has drastically changed the focus from access to a household sanitation facility (as was prioritized under the MDGs) to consideration of the full sanitation service chain that includes containment, emptying, transport, treatment and end-use disposal. Despite 2.1 billion people gaining access to improved toilets or latrines since 1990 globally, there is a long way to go to meet the sanitation target of safely managed sanitation for all.
As the countries have agreed and try to reach the goals, some common goals in terms of no poverty, health, gender equality, sustainable cities, climate, life below water, life on land, institutions and partnerships are directly linked (affected in achieving) with clean water and sanitation. Thus, once we do an investment in the clean water and sanitation, we may see the wider outcomes in other goals. This is an important and best way to understand the value of water and Sanitation. it is like with $1 invested in clean water and sanitation, we can reach much wider benefits.
The United Nation Habitat report titled, ‘Global report on Sanitation and Wastewater Management in cities and human settlements’ clearly lays out that regardless of technologies used, many cities in the low- and middle-income countries are struggling to manage wastewater and faecal sludge effectively. In order to provide universal sanitation services, there must be a responsible authority with a clear, legal mandate for inclusive urban service provision. There has to be clear institutional framework on roles and responsibilities.
According to François, sanitation is a basic need. More than a need, it is a human right recognized by the UN. It is one of the principles which should governs our public policies at local level and national level. Human right is not something that we should bypass however, the situation is a bit strange. Firstly, it is less studied subject and then the data is less produced, collated, and published.
Why monitor Sanitation? Sanitation data is crucial to identify and establish correlations with diseases and health. Sanitation data is also crucial to illustrate the social and economic benefits of investing in sanitation.
The international community has defined sanitation services under five categories: Open Defecation, Unimproved, Limited, Basic and Safely Managed. Safely managed category is the category that we are aiming for as measuring and managing. Ironically, this is actually what is measured for the sanitation data, and not the others categories.
For the data on sanitation services, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF through the Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (JMP) coordinate with all the related Ministries of the various counties that provide monthly or quarterly basis data. Sometimes there may be a discrepancy in terms of the interpretation or the analysis but the data is mostly correct. According to the Sustainable Development Report 2023-24 below are some staggering facts of sanitation services in the world and specifically in Asia.
In India, we also need to look into the institutional wonder whether it is possible to clearly lay down the responsibility of sanitation to a Ministry because, the polycentricity has a lot of gaps from the central government to local government when the roles and responsibilities are to be clearly spelt out. For example, though the central Ministry of Jal Shakti houses the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, much of the focus is on water resources with special interest on macro-large scale infrastructure projects with justification for provision of access to clean water. There are almost no highlights from the ministry on sanitation on regular basis. At the local level, the responsibility of sanitation in urban areas comes on to the municipal corporation and municipality which are governed by the central Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. Now the two ministries have almost invisible coordination. Similarly, the cleanliness Swachh Bharat Mission comes under the Ministry of Jal Shakti however, the local level in urban areas the responsibility comes on to the municipal corporation and municipality. In rural areas, the village sanitation and cleanliness besides access to clean water, all come directly under the central Ministry of Jal Shakti which has no dedicated division for sanitation. This helps to understand the India’s sanitation data better.
To improve the sanitation situation, it is also important to join hands with the local communities and proceed together. However, due to the complex caste-class-based systems in India, the sanitation management is trapped into the layers of social norms that discriminate certain section of the society to engage into its management due to poverty while the others are indifferent to sanitation, so much so that talking about it is also out of their purview.
Sanitation Solutions
There are some effective sanitation solutions and case studies to learn from. Since urban sanitation is lagging behind and since more and more population is getting urbanised, it is important to focus more on urban sanitation. According to Florence, the ultimate goal is to achieve equitable, safe and sustainable sanitation services for all residents. One of the promising approaches for urban sanitation is, ‘Citywide inclusive sanitation’ approach which prioritizes equity, safety and sustainable services with a strong engagement from local authorities and communities.
One of the critical aspects of achieving effective sanitation is having a responsible authority with a clear mandate. Unfortunately, many cities and urban local bodies especially in the lower- and middle-income countries struggle with a lot of fragmented UH responsibilities there is no clarity on who is responsible for providing sanitation services, as seen in the case of India.
In addition, adequate resource planning and active stakeholder engagement is essential for making urban sanitation successful. The success in urban sanitation relies on multiple interlinking factors which foster some sort of enabling environment and therefore local authorities supported by the utilities, operators and other partners. Some of the key factors on which the solution depends are:
- Political will - For sanitation services enhancement and sustainability, a strong political support and commitment is paramount. It is essential that the political leaders allocate resources and attention towards sanitation issues, ensuring that there are frameworks to provide services to all, in effective and efficient ways, continuously all the time
- Sectoral Interlinkages - Collaboratively across various sectors to holistically achieving the sanitation targets. This requires institutional arrangements and monitoring and evaluation
- Stakeholder Engagement - It is important to ensure that everyone from the national policy makers to local communities and the other sector actors are part of the process.
- Technology and Innovation - There is an urgent need to adopt innovative technologies to enhance sanitation solutions as, the Citywide inclusive sanitation approach promotes a mix of both seaward and non-seaward sanitation technologies to meet the diverse needs of all the users in the city.
- Capacity building and information access - There is an urgent need to continue to advocate for initiatives that strengthen the knowledge and skills of all the local stakeholders to be able to push political motivation to provide sanitation services to the community.
The World Bank’s Water Global Practice, in partnership with The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Emory University, The University of Leeds, WaterAid and Plan International, have jointly developed and advanced an approach to tackling urban sanitation challenges, termed as Citywide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS).
CWIS looks to shift the urban sanitation paradigm for access to safely managed sanitation by promoting a range of solutions with focus on service provision and its enabling environment, rather than on building infrastructure. The shift in paradigm to CWIS, referred as business as unusual, requires a shift in mindsets of all stakeholders importantly the governments, the engineering, the businesses, and the community. A CWIS project is where…
- Everybody benefits from adequate sanitation service delivery outcomes that meet user aspirations and that protect the health of users.
- Human waste is safely managed along the whole sanitation service chain ensuring protection of the environment and of human health.
- A diversity of appropriate technical solutions is embraced, combining both on-site and sewered, in either centralized or decentralized systems, with consideration of resource recovery and re-use —tailored to the on-ground conditions of the habitats.
- Institutional arrangements and regulations, with well-aligned incentives, are in place for the operation and maintenance of the full sanitation service chain.
- Cities demonstrate political will, technical and managerial leadership, and identify new and creative long-term funding options for sanitation.
- Funding also allocated for non-infrastructure aspects of service delivery, such as capacity building, household engagement and outreach, and sanitation marketing.
- Complementary urban services, including water supply, drainage, greywater management and solid waste management, are incorporated into sanitation planning.
- Activities are included to target specific unserved and underserved groups, such as women, ethnic minorities, the urban poor and people with disabilities. (sourced from World Bank).
- The case study of Malindi in Kenya, Dakar in Senegal, Kampala in Uganda, Lusaka in Zambia and Narsapur, Trichy, Wai, and Warangal in India are some examples of CWIS implementation.
A million worth question is when in a society, we mostly resist and refrain from communications on the sanitation topic, how do we address the sanitation issues? The most effective way is to normalise sanitation conversations. For the community to actually discuss about such a sensitive topic, there needs to be an environment of sanitation education and empowerment. We can use preparatory methodologies and different games. In every process, it is crucial that the community actually realizes the importance of sanitation and makes it everybody’s business and not shy away from talking about it. New ways are also emerging from public, private, people partnerships however, the catch still lies in tackling the legislative bodies for implementation.
Sanitation for all for all the time remains a daunting task for the system and the society. Only when it is collectively taken up and intersectoral practices are put in place with a robust institutional arrangement, the target of safely managed sanitation in its full value chain can be envisaged.
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*Nikhil Kumar is a Master Student at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, TISS, Hyderabad Campus. Dr Mansee Bal Bhargava is an entrepreneur, researcher, educator, speaker, and mentor. More about her at: www.mansee.in, www.edc.org.in, www.wforw.in, www.woder.org.
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Wednesdays.for.Water is an initiative of the WforW Foundation, a think tank, built as a Citizens Collective. The idea of Wednesdays.for.Water is to connect the water worries and wisdom with the water workers through dialogues/discussions/debates. The objective is to get in conversations with policy makers, practitioners, researchers, academicians besides the youth towards water conservation and management. The vision for WforW is to make water everybody’s business and to do so, the mission is to make water conversations for water conservation. The Wednesdays.for.Water is reachable at wednesdays.for.water@gmail.com and WforW Foundation is reachable at hello@wforw.in. The WforW Foundation social media are at Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
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