Sustainable Sanitation, Part 2

Akhtar Hameed Khan, Director of the Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi, Pakistan, described the grim facts of the current status of global sanitation in UNICEF's 1997 Progress of Nations study: "On the brink of the 21st century, half the world's people are enduring a medieval level of sanitation. Almost 3 billion individuals do not have access to a decent toilet, and many of them are forced to defecate on the bare ground or queue up to pay for the use of a filthy latrine. This unconscionable degradation continues despite a fundamental truth: Access to safe water and adequate sanitation is the foundation of development. For when you have a medieval level of sanitation, you have a medieval level of disease, and no country can advance without a healthy population."

According to the World Health Organization, the 1990s saw an actual decrease in the number of people with access to sanitary excreta disposal. Interventions are not keeping up with population growth. World population has increased fourfold since sanitation entered the lexicon of engineers and public health advocates in the mid-1800s. The United Nations projects a tenfold population increase by 2050. Access goes down as population goes up. The same relationship holds between access and international debt. As debt soars in poor countries, expenditures on sanitation plummet. One example is Kenya, where less than 50% of the population has access to sanitation. While its international debt climbed in the 1980s, its biggest city, Nairobi, saw capital expenditures for water and sewers drop by a factor of ten.

Because sanitation with environmental health in mind is a low priority with international development organizations and governments; construction contractors, industry, and financial institutions have greatly influenced the direction the sector has taken, favoring centralized, capital intensive services and technologies.

Some estimates put the price tag on providing universal sanitation at $68 billion. This money might provide coverage, but without a radical rethinking of how it is spent, one set of problems will only be exchanged for another. Unless the political and community will to adopt source separation, recovery, and reuse as fundamental goals for the sanitary disposition of human excreta is realized, pollution will remain the legacy of modern sanitation systems.

Laura Orlando

Background Information

Sustainable Sanitation, Part 1 - A Historical Perspective

Sustainable Sanitation, Part 3 - Future Trends

Information about sewage sludge and the hazards of its application on land

Articles about sewerage and sewage sludge

ReSource Musings Archive