SOUTH ASIAN CONFERENCE ON SANITATION (SACOSAN)
21st – 23rd October 2003
Background
Of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDG), three are directly linked to sanitation. These are: reducing child mortality, combating diseases, and ensuring environmental sustainability. Within a broader context, even the first MDG – reducing extreme poverty – is linked to sanitation, as poor people spend an increasing share of their income on medical expenses, due to water and sanitation-related diseases and loss of productive time. It is therefore not surprising that the Millennium Declaration uses sanitation as an indicator of improving the lives of the poor!
Although much has been achieved in last decade, the sanitation picture is still dismal in Asia. Only 39% of the population in South Asia, and 48% in East Asia and the Pacific, have adequate sanitation facilities (HDR, 2002). The practice of open defecation by the majority of people in the region is a serious threat to the environment and to the control of disease. Resource allocation for sanitation in many Asian countries tilts towards urban areas and to the rich. Consequently, it is the most vulnerable and marginalized population in urban and rural areas that suffer from minimal access to sanitation facilities. Moreover, the experiences of the last two decades have shown that conventional sanitation programs have not brought about the desired improvements.
Despite this bleak outlook, shining examples of excellence do exist. For example, a number of communities in the region have achieved total sanitation (every household having access to a hygienic latrine) without any subsidy.
However, these successes have usually been on a small scale, and their large-scale replication needs careful consideration. The challenge is to identify the determinants of success from these small-scale programs, and scale those up to national level with necessary adaptations. To achieve this, new institutional, technical and financial approaches may be needed. But first of all, governments must recognize the sanitation problem, and make a commitment to resolving it.