Nergui Manalsuren interviews sanitation expert Duncan Mara
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 17 2009 (IPS) – Despite longstanding promises by world leaders to halve, by 2015, the number of people without basic sanitation, 2.5 billion still lack access to basic sanitation, and 1.2 billion don t have any form of sanitation at all.
Duncan Mara Credit: University of Leeds
I don t think that the MDG (the U.N. s Millennium Development Goals) sanitation target can be achieved, says Duncan Mara, a professor of civil engineering at University of Leeds who has been working on low-cost sanitation in developing countries since the mid-1970s, and also on low-cost wastewater treatment and reuse.
Winner of the 2007 Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management s Making World of Difference Award, Mara expressed fears that even if real efforts were made starting today, it would be impossible to reach the goals in six years. And he thinks the picture might get even worse in the future.
We have to realise that the situation isn t going to get any easier in the decades to come as almost all the increase in world population in the next few decades is going to occur in urban areas, actually poor urban areas, in developing countries, he told IPS correspondent Nergui Manalsuren.
Excerpts from the interview follow.
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IPS: As one of the world s leading sanitation experts, particularly when it comes to sustainable, affordable and appropriate sanitation technologies and systems, is there a model that could meet the needs of the 2.5 billion people who lack access to basic sanitation? If so, how can this best be achieved? DUNCAN MARA: There s not really a model , certainly not a single model. What I think is necessary, absolutely crucial, is to get the sanitation knowledge we already have to those who need it most: engineers and planners in developing countries at all levels ? local, state/provincial, and central government. If engineers don t know about sanitation technology x, never mind about how to design it for local needs, then how do they know they re recommending the locally best option? And it would normally be not just sanitation technology x but in fact more commonly sanitation technologies x, y and z.
We re only talking about a dozen technologies at most, but we need to make sure that the knowledge we have about them is available to every professional who needs it. The Internet helps a lot, but not everyone has a good connection and anyway most of the information is only available in English ? some, of course, also in French, Spanish and Portuguese, but little if any in, say, Tamil or Chinese.
What we really need is downloadable e-courses on sanitation, and not just on the technologies, but on social, economic/financial, and institutional aspects as well, which local NGOs with good Internet connections can download and then distribute at the local level on CDs. The world really does need highly trained sanitation professionals, and it needs them now.
IPS: Why is the international community focusing more on water and less on sanitation? Aren t they both equally important, particularly in achieving the Millennium Development Goals? DM: There s now much more emphasis on sanitation, thanks to last year being the International Year of Sanitation which saw sanitation move well up the political ladder. Of course, all the fine words spoken by ministers at the various regional sanitation conferences have to be translated into action, and we ll just have to wait and see how this plays out. I think we have to be optimistic, rather than cynically pessimistic, even though recent history might tell us otherwise.
Basically, we have to stop poor people in developing countries defecating themselves to death, and we have to tell developing country governments that, if they don t invest in sanitation for their poor, then they are effectively allowing them to die at an early age. Poor hygiene, poor sanitation, and poor water together claim more lives each year than AIDS, and governments need to understand this.
I would argue that, from a purely health perspective, sanitation is somewhat more important than water, but really it has to be good sanitation, good hygiene, and good water, all together, for good health.
IPS: As one of the Millennium Development Goals, where does sanitation stand on the list in terms of its progress so far? DM: Sanitation lags behind water by a huge margin: 2.5 billion people lack access to improved sanitation, versus just under a billion for water. What s really worrying is that, of these 2.5 billion people, around 1.2 billion don t have any form of sanitation ? these people are the open defecators , and nearly 60 percent of these live in one country: India.
So, you could argue that, if we want to make a real impact on global health, we should concentrate on providing access to good sanitation to these 1.2 billion open defecators. This is where Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is so crucial: get communities of open defecators to realise how not having any sanitation facility is so bad for their health ? but also for their dignity and, for women and girls, their safety as well; and then to get them to install and use a really good, locally appropriate latrine.
IPS: What is the role of NGOs in promoting sanitation and hygiene around the world? DM: There are some really excellent NGOs ? WaterAid, for example, and SPARC, which is an Indian NGO promoting community-owned and -managed sanitation blocks in urban slums where people are too poor to be able to afford individual-household sanitation facilities. NGOs, especially local NGOs and particularly when supported by international NGOs, have a real role to play as they can work with local communities and speak on their behalf to local (and also national) government agencies.
However, I think the greatest role that NGOs, especially international and large national NGOs, have is to show agencies with much more money how best to spend that money, and they do this best by example ? by which I mean the big agencies can copy the small-scale NGO successes on a much larger scale. Thus it s R D by NGOs and large-scale implementation by the bigger agencies, both national and international.
IPS: Are these NGOs well supported by their governments? And by the international community? DM: Some are and some aren t. Some governments seem to be taking the view that, because there are some local NGOs, and maybe also an international NGO, active in the sanitation sector, they needn t do more. The international community fares better as, in many cases, it supports the work of local and international NGOs ? but this can be another reason for governments not to do more.
I think the big agencies ? UNDP, for example, and the World Bank, but also the bilateral aid agencies ? should flex their muscles more and say to developing countries that are failing to invest in better hygiene, sanitation, and water for their urban and rural poor no, you can t have x million dollars for this project unless you start doing something sensible to improve hygiene, water, and sanitation for your poor .
