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Dignity, Disease, and Dollars: Asia’s Urgent Sanitation Challenge
Why Invest in Sanitation


The Asian Development Bank takes Asia’s sanitation challenge seriously. It advocates the need for better and affordable facilities for individuals, disease prevention and healthy environments for communities, and financial viability of sanitation services for provider governments and utilities.

  
MORE ON SANITATION
 

BARRIERS TO SANITATION
Different countries face different challenges when it comes to reforming their sanitation situation. But generally common among them are the following:
  • Sanitation is high cost and unaffordable
  • The poor have more important needs than sanitation, and they cannot afford it
  • Sanitation is not a high priority for governments
  • High-cost technology is needed to make sanitation work
  • Governments and utilities do not have access to finance
But these barriers are not insurmountable. The truth is
  • Sanitation is affordable when the right technology is installed, reasonable financing is offered, and a creative mix of providers shares the cost
  • Households—even poor ones—are willing to pay for sanitation services, primarily for reasons of dignity and privacy
  • Making sanitation a priority delivers big economic, health, and environmental benefits
  • There are already innovative and low-cost—even waterless—technologies that can be used for wastewater management
  • Financial viability can go with public affordability, and full cost recovery is feasible, provided the sanitation services are customer-oriented and worth paying for

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HOW COUNTRIES ARE CLEANING UP THEIR SANITATION MESS
While many countries in Asia are unlikely to meet the sanitation target of Millennium Development Goal 7: “halving by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation,” a few have already started to put sanitation higher in their development agenda.

Read examples of those that have reaped the results of their sanitation investments:

 Bangladesh
In 2004, the government declared “Sanitation for All by 2010” as its national target and adopted a reward scheme for communities that achieved open defecation free (ODF) status. The national government earmarked 20% of its annual development budget to promote sanitation, releasing funds for the first time directly to the local government units in the form of cash rewards for ODF.

People’s Republic of China
An environmental clean up of a river that once oozed through Shanghai has spurred urban renewal. The Suzhou Creek cleanup will have taken 10 years and over a $1 billion before completion in 2008. Today, the river has the benefit of a piped wastewater collection and treatment system, control gates, relocated polluting factories, oxygen pumps, and urban land renewal.

India
In 1999, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) implemented a city-wide sanitation program for 500,000 people. Only NGOs were allowed to bid for the project to ensure that the community participated in the construction, design, and maintenance of block toilets. PMC remained a facilitator, and communities handled the major decisions. The project, implemented within budget and on schedule, was successfully replicated in Mumbai.

Maldives
A joint venture contract created the Malé Water and Sewerage Company Pvt. Ltd, which provides water supply plus sanitation and wastewater services for Malé. The company imposed a full cost recovery, tier-based tariff structure on the customers. Despite the considerable tariffs, demand for connections rose. All households are now connected to the water and wastewater systems, and the company recovers its costs.

Philippines
Liloan’s coastal waters turned dangerously dirty when wastewater from the public market’s septic tank was discharged straight into the sea. This affected the residents’ health and the town’s tourism industry. Liloan’s solution was to build a decentralized wastewater treatment facility. The market vendors pay users’ fee to maintain the facility, which brought back physical, economic, and environmental health to the small town.

Viet Nam
After decades of economic and political difficulties, rural sanitation was revived in the 1990s. Projects offered technical guidance, latrine materials, and cash assistance. Local governments mobilized rural communities to build improved sanitation facilities, such as toilets, water wells, and animal pens. Households contributed to a common fund for developing communal services, like waste disposal.

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CONTACTS

Amy Leung
Urban Development Specialist
E-Mail: aleung@adb.org

Hubert Jenny
Water Supply and Sanitation Specialist
Email: hjenny@adb.org

Anand Chiplunkar
Senior Water Supply and Sanitation Specialist
Email: achiplunkar@adb.org