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Dignity, Disease, and Dollars: Asia’s Urgent Sanitation Challenge
ADB’s Sanitation Agenda
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Between 2006-2010, ADB aims to provide 200 million people with sustainable access to safe water supply and improved sanitation and double its pipelined $2.2 billion worth of sanitation and wastewater projects. To reach these targets, ADB anticipates an increase in its lending and technical support activity, particularly once governments prioritize sanitation on their development agenda.
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MORE ON SANITATION
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 ADB’s concept of sanitation goes beyond the disposal of waste and the practice of protecting health through hygienic measures. ADB uses the term sanitation to cover environmental sanitation—the collection, treatment, disposal, and recycling of household, commercial, and industrial wastewater.
Sanitation also encompasses changing attitudes and behavior, specifically hygiene habits, developing solutions (including financing), and creating a demand for sanitation as a means for making sanitation systems effective. Drainage too must be included because of its unintended use for wastewater and sewage disposal, which has led to fouling up waterways.
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CHAIN OF CHANGE: ADB’S SANITATION AGENDA
ADB’s sanitation agenda is tied to a results chain that starts from making sanitation investments demand-driven and ends with achieving sanitation goals. Here is how ADB plans to contribute to this Chain of Change:
- Demonstrate to national and local governments and utilities—through pilot projects, knowledge products, or face-to-face exchange on best practices—that sanitation yields benefits that well exceed costs
- Prioritize sanitation in dialogues with governments as part of ADB’s Country Partnership Strategy process
- Help local governments diagnose their current sanitation status and the performance of their public utilities
- Contribute to the financing of city and utility sanitation plans
- In conjunction with local governments and their utilities, design sanitation projects that benefit from the views of women, capitalize on newer and lower cost technologies, align with community needs and affordability, and deliver localized and decentralized solutions zone by zone within cities
- Offer financing options and products, such as
- providing long term financing with credit enhancements solutions
- identifying sources of funds for an environmental fund
- introducing newer products, e.g. subsovereign and local currency borrowing, and multitranche financing facility
- Support the design and development of microfinance solutions for improved sanitation at the household level
- Encourage public utilities to develop their capacities by participating in the improvement programs of utility networks—such as the South East Asian Water Utility Network, the South Asian Water Utilities Network, and an upcoming Central Asia network
These proposed actions are only the beginning. ADB expects its action agenda to evolve further as it increasingly engages with governments, utilities, communities, and development partners towards the goal of “Sanitation for all.”
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PARTNERING FOR SANITATION
 Given the multifaceted nature of sanitation barriers and solutions, ADB recognizes the need to partner with other agencies and civil society to help the many stakeholders and decisionmakers in a comprehensive and coordinated way. ADB will forge partnerships to:
- help communities to crystallize public demand through awareness, hygiene, and education programs
- advise on newer sanitation technology so that solutions are appropriate to community needs, local circumstances, and affordability
- assist cities and rural towns in conducting sanitation diagnostic audits and sanitation planning
- provide sanitation costing and economic assessments that form part of tariff setting for such services
- assess the capacity development needs of local government and utilities, design suitable responses, and help with their implementation
- contribute further grant funds to apply to pilot and demonstration activities, capacity development, and project design and implementation
- access funds, technology, assets, and good management practices from the private sector for public sector utilities
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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
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