Nergui Manalsuren interviews JAE SO and PETER KOLSKY of the World Bank
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 31 (IPS) – The world’s developing nations, particularly in Asia and Africa, are struggling to cope with two of the basic necessities of life: fresh water and adequate sanitation.
The United Nations says there are still some 1.1 billion people who lack access to safe water, and 2.6 billion without basic sanitation.
The World Bank allocates 60 percent of its 10.7-billion-dollar budget for water supply and sanitation for water, and only 40 percent to sanitation.
Why does sanitation get less and water more? “There are a number of related factors to consider in explaining the relative proportion of funds for water supply and sanitation,” says Jae So, manager of the Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP), a donor-funded programme administered by the World Bank, and Peter Kolsky, senior water and sanitation specialist at the bank.
In a joint interview with IPS U.N. correspondent Nergui Manalsuren, the two World Bank officials said the portfolio reflects the demands of clients – the governments of developing countries.
They explained that the most pressing needs of those without access to basic sanitation can often be met with local resources at relatively low cost, and clients often do not think they should borrow large amounts of money to meet these needs.
“This doesn’t mean that the Bank and WSP can’t support the promotion of basic sanitation: We can and do. It just means that this may not be as expensive as dams, water treatment works and pipelines for water supply.”
Excerpts from the interview follow.
IPS: The United Nations says that to meet the Millennium Development Goals’ sanitation target by the year 2015, about 173 million people will need to gain access to sanitation each year between now and then. How much money will that cost and how will the World Bank help to meet this target?
JS: Estimating the public funding required to meet the sanitation MDG is a surprisingly difficult task. Not only do differing geographical and socioeconomic conditions suggest a wide range of appropriate technologies, but government policies vary widely as to how much should be borne by the government as a “public” investment, and how much should be borne by the household as a private household investment.
The most dramatic improvements in sanitation access, in South Asia and Ethiopia for example, have been driven not by massive public works programmes, but by an approach known as Community Led Total Sanitation which requires relatively small investments from the public purse.
The government’s role in this approach is to promote the idea of sanitation, to share information, and to provide some incentives for households and communities to invest in sanitation…but not to define the technology to be adopted, and to pay all of the capital cost. Even estimating the cost of promotion is not easy: how much will it cost to convince a household in Bangladesh to invest in sanitation?
In addition to traditional capital loans to help governments pay for such sanitation infrastructure as sewers and treatment works, the Bank can very usefully play a role through lending funds for sanitation and hygiene promotion, through sharing experiences around the world about new approaches to sanitation and hygiene promotion, and in helping some governments through flexible results-based support, or budgetary support, where funds are made available with minimal bureaucratic demands as specific targets of sanitation access are achieved.
IPS: The U.N. declared 2008 the International Year of Sanitation. What were its achievements? And how did this help to spotlight the problems of sanitation, particularly in the developing world?
PK: The International Year of Sanitation helped bring sanitation into the spotlight through various collaborative efforts, including regional events to raise awareness and discuss policy issues at the government level, workshops that educated the media about the sanitation issue to allow for improved coverage and reporting, and continued efforts at the community level to improve sanitation behaviour and practices.
One important indicator of success is the number of national, regional, and international meetings that address sanitation directly. In the recent past, sanitation was always the poor “stepchild” of water supply, and meetings on “water supply and sanitation” would focus largely on water supply with relatively little attention to sanitation…it was as if sanitation were an afterthought or an accessory.
Ever since AfricaSan in 2002, and the addition of sanitation to the MDGs shortly thereafter, the spotlight has helped both practitioners and policy makers recognise the need to recognise sanitation as its own set of challenges and opportunities, and not as an accessory to water supply.
IPS: Are developing countries themselves doing enough to help resolve the problem? And what are the success stories in the developing world, specifically with World Bank funding?
JS: Countries are increasingly focusing on the sanitation issue and its impact on people’s lives and on the economic wellbeing of individual nations. The World Bank has been involved in water projects in Senegal for many years, and a major uptake in urban sanitation was achieved in Dakar in a project supported by the Bank. WSP is involved at the technical assistance and advocacy level, as well as in promotion of campaigns such as Community-Led Total Sanitation.
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