Sanitation Updates

The Netherlands have kick-started the Global Sanitation Fund with US$ 44 million, Dutch media reports. The Fund was launched by the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) on 14 March 2008. WSSCC Executive Director Jon Lane said in a radio interview that he hopes the fund will operate with US$ 100 million a year.

Read more: Source Weekly, 22 Mar 2008

OTTAWA, March 20 /CNW Telbec/ - On the eve of World Water Day (March 22), a coalition of Canadian organizations concerned about the global sanitation
crisis is calling on the Canadian government to make investment in sanitation
and water a foreign aid priority. In an open letter sent to Minister of
International Cooperation Beverley Oda, Sanitation & Water Action Network
(SWAN) Canada called for increased investment in sanitation as a way to save
lives, strengthen economies, and fight poverty around the globe.

Read More - Newswire

Geneva, 7 March 2008 - The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) is launching on 14 March 2008 in Geneva the Global Sanitation Fund, the first global financing mechanism to increase expenditure on sanitation and hygiene.

For more info see the article published earlier in Source Weekly

Read more about the launch here

 BALI, Indonesia, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) — Four countries in Southeast Asia, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam have suffered 9 billion U.S. dollars economic loss annually due to poor implementation of sanitation, about 2 percent of their combined GDP, a recent study conducted by the World Bank has said.

The study said that Indonesia, the biggest Southeast Asia economy, had suffered the most losses of 6.3 billion U.S. dollar per year.

Indonesia has struggled to save its state budget from the impact of the global economic slowdown, soaring oil price and commodities, as well as high inflation pressure. The government has planned to widen the budget deficit from 1.7 percent of the GDP or 73.3 trillion rupiah (about 7.97 billion U.S. dollars) to 2percent of the GDP or 83.7 trillion rupiah (some 9.1 billion U.S. dollars).

Read More -  China View

In support of the United Nations International Year of Sanitation, the World Toilet Organization (WTO), in partnership with the Asian Development Bank, is organising:

World Toilet Summit & Expo.

• An initiative from WTO since 2001, the World Toilet Summit is an annual gathering of experts with focused discussions that promote clean toilets, sanitation issues and hygiene.
• The first World Toilet Expo & Forum was held in Shanghai in 2005, and thereafter in Bangkok in 2006. It features innovative and practical solutions from leading industry names.

World Sanitation Fund Forum

• The World Sanitation Fund is a joint initiative of WTO and Ashoka Innovators of the Public.

Conference web site

The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) is setting up a new financing mechanism to help large numbers of poor people to attain safe and sustainable sanitation services and adopt good hygiene practices. The official launch of the Global Sanitation Fund is expected for March 2008.

Visit the WSSCC Global Sanitation Fund web site

An NGO is paying people to use a public urinal, while it uses the output as bio-fertiliser.

Preposterous but true. There are enough ‘pay and use’ toilets, but in Trichy district of Tamil Nadu, all those using the Ecosan Community Compost Toilet in Saliyar Street, Musiri, will get paid. The scheme started from the festive day of Pongal on January 15.

Users will be paid ten paise per visit to ECCT. The payment will be made to all card-holders who will be using the ECCT on a monthly basis, said M.Subburaman, Director, Society for Community Organisation and Peoples Education (SCOPE).

Link to the Business Standard article

Jan 4, 2008 - Some 7.1bn reais (US$4bn) were contracted in sanitation works funded by Brazil’s federal government last year, of which 2bn reais have already been disbursed, local paper Valor Econômico reported.

Link to the Business News Americas article

BEPPU CITY, Japan, 3 December 2007 – More than 170 delegates from 14 East Asian nations gathered last weekend in Beppu City, on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, for the first East Asia Ministerial Conference on Sanitation and Hygiene (EASAN 2007)

Co-hosted by UNICEF, the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) and the World Health Organization, it was the highest-level gathering of its kind ever held in the region.

Ministers and policy makers from East Asia pledged to raise investment in sanitation and hygiene, especially for the poor, and in schools and health care facilities.

A week earlier, on 21 November 2007, government leaders attending the Third East Asia Summit (EAS) signed the “Singapore Declaration on Climate Change, Energy and the Environment” in which they reaffirmed their commitment to “enhance access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation and promote integrated water resource management through initiatives such as […] the International Year of Sanitation 2008”.

Link to the complete article