Thailand, Bangkok: struggling to clear garbage in flood crisis

Garbage piled up on a flooded street in Bangkok, Thailand. Photo: Getty Images / WSJ

Industrial parks in Bangkok are being threatened after residents in Bangkok’s northeast demolish government-built levies to release the stagnant, garbage-ridden water that was building up in their neighbourhoods, writes the Wall Street Journal.

Flooded roads are preventing garbage collectors getting to many areas—raising fears over the risk of disease and over the blockage of drains, which is impeding the flow of water into the sea. Bangkok produces about 8,700 tons of rubbish a day—roughly a quarter of Thailand’s total. Added to that figure is the additional trash flowing into the city from northern provinces.

Sanitation costs and financing – presentations at IRC’s 2010 Symposium

The following papers on sanitation costs and financing were presented at the IRC Symposium 2010, ‘Pumps, Pipes and Promises: Costs, Finances and Accountability for Sustainable WASH Services’, held in The Hague from 16-18 November.

The economics of sanitation initiatives (ESI) for sanitation decision making in Southeast Asia. Author: Guy Hutton

This presentation discusses cost data from 5 Southeast Asian countries in various forms (by technology, by site/project, by hardware/software, by financing source, by timing, and under different infrastructure capacity use levels) to aid decision makers in intervention selection and to draw more general lessons about sanitation financing, efficiency and sustainability. Cost data were triangulated from household surveys, project or provider documents and local market surveys to estimate investment and annualized life cycle costs per household and per individual.

Full paper

Asia – National Policy and Financing for Sanitation

Below is a link to a recent presentation at the National Sanitation Conference, 8 December 2009, in Jakarta Indonesia.

• Almud Weitz, on behalf of the Indonesia Sanitation Donor Group. National Policy and Financing for Sanitation: Examples from Asian Countries (pdf, 688KB). 2009.

Outline

A. Success factors for sanitation development in Asia

B. National approaches to sanitation development

• Thailand
• Vietnam

C. Financing Sanitation

• Urban Sanitation in Vietnam
• Rural Sanitation in India

D. Key lessons for sanitation progress