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Achieving Sustainable Sanitation in Asia 3 “Wastewater Management Has Become Impossible to Ignore, and New Ways to Finance It Are Being Sought.”

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Achieving Sustainable Sanitation in Asia 3 “Wastewater Management Has Become Impossible to Ignore, and New Ways to Finance It Are Being Sought.” policy brief No. 2019-4 (June) Key Points • Development finance Achieving Sustainable Sanitation has largely been directed towards centralized systems of wastewater in Asia management, which has resulted in large populations being Sahana Singh, Editor, Asian Water Magazine excluded from proper wastewater collection and treatment services. • In order to ensure the success of decentralized sanitation strategies, there is a need for institutional reform and the setting up Introduction of robust frameworks. • The spillover effects of Five thousand years ago, when the urban residents of the Sarasvati-Sindhu civilization proper sanitation, which sat on their toilets, their rural brethren used the fields to defecate. In both the urban include an increase in and rural models of sanitation, nutrients were recycled via natural fertilizers, and property tax revenues, water bodies were not used for dumping raw waste. Ancient Sanskrit oral texts lay can help to offset the costs of fecal sludge out the importance of not allowing human waste, blood, or hazardous substances management. to contaminate water bodies under any circumstances. Accordingly, defecation was always conducted in distant, uninhabited places, after which feces were covered with soil, and the left hand was used for washing with small amounts of water. Natural plant-based soaps or sand were used to wash the left hand, which would still not be used for eating, just as a precaution. Cholera epidemics were unheard of in ancient India. In contrast, London’s sewer commissioners “proudly noted the huge volume of human waste that the city’s toilets efficiently deposited into the river (Thames); 29,000 cubic yards in the spring of 1848 and 80,000 cubic yards by the winter of 1849” (Shah 2016). It was a period when Europe was in the grip of the miasma theory, now obsolete, which guided the people into believing that the banishing of odors led to a banishing of diseases. Thus, flush toilets enjoyed a spike in sales even as sewage from those toilets fouled the Thames and led to a massive cholera epidemic causing many deaths. But, the connection between fecal matter being sent into the river and the cholera outbreaks that that kept descending on London was not made until the late 1800s. In the last 100 years, the world has made dizzying advances in science and technology. There is awareness about the direct link between poor sanitation and disease, school dropouts, loss of livelihood, and women’s disempowerment. Besides, many have pointed out the anomaly of living in an advanced age of space travel, mobile telephony, nanotechnology, and 3D printing while the most basic service of sanitation is not available to millions. © 2019 Asian Development Bank Institute ISSN 2411-6734 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. “Governments have the important task of building capacity as well as institutions in order to ensure proper delivery. “ Goal-Setting for Sanitation: Excessive Focus on Centralized A Brief Overview Wastewater Management In 1977, a global meeting of political leaders was held for It is well known that around 2.3 billion people in the the first time to discuss the importance of clean water world lack access to basic sanitation. A large number of supply and wastewater management at Mar del Plata in these live in the developing member countries of the Argentina. The International Decade of Water Supply and Asian Development Bank (ADB). Sanitation was declared with the objective of providing clean water and sanitation to every person by the year For many years, development finance has been directed 1990. On hindsight, this was clearly an impossible target toward centralized systems of wastewater management to achieve—however, millions of people did receive involving the construction of sewers and treatment coverage during the decade (Biswas 2004). plants. This has not only entailed considerable capital investment but also long time periods for planning and Subsequently, the Millennium Development Goals commissioning because of the complexities involved. (MDGs) were laid out to be achieved between 1990 Such systems are suitable for places with high and reliable and 2015. One of the goals set was to reduce by half water consumption and are typically not built in rural or the number of people without access to clean water. low-income areas. In addition, big-budget projects often Sanitation was added to the goal later during the suffer from political and funding manipulations. The Johannesburg Summit in 2002. Considerable discussion centralized approach has resulted in large populations was directed towards achieving the MDGs by Asian being excluded from proper wastewater collection and countries, however the goal of halving the number of treatment services. people without access to sanitation could not be met by many countries. Even as the MDGs aimed to reduce the When the Clean Water Act was passed in the United number of unserved people, the population explosion States during the 1970s, it was assumed that it was only ensured there were ever-increasing numbers of people a matter of time before centralized sewerage facilities who needed to be served. It was akin to aiming at a would be available across the country (Hophmayer- moving target. There were problems with measuring Tokich 2006). Over the years came the sobering and monitoring the progress in achieving the goals. realization that the timeframe and resources needed to The MDGs have made way for the more ambitious deliver an overarching centralized sanitation solution for and nuanced Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) the country were beyond the realm of practical actions. for 2015–2030. Achieving universal and equitable The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation states in its access to safe and affordable water, sanitation, and strategy overview: hygiene; ending open defecation; and paying special attention to the needs of women form a central The toilets, sewers, and wastewater treatment part of the clean water and sanitation goal (SDG 6) systems that made sense in the past aren’t necessarily (Jägerskog et al. 2015). the best solutions for the future, especially in poor countries. These types of systems require vast It must not be forgotten that access does not equal amounts of land, energy, and water and are extremely service delivery. Governments have the important task of expensive to build, maintain, and operate, even by building capacity as well as institutions in order to ensure western standards. They are particularly difficult to proper delivery. The systems also need to be maintained introduce, as new infrastructure, into dense urban and monitored. The build-neglect-rebuild syndrome has settings and informal settlements, where the impact been the bane of many a development project. of unsafe sanitation on people is the greatest. (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, n.d.) ADBI Policy Brief No. 2019-4 (June) 2 Stepmotherly Treatment toward in Japan, desludging is a legal requirement imposed Decentralized Wastewater Systems on the owners of on-site sanitation systems, and it is thoroughly supervised by local governments and Must Stop implemented by the private sector. There are about 1,100 sludge treatment facilities nationwide that are From 2003 to 2016, ADB invested $681.14 million managed by municipalities to ensure that sludge is in the People’s Republic of China, followed by India safely transported and hygienically treated (Seetha ($153.70 million), Indonesia ($56.64 million), Fiji Ram, Hashimoto, and Bugalia 2018; Japan Sanitation ($37.09 million), and Viet Nam ($34.96 million). Sewerage Consortium, n.d.). networks formed an important component of these investments. An independent evaluation noted that out In the early years, treated sludge was disposed of in of 63 projects, only seven had both off-site (sewers) and sanitary landfills. However, it was realized that in a on-site (septic tanks and latrines) wastewater treatment country with limited land availability, such as Japan, components (ADB 2018). compact and innovative options needed to be explored. Thus, the excess sludge was incinerated along with solid Meanwhile, even as more development finance is being waste. But as the recycling of resources became a more directed towards centralized wastewater systems, important goal in Japan, cities such as Saitama City policy improvements and regulatory efforts are also chose composting, which had the additional benefit of being focussed on them. This is leaving the arena of improving soil (ADB 2016). decentralized systems in an orphaned position with insufficient finance as well as policy support. Given that decentralized sanitation has the potential to ensure Finance Is No Longer a Constraint complete coverage of the under-served populations, it is important to change the paradigm. In the early days of sanitation financing, it was a difficult task to secure even $100 million from donors. There are many advantages of a decentralized strategy. Also, it was easier to procure finance for water supply Costs are lower because the collection infrastructure is projects compared to sanitation projects. According to considerably simplified. In a centralized system, finances Hophmayer-Tokich (2006): “lower coverage of drinking are invested for a capacity that will only be needed water services in the poorer areas means that if they after many years. Thus, a large amount needs to be would succeed to provide their entire population with spent in a short period, thereby imposing a burden safe centralized drinking water services, it is not likely on the local economy. In a decentralized system, the that sufficient additional financial resources will remain components are less complex and more distributed, so for proper wastewater collection and treatment.” simultaneous failure is less common. Most importantly, reuse opportunities for effluents and solids at the local Over the years, there has been a great deal of advocacy level are increased. The ecological footprint is also on sanitation issues, and attention has focused on the smaller (Hophmayer-Tokich 2006).
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