Drinking water and sanitation decade: record progress in early 1980s.

Drinking water and sanitation decade: record progress in early 1980s

Safe drinking water was provided for an estimated 345 million people in developing countries from 1980 to 1983, surpassing the record set during the entire period of the 1970s, according to a United Nations report on "Progress in the attainment of the goals of International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade."

The report (A/40/108-E/1985/49), a mid-Decade evaluation of progress achieved since the Decade was launched in 1980, will be considered later this year by the General Assembly. It notes almost 140 million rural and urban dwellers benefited from newly installed sanitation facilities, a prerequisite to improved health in most developing countries. An estimated 530 million additional people will receive reasonable access to safe drinking water and some 86 million people will receive adequate sanitation services by the end of 1985.

Despite these advances, some 1,200 million people remain without safe water and some 1,900 million without adequate sanitation in the developing world. National, international and grassroots action on many fronts is needed to plan, design, construct, operate and maintain the services they require.

Unsafe water and inadequate sanitation are responsible for 83 per cent of all human illness and disease, as well as heavy losses in productivity. Thus, clean water and adequate sanitation for all is the central goal of the Decade--an international education and action campaign involving 100 Governments in developing countries, donor Governments in developed countries, 12 United Nations system organizatisons and dozens of non-governmental organizations.

In spite of formidable economic organizational and technological obstacles, measurable progress has been made throughout the developing world in extending drinking water and sanitation services to both urban and rural populations.

Water supply. The latest World Health Organization estimates reveal that about 255 million rural dwellers in over 120 developing countries received safe drinking water during the first three years of the 1980s. This 14 per cent increase in rural water services coverage surpasses the progress achieved throughout the entire decade of the 1970s. In urban areas, an estimated 90 million additional people were provided with safe water between 1980 and 1983--a rate of expansion which on a global basis kept pace with rapid population increases, though not in all regions.

Sanitation services. The greatest progress in sanitation services has been achieved in urban coverage. The percentage of total population served increased from 49 per cent in 1980 to 59 per cent in 1983--a dramatic reversal from the decline in coverage during the previous decade. While many developing countries have rural sanitation programmes underway, progress in service coverage was difficult to estimate because of unreliable statistics at the beginning of the decade.

Country action

The starting point towards achieving Decade goals is for each country to establish targets, plans and programmes through 1990 which match, as far as possible, the global goal of providing safe water supply and appropriate sanitation for all. According to WHO, the number of countries with comprehensive Decade plans approved, or in preparation, has increased dramatically from 9 in 1981 to 90 by the end of 1983. Of these, 76 countries have set specific service coverage targets in one or more subsectors--urban/rural water supply and urban/rural sanitation.

Isntitutional problems remain key constraint to implementing Decade strategies in developing countries, according to the report. Since the beginning of the Decade, many Governments have carried out reforms to strengthen sector institutions and achieve better co-ordination in planning and management. These changes include creation of special government units to deal with water and sanitation problems, decentralizing authority for programmes to regional and local levels, and training programmes to meet the human resource requirements for the Decade.

While the proportion of national budgets allocated to water and sanitation programmes has, on average, remained relatively stable in the 1980s, some countries have devoted more than 10 per cent of their national budgets to drinking water supply and sanitation (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Uganda and Zambia). Large increases for water and sanitation were also reported in Democratic Yemen, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Trinidad and tobago. Government investment in many developing countries, however, remains relatively low and in some poorer ones the portion is negligible. If progress is to be made in the second half of the Decade, both domestic and external investments will have to be increased substantially.

With increased awareness about the importance of safe drinking water and adequate sanitation, the late 1970s saw a dramatic increase in the level of external resource flows to the sector. Since 1980, bilateral aid agencies have increased their support to the drinking water and sanitation sector from one per cent to between 4 and 15 per cent of their total aid budgets.

During the first half of the 1980s, external funding levels have been maintained at about $2 billion annually. This is made up of contributions from world Bank and regional development banks (50 per cent); bilateral donors (37 per cent); UN system including UNDP and UNICEF (7 per cent); and non-governmental organizations (6 per cent).

A Steering Commiittee for Cooperative Action was established in 1978 to improve inter-agency coordination, strategy development and programme support. Chaired by the United Nations Development Programme, it now represents 12 UN agencies. It serves as a focal point for information exchange on Decade activities and for joint action on such special programmes as human resources development, promotion of women's roles and public education.

Considerable progress has also been made in co-ordinating donor activities at the country level, where UNDP Resident Representatives serve as focal points for Decade activities within each country.

Wells and latrines

The methods being used range from satellite detection of groundwater in African drought zones, to microscopic examination of parasites by villagers in Nepal; and from training women as health promoters in Pakiston, to global testing of community-use handpumps and lost-cost latrines.

In Mali, aerial maps indicate there are vast underground acquifers from the south of the country to the far north. In this connection, $5 million of UNDP support is being utilized to dig 2,000 of the 11,000 wells said to be necessary to give villagers a fighting chance against the drought there. In one district, 600 drillings have produced 420 good wells, each equipped with a handpump which provides sufficient domestic water for four to six large families plus irrigation for a 1,000 square metre patch of crop land.

Infant mortality in Nepal among the highest in the world, is largely caused by waterborne diseases. In an effort to lower mortality rates and to increase rural water supply coverage from 7 to 67 per cent of the population, the Government planned to install over 2,000 water systems as well as 30,000 tube wells and handpumps in the late 1970s. These plans faltered when recession reduced government revenues. They were revised to emphasize self-financing by the more than 4,000 local governments participating in the programme.

One such programme involved about 30,000 people in the construction of latrines. Community interest, however, was not spontaneous, because proper sanitation practices were virtually unknown. Only when people were asked to examine their own stools under a microscopic provided by a mobile team from the programme, were they convinced of the evidence of parasitic infections. The result is the creation of grassroots demand: people are now willing topay up to 75 per cent of the cost of an improved latrine.

Social innovation is also involved in Pakistan's $1.5 billion rural water/sanitation plan fro the 1980s. In a departure from the 'purdah' tradition which segregates men from women, women are being trained alongside men to become village sanitation promoters, receiving intensive education in water and sanitation technologies, community motivation techniques and project planning and management.

Each new promoter is then armed with a revolving loan fund to finance 70 latrines, two sanitary wells and one cistern in five selected villages, and organizes separate meetings among men and women to explain ways of making water and sanitation improvements village-wide. Thus far, more households are building latrines than originally targeted. And despite occasional criticism from villagers for choosing a "sweeper's job," female health promoters are providing themselves to be equal partners.

Some of the most significant breakthroughs lie in improving conventional designs and developing new low-cost technologies--such as handpumps a village can easily afford, operate and maintain. To help supply the estimated 5 to 7 million handpumps needed by developing countries during the Decade, a UNDP/World Bank global handpumps project is supporting extensive research, design and field testing of handpumps in 15 developing countries. The new pumps use plastic parts--especially for below-ground structures--and are cheaper, lighter and much easier to maintain at the village level.