Environmental Protection through Sanitation

Article Written By: h2bid2009

Each year, more than 200 million tones of human waste go uncollected and untreated around the world, fouling the environment and exposing millions of people to disease and squalor, says Jon Lane, WSSCC Executive Director. On World Environment Day, midway through the International Year of Sanitation, WSSCC is calling for governments, stakeholders and individuals around the world to accelerate the work to end these ongoing human and environmental catastrophes. Doing so, he says, requires neither colossal sums of money nor breakthrough scientific discoveries. Using existing, proven approaches and technologies, and for about US$ 10 billion a year less than 1 percent of global military expenditure the world could meet the Millennium Development Goal sanitation target to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to basic sanitation. And around ten years later, everyone could have a toilet to use.

Achieving universal sanitation can, with proper financing, be accomplished through hard work on the ground, plain talk about toilets, strong leadership at all levels, and by creating demand for toilets among the 2.6 billion poor people who need them. Toilets, washing facilities, garbage removal, wastewater disposal, stormwater drainage: sanitation services such as these are a prerequisite for clean, healthy household and community living environments, particularly in dense settlements. Such sanitation services are also vital to safeguard environmental quality more broadly, especially the quality of water resources. The cost is high, conversely, where sanitation services are lacking. Water pollution stemming from poor sanitation costs Southeast Asia more than US$ 2 billion per year, and in Indonesia and Vietnam creates environmental costs of more than US$ 200 million annually, primarily from the loss of productive land.

In teeming informal settlements across the globe, the sanitation crisis is keenly felt. With no way to safely dispose of either faeces or garbage, around a billion slum dwellers must resort to flying toilets (also known as wrap and throw) and to dumping trash in public spaces. This situation is not limited to urban settlements; in impoverished city suburbs, small market towns, large villages and periurban settlements across the developing world, the public environment is full of waste. Poor sanitation creates a host of health hazards as well as a bleak and disheartening visual landscape. Roads are full of mud, puddles, and piles of garbage and debris, not to mention disease-carrying insects, microbes and rodents. The odours are often unpleasant.

Living in a squalid environment harms physical and psychological health; is stigmatising; often presents employment challenges; and deepens human poverty. A healthy living environment, one that supports human dignity and is free of disease transmitting agents and conditions, is impossible without sanitation services.

In the developing world, roughly 90 percent of sewage is discharged untreated into rivers, polluting waters and killing plants and fish. This presents a major health threat to people who depend upon open streams and wells for their drinking water as well as an economic blow to people whose livelihoods depend upon fisheries. Upstream water users find better quality water, whereas downstream users find sewage sinks. Water quality is worse near densely populated areas.

Sanitation involves a range of actions, but for a healthy environment in communities as well as in the larger natural world the top priority is separating excreta, with its host of biological pathogens, from contact with human beings as well as plant and animal life. But to fully realise the health, social, and economic benefits, the management of wastes must be considered. Conventional sewerage can now be supplemented with ecological sanitation technologies that make use of the nutrients in human waste. These range from simple arbor-loose where a tree is planted on the latrine pit to urine diverting toilets that produce fertiliser from urine and safely composted faeces. Anaerobic digestion of sewage to produce biogas for energy is another option.

To support the awareness-raising effort on this and other key sanitation messages, the UN-Water Task Force on Sanitation has launched an advocacy and media kit in English, French and Spanish. Task Force Members include the United Nations Children s Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organization (WHO), Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP), UNEP, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN–HABITAT), United Nations University (UNU), and WSSCC.

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