D Hanekom: World Water Week, closing the sanitation loop

20 August 2006

"The Sanitation Challenge in Policy Making (in South Africa)"

Firstly, let me start by thanking the Stockholm Environment Institute for
inviting me to exchange ideas and to share South Africa�s experiences with some
of the world�s most knowledgeable people on the topic of ecological sanitation.
Sanitation is regarded as an extremely private matter, and is not among the
most popular of subjects. It seldom features prominently in the hierarchy of
policy priorities, and is often neglected by policy makers, at great cost.
Phillipa Garson, who works for a water and sanitation non-governmental
organisation (NGO) in South Africa, elegantly illustrates this point as
follows:

�An elderly woman turns on a communal tap for the first time, those first
gulps of sparkling water taken by a tiny barefoot child... these images
undoubtedly offer more inspiring photo opportunities than those of a community
member disposing of human waste in an environmentally safe way, or using a
newly erected pit latrine for the first time.�

Seminars such as this one ensure that the public and global importance of
sanitation is properly recognised, that the debate is kept alive, and that
research and solution seeking continues. The challenge was placed firmly on the
global agenda in Johannesburg at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable
Development. The statistics are well known to us: over one third of the world�s
population - that is more than 2,6 billion people - do not have access to
hygienic sanitation facilities. Most of them live in under-resourced rural
areas or in sprawling urban slums, and are poor. It is also no secret that the
less poor seldom have to squat in the bush with little or no privacy, or face a
full to overflowing bucket in the morning, or have to go outside to use a pit
latrine, often late at night and with little guarantees of personal safety.

The human dignity that can be restored through providing adequate sanitation
facilities in such circumstances is well recognised. To quote from the
statement of Ms Lena Sommestad, Swedish Minister for Environment, at the
Commission for Sustainable Development in New York in April last year:

"We think that sanitation should be a human right. And (yet) today millions
of poor people suffer from diseases and parasites, young children die of
diarrhoea and women are denied security, privacy and dignity because sanitation
has not received enough political attention."

The need for a large scale roll out of sanitation infrastructure to address
this situation is quite evident. The key question posed at this seminar,
however, is not about whether we should be "rolling out" infrastructure, but
about the search for the best and most sustainable options, aimed at minimising
waste and damage to ecosystems, without compromising on the human rights of our
citizens and in a manner that ensures that these solutions are also acceptable
to the intended users. At the heart of the sanitation challenge is the need for
sustainable, ecologically appropriate solutions, with practical implementation
plans that respond to local physical and social conditions that are properly
aligned with human and financial resources.

In South Africa, the political will to provide sustainable sanitation
solutions is not lacking. This is amply demonstrated by our policy and
legislative framework, budget allocation and achievements to date. However, we
need to find better ways of engaging our target communities in the
identification and adoption of the most appropriate and acceptable solutions
that are in line with our very real environmental and resource constraints.

South Africa, with its population of about 47 million people, is currently
categorised as water stressed with an annual freshwater availability of less
then 1 700 m3 per capita (i.e. the global index for water stress). It is
predicted that the country will experience physical water scarcity (i.e. less
than 1 000 m3 freshwater availability per capita) by the year 2025.
Furthermore, the natural availability of water is unevenly spread across the
country and is compounded by strong seasonality of rainfall. It is a semi-arid
country with an average rainfall of 500 millimetres (mm). 21 percent of the
country gets less than 200 mm per year.

Clearly, continued reliance on and expansion of water based sanitation
systems will place an unmanageable strain on our natural resource base.
Municipalities are already struggling to maintain existing infrastructure, and
water restrictions have become commonplace in many cities. The"decent,
hygienic" sanitation that we have in our middle-class homes in Johannesburg, as
we have here in Stockholm, where all our excreta simply gets flushed away (to
some distant, unknown, unseen place) comes at a price, which cannot simply be
measured in rands, dollars or krona - 500 litres of nutrient rich urine per
person per year gets flushed away with huge amounts of municipally purified
water. In stark contrast, more than a billion less fortunate people don�t even
have clean water to drink.

Bad as this is, the extraordinary waste of water is however not the only
issue of concern in waterborne sewage systems: there are many other concerns,
including affordability, sustainability, ecosystem health, and even human
health and hygiene concerns. Our per capita income is just under $1 000 per
month, but, just like our rainfall, it is very unevenly distributed. According
to the Gini coefficient, income inequality in South Africa is one of the worst
in the world. We have a dual economy, with some of the most impressive first
world infrastructure residing side by side with dire poverty and
underdevelopment, in what we call the second economy. Inevitably, this reality
does influence the sanitation paradigm, attitudes and expectations.

We define ourselves as a developmental state, and since the advent of
democracy we have been on a concerted drive to improve the quality of life of
all of our citizens at all levels. We have made a great deal of progress in a
number of areas in the last 12 years:

* housing: over 2 million state subsidised houses have been built since
1994
* water: 9 million more people have access to clean piped water - presently 72
percent of all households have access to clean water
* education: a 60 percent decline in the inequity in spending for our 12
million school children.

However, various commentators have observed that we have not made the same
progress in sanitation - although 3 million toilets have been built, only 58
percent of households have adequate sanitation - with serious health effects on
our population. 1.5 million cases of diarrhoea, in children under the age of 5
years, are reported every year. Our sanitation policy framework has evolved and
been periodically refined over the last 12 years. The first comprehensive
policy document was the 1994 White Paper on Sanitation. In this white paper
"adequate sanitation" was defined as one ventilated improved toilet (VIP), per
household. Of course, we have subsequently discovered that the VIP toilet is
not always the best solution, and in some instances the experience has been
grim, as a result of bad design and inadequate planning.

Clear and detailed policies are therefore necessary to guide us not only to
do the right things and make the right choices in a situation where resources
are scarce and the environment is fragile, but to guide us towards doing the
right things in the right way. There is certainly enough knowledge, expertise
and technology to allow for a variety of options and informed decisions. The
final choices however, have to be determined by local conditions, affordability
and resource constraints, and, very importantly, sufficient community
understanding and support for the solution of choice.

Imposed solutions, especially those determined purely by technical
considerations that are not regarded as "first prize," are destined to fail.
"First prize" in South Africa (and I suspect it is much the same in most other
countries) is without doubt a flushing toilet inside the house. Other than
those situations where the community has been persuaded that flush toilets are
simply not an option, any suggestion from a politician or a civil servant that
the community has to settle for "next best or nothing" does not go down very
well. Community acceptance of the next best option requires proper
understanding and appreciation of the reasons, such as water scarcity,
affordability, infrastructure-overload and maintenance problems. Ironically,
sometimes the "second best" offer may in fact have distinct advantages to the
household to what is perceived to be the best, but in sanitation, as we know,
perceptions and attitudes are not unimportant, and may be the greatest obstacle
to "best technology" introduction.

In the local government elections manifesto (of the African National
Congress) released earlier this year, we pledged to eradicate the much loathed
bucket system by the end of 2007, and confirmed that all households will have
access to clean water and decent sanitation by 2010. Understandably, the bucket
system is seen as an abomination by both residents and policy makers. But from
a policy perspective we must be clear about the best alternatives. There are
cases where the bucket system has been replaced by badly designed VIPs that are
full and are not emptied, attract flies, and are smelly and distinctly
unhygienic.

In the course of our door-to-door work during those elections, a number of
residents in a small town called Hanover showed us their overflowing VIP
toilets. Neither the residents nor the serving local councillor had ever heard
of urine diversion (UD) toilets. There was some disbelief when they were told
that it was possible to have an indoor dry toilet without any odour, perfectly
hygienic, and without daily removal of excreta.

In South Africa, as it should be, policies are not made by individuals -
they are made collectively within party structures, through defined processes,
by Parliament and Cabinet, and certainly always involve intense debate and
engagement with a range of stakeholders. While more needs to be done to
publicly profile dry sanitation solutions in a more positive light, at some
point, though, hard decisions have to be taken. Needless to say, it is seldom
possible to please everyone. But where there is a clear case for the
introduction of a particular technology we have to be bold enough to state the
case and to move ahead, in the right way, with implementation - with all due
mindfulness of the fact that there is unlikely to be a single solution to all
situations. In considering the urine diversion toilet as a serious option that
should be promoted, we have to be satisfied and confident that this form of dry
sanitation is indeed a technically sound and appropriate solution to household
sanitation needs.

Maggie Black, an independent writer, after attending the first ever
international conference on ecological sanitation in China, presented an
eloquent and compelling case:

"The case for �closed-loop thinking� in sanitation - an approach which keeps
the polluting material away from the environment until it is composted and
safe, and reuses all the organic nutrient components of what we emit from our
bodies as a consequence of eating and drinking - is, frankly, water-tight. To
provide this as an option for those millions of people who need a toilet, a
clean living area, and more to eat, is plain common sense. The squalid
environment they currently endure is an outrage against their dignity and
health, and an indicator - not an outcome - of their poverty, a point too often
ignored."

Our experience in South Africa of urine diversion toilets can probably best
be described as a mixed one - we have made mistakes and we are still learning.
There are presently approximately 60 000 such toilets in our country. Per
capita, that gives us more than in China. But the obvious question is: if
Maggie Black is right about the technology, and given that the backlog is so
enormous, and we are a dry country, and we do have resources, and we do have a
roll out programme - why are UD toilets not being delivered on a much larger
scale? We saw some horrific television footage recently of what happens during
a flood in an area with pit latrines. Expensive waterborne sanitation often
fares no better during floods - in fact spills happen quite regularly without
floods. Interestingly, we also have anecdotal evidence that the UD option can
be made more palatable and seem like less of a "second best" solution, even in
the seemingly better off suburbs.

The one and only middle class Johannesburg house that we know of with a
urine diversion toilet serving their family sanitation needs is actually
well-represented at this seminar. Most of you know him. Richard Holden is our
sanitation expert in the Department of Science and Technology. They have had
that toilet in their home for years, and they have it by choice, not because it
is the only option available to them, but the entire family is perfectly happy
with it. Now, Richard is either a bit crazy, or this toilet actually works. His
water bill has come down dramatically, and the garden is lush. So, if by now we
are convinced that the UD toilet is indeed an appropriate and effective
technology, both in meeting household needs related to privacy, dignity and
health, and in offering the cleanest and environmentally safest solution, then
it brings us back to the question: Why has this technology not been introduced
and adopted on a much larger scale in our country? To answer this question we
need to better understand the reluctance, the caution, the prejudice and
resistance in our society to urine diversion toilets, and analyse our mistakes
in the projects that have not taken off, as was hoped. There are probably a
number of reasons why UD toilets have not been widely embraced.

In the first instance there is no specific encouragement in our policies to
promote it. In a paper presented to the Global Dry Toilet Club of Finland last
week, Louise Duncker, of our Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
(CSIR), brings our attention to the fact that the Strategic Framework for Water
Services (Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, 2003) makes no mention of
use, reuse or recycling of household waste products, of minimising impact on
natural resources or of provision of sanitation services in a manner that
results in efficient use of natural resources.

The CSIR has been investigating users� perceptions and attitudes towards
urine diversion sanitation in South Africa for the past five years. Ms Duncker
writes:

"The main findings were that people were aware of the fertiliser value of
faeces but not of urine and that only some were willing to use the faeces in
their gardens. Although most people did not ascribe any cultural values,
beliefs or taboos to human faeces or urine, it was generally considered totally
unacceptable for people to handle human faeces, especially concerning food
production."

And she concludes:

"In South Africa the perceptions and beliefs of the users represent a major
stumbling block to the use of human excreta. The use of the products from dry
toilets will not happen automatically - constant intervention and
awareness-raising will be needed. A strategy needs to be developed to
facilitate attitude change and a mind shift with the users, i.e. selling the
concept of ecological sanitation".

"... monitoring and evaluation and involvement should be a priority,
considering that the dry toilets are a new system and need to be managed
correctly if the goals of ecological sanitation are to be met. The problems are
usually caused either by a lack of sufficient involvement of the community
during the introduction and implementation phases, or because the implementing
agency conducted it only partially".

This work is useful, but in truth, we cannot say with certainty what the
real reason is for the negative perceptions and resistance. For most users, the
fertiliser value would be a non-factor - their demands are for a decent,
hygienic toilet, free of smell, preferably in the house. It would appear that
in areas where it has been well accepted it is it in so many ways, and perhaps
so obviously the best solution, for example a particularly dry part of our
country called Namaqualand, with rocky terrain, making pit latrines virtually
impossible, and simply no question of bringing in waterborne systems. But the
community consultation was also thorough, and political leaders bought into the
technology and played a positive role in bringing the community on board.

There are other parts of our country where successes have been recorded, not
because of the recognition of the nutrient value in the excreta, but because
the community was convinced that this form of sanitation was the "best second
best". Once the user is convinced that the occasional handling of dry,
odourless excreta is perfectly safe, and not such an odious task, there seems
to be little reason for resistance.

But in preparing this presentation, reading and speaking to various people,
two things have become very clear to me. Firstly, this is the best form of dry
sanitation available to households, and we should try by all means, in our
water scarce country, to avoid expansion of water-borne sanitation. And
secondly, that we need to do more research and develop a better understanding
of the reasons for resistance and failure, properly document the success
stories and their determinants, and move ahead in the right way. The
technology, with the right kind of introduction, proper training and support,
is a winner.

Certainly the evolution of our policy framework does enable us to better
prepare for these challenges. In the past, sanitation was primarily focused on
technical solutions, like toilet building, and providing and maintaining
sewerage systems. Cumulatively, South Africa�s sanitation policy framework is
now far more comprehensive and far less prescriptive. An example is an
extraction from the 2001 Basic Household Sanitation strategy which explicitly
states that:

"It is now recognised that toilets are just one element in a range of
factors that make up good sanitation. Community participation in decision
making, improved health of millions of people, safer living environments,
greater knowledge of sanitation-related health practices and improved hygiene
are just some of the factors that are central to the development of good
sanitation services".

I have not yet mentioned what I consider to be the key ingredients for
successful policy implementation, assuming that the policies themselves are
more or less on track. Without a doubt, it is passion, determination and
intelligent management of processes, starting right at the top! Thorough
monitoring and evaluation, yes, but being prepared to step in where there are
problems, and getting the entire team, at all levels of government and civil
society behind this drive, and spending lots and lots of time engaging with
communities. When we reach the point of celebrating every new ecologically
sound toilet, in the same way as we celebrate those first gulps of sparkling
water, then we really will be more than half-way there!

Thank you.

Issued by: Department of Science and Technology
20 August 2006
Source: Department of Science and Technology (http://www.dst.gov.za/)