Experts Urge All-Out Toilet Efforts
BANGKOK - New technology, religion, and the market must be harnessed to secure basic toilet facilities for Asia’s rural and urban poor, sanitation experts from the region said here Thursday.
Currently, over 2.6 billion people across the world have no access to an organized system of toilets, of which some 1.5 billion people live in the Asia-Pacific region, states the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), a regional UN body based in Bangkok, which hosted a conference on sanitation.
And every year, over 200 million tons of human waste go uncollected and untreated globally, adds ESCAP. This not only fouls the environment and spreads diseases, but forces the people with no access to toilets to ”live in deeper poverty and indignity.”
”If you want to solve the problem, you have to talk about the appropriate technology that works,” said Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of India’s Sulabh Sanitation and Social Reform Movement, in a keynote address. ”In many developing countries, due to lack of affordable sanitation technology, sanitation coverage was far below the level of satisfaction.”
And for that, community involvement is a priority, since most of the people who need toilets are from the marginalized lower socio-economic sector, added Pathak, whose organization has built 7,500 community toilets in India. ”It is still not seen as a high priority, resulting in [the] absence of people’s participation.”
Other experts, like Jack Sim, founder and current head of the Singapore-based World Toilet Organisation (WTO), called for the poor to be viewed in different light if the current sanitation gap has to be bridged. ”We don’t follow the donor model, which requires the poor to be certified as useless to receive assistance.”
His organization has pushed the message for better sanitation using a ”marketing model,” where the poor have to ”demand” toilets. That includes ”teaching the poor to be sanitation businessmen,” said Sim.
The role of religion in influencing change of current toilet habits has to be roped in, he added. ”Religion is a very good tool, because most religions say that when you come to God, you must come clean. We must try and leverage on this.”
Other organizations, like the Seoul-based World Toilet Association, say that for the world to achieve its current sanitation targets, discussion about toilets needs to be part of regular conversation. ”An open dialogue about toilets, a subject often avoided because of unpleasant associations, must be fostered,” it states. ”Changing people’s perceptions and encouraging social action aimed at expanding appropriate toilet facilities around the world is crucial.”
The ESCAP event was part of the program to mark World Water Day, which falls on Mar. 22. The emphasis on sanitation for this year’s event stems from 2008 being declared as the International Year of Sanitation.
Ensuring better sanitation, furthermore, is one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that world leaders agreed at a 2000 UN summit to meet by 2015. Goal Seven of the MDGs’ eight goals was a pledge to halve by the deadline the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
The Asian continent offers a major challenge for such an ambitious development program, since it is home to giants like China and India. China accounts for a third of the region’s 1.5 billion people without safe sanitation, while India accounts for another third.
During a review of progress made halfway into the MDGs timeline, the UN revealed that China had ”traveled less than half the distance to its target,” while India’s efforts were ”not enough to stay on track.” Bangladesh, another populous South Asian nation, had also fallen behind, with the UN saying it ”too is off track.”
Even smaller countries like Cambodia and Laos are burdened with few toilets. Currently, only 17 percent of Cambodia’s rural population, where the majority of the country’s 14.8 million population live, have access to toilets, says Nasir Hassan of the World Health Organisation. In neighboring Laos, only 30 percent of the population have access to basic sanitation.
By contrast, Southeast Asian countries like Singapore and Brunei have 100 percent sanitation coverage, while Thailand has 99 percent coverage and Malaysia, 94 percent.
Yet Thailand’s success offered a note of caution, since it was not accompanied by a dramatic drop in waterborne diseases. ”Despite a near 100 percent sanitation coverage, the morbidity rates did not come down,” Dr. Twisuk Punpeng, a senior advisor at Thailand’s ministry of public health, told IPS. ”New toilets alone will not reduce morbidity rates. Good hygiene practices are also essential.”
According to the United Nations, the lack of basic sanitation leaves the world’s poor vulnerable to preventable diseases. ”Globally, one child dies every 20 seconds as a result of poor sanitation.”
Diarrheal disease remains the leading killer of children under five years in the East Asia and Pacific region, states the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in a document circulated at the conference. It is responsible for 187,000 deaths annually.
Poor sanitation in the region also affects education, adds UNICEF. ”School enrollment is also affected as children, especially girls, are less likely to stay in schools without adequate water and safe, private sanitation and washing facilities.”
© 2008 Inter Press Service
All this socialist talk about free toilets… theres a unexploited market for
paying toilets , ripe for the picking!
In fact, its already exploited, as detailed in the Mike Davis book “Planet of slums”.
How about an all-out population control effort? If people keep making people, we’ll run out of room, food and water, and no amount of toilets will save us.
max, I agree, this story isn’t even worth commenting on except to mention population control, since it is the root of all other problems on our planet. Be fruitful and multiply might have worked a million years ago, but enough is enough now.
Shit is important. As a vector for disease, as a source of fertilizer, and so on.
There is no civilization without plumbing. Although it doesn’t make the job of reaming out a clogged waste pipe or replacing a toilet any easier, at least I have a little additional justification for enjoying a well earned beverage afterward.
“max, I agree, this story isn’t even worth commenting on except to mention population control”
Thats quite a stand.
Sanitation is a huge world problem worth talking about outside of population control. Theres lots of water-borne diseases that could be easily remedied if there was proper sanitation infrastructure. But big money doesnt care about that, unless they can make money off it that is.
As for population control, humans are a crafty bunch. Sometimes i feel that were so much in deep shit we can almost start thinking about what to write on our common tombstone, but if we get our *ahem* shit together, we might be able to surprise ourselves and do stuff like colonize the rest of the 70% of the planet. In theory, there is still enough space for population growth. Just, not unmanaged growth where most of the planets population is left in wastelands to rot and ecosystems treated like throwaway trash.
Shit is a valuable resource. Look up the Humanure Handbook for information on how to safely compost human waste.
N.Y.C.’s Nonexistent Public Toilets
Before talking about the problems of public toilets in China, and India, look at the problems that we have at home. Have you ever tried to find a public toilet in New York City? New York used to have them in parks,public buildings, and at almost every subway station. It cost ten cents or a quarter to use them. If you did not have the change it was perfectly acceptable and proper to go in behind someone else who put the money in to open the door.In the last twenty five years they have closed almost all of the public rest rooms in this city.
New York State has always passed laws with total disregard for the needs of New York City. In the mid seventies they passed a law which stated that all public rest rooms must be free. They did this when our city was having terrible economic problems. Without the income to pay for the facilities maintenance they had to close many of the rest rooms. Dumb politicians in the early eighties, at the beginning of the aids crisis, decided that some gay men were having sex in public rest rooms, and for public health reasons it would be best to close them. Why they closed the ladies rooms, god only knows.
During the decade of the eighties the stench of urine was strong on most of the subway platforms, not to mention the little piles of poop at the end of the platforms. This was not only an unsightly mess, and a health hazard, but it posed a physical hazard as well. Elderly people, or folks who were not to steady on their feet could fall on one of these slippery obstacles.
Today in New York if you have to go,probably all that will be available is rest rooms for customers only. It is not uncommon to see someone on a long line at McDonald’s, with their legs pushed together and a frantic look on their face. What do people do who don’t have the money to purchase something every time nature calls? Take a guess. Some of the tourists think that New York has a problem with Doggy Do. Take a closer look. A Doggy didn’t do it.
Catseyes, when you talk about “do stuff like colonize the rest of the 70% of the planet,”… are you freakin’ talking about the oceans, like “Waterworld”?
In fact, the Earth is non-viable for human life across 90% of its surface, but that doesn’t mean you can terraform it to fit more humans in. Humans don’t just need a plot of dirt or a raft to stand on, they need food, and room to roam, and energy, and environmental space that processes their waste products and provides clean air and water. And they would like peace and freedom and safety. And the intellectual stimulation of art and science and travel. And more. This is not possible when crowded into a ‘planet of slums’.
You also say that “in theory, there is still enough space for population growth. Just, not unmanaged growth where most of the planets population is left in wastelands to rot and ecosystems treated like throwaway trash.” Yeah, there is enough room for lots more people, if we either ALL live in those “wastelands to rot (in) and (the) ecosystems (are) treated like throwaway trash,” or we live our lives in in Matrix-like tubes. Even if the world were more fair and equal, as it should be.
There will always be greater and greater numbers to provide for, if population growth is not stabilized. See www.dieoff.org and Olduvai Theory for more on this. If we don’t get a grip, it’s back to the caves for us, or at least the remnant of humanity that may remain.
Otherwise, there is plainly not enough for us all now, much less for more billions of people going forward. Decent life and right livlihood must include some form of population control, as well as localized socialism across the globe to advance the level of life for all. Or else, NON-decent life for most people will be the norm, as it is for billions now. And war over resources will be continuous, as it is for humanity now.