Sanitation can eliminate slums in less than a generation. Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation – Thu, 6 Nov 2014
Author: Magda Mis
Investing in water and sanitation could eradicate urban poverty and eliminate slums in less than a generation, said a study published on Thursday.
Almost 1 billion people, most of them in South Asia and Africa, live in slums without access to basic services like clean water and improved toilets.
Providing water and sanitation to those impoverished areas is necessary to drive economic development and can be done within decades, a study by international charity Water Aid said.
“Sanitation doesn’t come once prosperity comes – it is a driver of prosperity,” Barbara Frost, chief executive of Water Aid told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of a water summit in London.
Singapore and South Korea, prosperous countries that struggled with open sewers just a few decades ago, now provide good water and sanitation services to their population.
Such states achieved it through strong political leadership, campaigns like the “Keep Singapore clean” initiative, and by making investment in water and sanitation a priority, according to the study.
“The focus (needs to be) on moving from slum conditions, like open sewers and stinking rivers, to a modern city and this is what they have achieved in Singapore,” said Frost.
Even though most slums are mushrooming around cities in developing countries, national wealth should not be a condition for water and sanitation investments, the study said.
In the 1960s, when South Korea started to work on universal access to these services, its per capita GDP was lower than that of many countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Frost said Rwanda is a good example of how, when sanitation is made a priority, progress can be achieved quickly.
“(Rwanda is) making enormous progress…and that’s partially(thanks to) strong leadership,” said Frost.
The country managed to deliver sanitation services to an additional 30 percent of its population in just a decade.
Globally, more than 700 million people do not have access to clean water and 2.5 billion live without improved sanitation.
The United Nations is due to set new sustainable development objectives in 2015 with a global target of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030.
“If the goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030 is to be realised, it’s going to be essential that investment is made in water and sanitation,” Frost said.
“Unless there is universal access to (those) basic services, extreme poverty can’t be eradicated.” (Reporting By Magdalena Mis; Editing by Maria Caspani)
