Sanitation for all?

After introducing the topic of sanitation, this Thematic Overview Paper (TOP) looks at the historical perspective and addresses different types of sanitation, such as basic sanitation, environmental sanitation, and ecological sanitation. It goes on to explain the elements of a sanitation system and the different stakeholders involved. Approaches to technology choice are discussed and the TOP concludes with a number of relevant books, articles and papers, websites and contacts. For decades, water and sanitation sector professionals complained that sanitation was being neglected. Today, the mood is very different. Powerful arguments about the role of sanitation improvements in reducing poverty, protecting the environment, raising education standards, and spearheading human development attracted massive media attention at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 1992. As a direct result of that Summit, a vital sanitation target was added to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Target 10 of MDG7 urges governments to: Halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. The challenge to WSS practitioners now is to deliver sustainable sanitation services to more than two billion people by 2015.

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