Friday 27 July 2012

Rural sanitation

What Does It Take to Scale Up Rural Sanitation? by Eduardo Perez and published earlier this month by the Water and Sanitation Program is an important document because, as the report’s webpage says, “Today, 2.5 billion people live without access to improved sanitation. … Of those without access to sanitation, 75 percent live in rural areas [emphasis added].” – so there’s no escaping the importance of rural sanitation. The technologies for rural sanitation are well understood – well, most of them anyway. The report notes that “Scaling Up Rural Sanitation is designed as an evidence-based learning project with an explicit goal to test and document new approaches, reflect on challenges, and develop knowledge products to share lessons learned. Testing innovative approaches implies taking risks and learning from successes and failures.”

Yet, and it’s a big yet, there’s no mention of Arborloos – clearly a major omission!