Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 18 2008 (IPS) – The Global Sanitation Fund (GSF), created last March with a 100-million-dollar target per year, is being billed as a key financing mechanism aimed at meeting one of the eight U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Boys use new latrines at Tulung Elementary School in Pundong Village in the earthquake-ravaged southern district of Bantul, Java. Credit: UNICEF/HQ06-1845/Josh Estey
The whole point of creating the GSF was to boost progress on sanitation towards MDGs and beyond, says Jon Lane, executive director of the Geneva-based Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), which helped establish the GSF.
Asked what impact the GSF will have in helping some of the world s poorer nations, Lane told IPS: At this stage we cannot provide any numerical evidence on improved coverage the GSF is just starting out but the very existence of a funding mechanism that will work to enhance people-centred approaches and demand creation is already a step in the direction.
This is because the GSF represents a much-needed paradigm shift away from hardware and supply-driven policies that have been proven wrong by the experience in the sanitation sector, and thus it is a contribution to achieving the MDGs, he added.
The GSF has picked Madagascar as one of the first pilot countries to benefit from the fund.
We are really honoured by this display of confidence. These funds are enabling our country to increase advocacy, awareness raising, and the mobilisation of resources to help the most vulnerable people in remote communities, the president of Madagascar, Marc Raval Omanana, told the Stockholm International Water Conference last month.
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According to a joint study by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the U.N. children s agency UNICEF released early this year, 62 percent of Africans do not have access to an improved sanitation facility a proper toilet which separates human waste from human contact.
And some 2.6 billion people worldwide, including 980 million children, now live without access to a toilet at home and are vulnerable to a wide range of health risks.
More than 5,000 children under five die every day due to lack of sanitation and hygiene, resulting in over 1.5 million diarrhoea-related deaths, according to U.N. figures.
On the plus side, the joint study estimated that 1.2 billion people worldwide had gained access to improved sanitation between 1990 and 2004.
But if current trends continue, warns the United Nations, the world will miss its MDGs on sanitation by more than 700 million people by the target date of 2015.
The MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in extreme poverty and hunger; universal primary education; promotion of gender equality; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; combating the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a North-South global partnership for development.
Water and sanitation are part of Goal 7, aimed at ensuring environment sustainability.
A summit meeting of 189 world leaders in September 2000 pledged to meet all of these goals by the year 2015. But so far most of the goals remain unimplemented.
The United Nations will hold a meeting of world leaders Sep. 25 to take stock of the successes and failures of MDGs. The world body has estimated that at least 10 billion dollars are needed in additional funding to meet the water and sanitation needs.
Asked if the 100-million-dollar target of the GSF per year was inadequate, Lane told IPS: At first sight it appears that the 100-million-dollar target per year is only one percent of what s needed.
But if you consider that the vast majority of the 10 billion dollars is to be spent by the households themselves, then the GSF s impact on aid flows becomes more significant, he argued.
The 100 million dollars is not some kind of ceiling, it is the GSF s aspiration in order to be big enough to make a significant contribution.
There are lots of donors, and the GSF is not trying to become some kind of monopoly, he said, noting that it is a pooled fund that gives donors the possibility to channel their funds into sanitation.
If we take the example of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria it is now a huge structure, but its funding is still a fairly small proportion of the total going to HIV/AIDS, for example.
Therefore, more than its numerical contribution, the importance of the GSF is to bring other people s attention to the problem and encourage them to put more money into sanitation.
We re not asking donors to put money exclusively into the GSF, but in general to allocate more money to sanitation. The GSF can thus be seen as aiming at catalysing further action by various financiers and donors, he added.
When most of the world s developing nations are struggling to meet the sanitation needs of its growing population, the People s Republic of China has been singled out as a major success story. The government in Beijing has invested more than 8.0 billion dollars just in sewers and waste water treatment.
The air quality (in China) may still leave something to be desired, but the quality of Beijing s sanitation is impressive and sustainable, Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, chair of the U.N. Secretary-General s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation, told the Stockholm International Water Conference last month.
Asked what other U.N. agencies fund sanitation, Lane said that very little goes to sanitation from agencies such as UNICEF, UN-HABITAT, and U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).
But the United Nations is not really a financing system for sanitation, he pointed out. The big money comes from bilateral aid, government to government. The money going through the U.N. system is pretty small.
This said, the funding gap by the U.N. system compared with the estimated funding requirements of 10 billion dollars, is huge.
As regards governments funding sanitation, the group of donors already attracted by the GSF (among others the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Britain and Australia) is one of the most prominent in the sector s financing, Lane added.
