Group8_A | SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation
Introduction
Our world has
made a lot of progress in providing easy availability and access to water and
sanitation facilities to billions of people in the world especially in the
rural areas. Yet, they lack the basic facilities of sanitation and hygiene.
According to recent statistics, about one-third of the people on the planet
don’t have access to hygienic drinking water and about 67.3 crore people still
defecate in open areas. The COVID-19 pandemic acted as an eye-opener for the
people in making them aware of the importance of hygiene and sanitation.
Cleaning hands with soap and sanitizing it frequently increased the awareness
among the population and helped billions of people around the world safeguard
themselves from this virus borne disease.
India has made
significant development and is moving rapidly towards the goal of ending open
defecation all across the country which in turn is improving the WASH (Water,
Sanitation and Hygiene). In 2015, about half the population of our country had
to suffer the indignity of defecating in the open area as they didn’t have access
to toilets. But after the Indian government started its campaign and committed
to “Make India Open Defecation Free” by 2019, the numbers have reduced
significantly. This has reduced the numbers significantly by 45 crore people. According
to recent numbers, around 92.67% of people in the country have access to basic
water sources and 99% have access to basic sanitation in the country. Another
big step towards clean water was the launch of “Clean Ganga Mission” which was
set up in October 2016. Many organizations have been involved in this effort.
Current Scenario in India
WASH
related problems have been an incessant pain to India for a really long time.
In
2015 it was found out that less than 50% of the Indian population has access to
potable drinking water. An estimated 19.6 lacs dwellings have poisoned
groundwater with chemicals like arsenic, fluoride, lead, etc because of
over-exploitation of groundwater, and 718 Indian districts face an extreme
water shortage. Not just this, around 56.8 crore Indians, which is 90% of South
Asians who were defecating in open farm fields, near water bodies, forests, and
other public places. It is not just shameful for a country, but also harmful
for the inhabitants whose environmental surrounding has been corrupted as this
leads to tonnes of human waste getting accumulated in the environment. This
exposes the children to dangerous pathogens and increases the risk of
contracting diarrhoea and other waterborne diseases. Around 1,00,000 children
under the age of five succumb to diarrheal death.
Exposure
to contaminated water and poor sanitation have ripple effects impacting not
just the individuals but also the country. Like it hampers National
development, such people lead shorter lives, with no provision for guaranteed
food, education, or a stable future for their children. However, Initiatives
like National Rural Drinking Water Programme, District-wide WASH programs, and
Swatch Bharath Mission helped improve this situation to some extent. As per the
2019 latest estimates released by Government of India, only 11.8 crore Indians
don’t have access to potable drinking water and toilets. This is a significant
improvement, but it is still a long way to go India.
Business Implications and Responses
Clean
water and sanitation are a big crisis when looked from the perspective of
businesses. Though direct effects are less in both number and impact, the
indirect effects have a huge impact and difficult to track and identify.
Direct
effects arise primarily from the discharge of raw sewage and industrial wastes into
water bodies ultimately polluting the freshwater sources. To understand the
scale of the discharge, a report by the Centre for science and environment in 2013
reported that in India 80 percent of untreated sewage is discharged into
freshwater sources. This basically means limited water supply for industries
and they will have to incur more on water treatment.
Indirect
effects are much more complex and long-term. These effects can be broadly
categorized among Health, Education and Economy. Unclean water leads to
illness, majorly diarrhoea that directly affects a person’s ability to work and
study. According to a study, sanitization can reduce the risk of diarrhoea by
about 30%. Another study by Hutten and Haller reported that by achieving the
MDG water and sanitation targets industries will lead to an increase of 320
crore productive days per year globally. The illness through inadequate
sanitation affects children more and they are forced to miss school. This
basically may lead to a long-term effect where a decreased school attendance
may lead to a decrease in future abled and talented workforce. Achieving the
desired level of sanitation will lead to an opposite effect of this, where we
will see an increased number of abled workforces in future. Hence, this is how
unclean water and inadequate sanitation affects education.
Improper
sanitation also adds to poverty as people miss both school and work due to
illness, ultimately reducing the money in hand in future. Employing proper
sanitization will lead to less illness and higher productive work, leading to
higher money in hand. Higher in money in hand increases people’ purchasing
power which is good for businesses. Countries following higher standards of
clean water and sanitization invariable have better average health status among
its citizens. This simple fact attracts more businesses to invest in these
countries as they will get a healthier workforce and a robust business climate.
One
of the biggest campaigns that aim at dealing with this crisis is WASH by UNICEF.
Their aim is to reach a universal, sustainable, and equitable access to safe
drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene by 2030. Businesses have also shifted
the WASH crisis as a core business priority from being a corporate social
responsibility (CSR). Company’s such as Diageo and HUL have been at the forefront of this campaign and inspire other businesses to join hands.
Diageo came to limelight with its Water of Life (WoL) program in Ghana where
they set up several water and sanitization projects. These projects became a
reliable source of water supply to 70% of the total beneficiaries in Ghana.
This project also helped the women in the family. Their time to travel and
fetch water was zero now and they can contribute to the society a little
better.
Similarly, HUL opened “Suvidha Centre” in the slums of Mumbai. These “Suvidha
Centres” were urban water, hygiene and sanitation community centres that
provide drinking water, sanitation, laundry, shower and handwashing facilities
at an affordable cost. These centres are
first-of-its-kind set ups that are catering to around 7500 people living in the
slums of Mumbai.
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| How the sanitation crisis negatively affects businesses |
Analysis
The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly shown how WASH services
are critical in protecting us from infectious diseases. It could be the catalyst
needed to aggressively pursue the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) towards
clean water and sanitation. One of the key messages for the Swachh Bharat
Mission goals were washing hands properly, which is also in line with the
pandemic situation at hand.
The SDG constitute 17 main goals, most of which are
interconnected. Its purpose is to ensure availability and sustainable water
management and sanitation, which is critical now. It also contributes
significantly to economic development, poverty reduction, education, and, most
important, at this point, health.
Rural India was declared as Open Defecation Free on
October 2, 2019. We now need to sustain the gains made under Swachh Bharat
Mission to ensure that the health and hygiene benefits continue to be
effectively realized. It is critical that Open Defecation Free behaviour must
be sustained, and every village/ward has access to solid and liquid waste
management. Aligned to that, SBM Phase II, both in rural and urban, brings
challenges that are likely to be more rigid and newer.
There are a lot of challenges starting from the
scale of operation of the programme to the finances, and both are turning out
to be more difficult in the pandemic crisis. Historically, only 3.5 crore Indian
rural households out of 18.5 crore households have had access to available tap
water. This means we will have to cover four times more homes in the next five
years. After supplying water, we would have to plan to reuse the greywater or
the discharged water. Both these could be taken care of by the convergence of
different government schemes.
There is evidence that viruses can remain infectious for days to weeks in untreated wastewater and faecal matter. Conventional wastewater treatment processes could significantly reduce the risk posed by the viruses. While there have been no reported cases of Covid-19 due to contact with faeces of an infected individual, human waste is hazardous, contains numerous pathogens, and so should be safely managed in all settings during and post the pandemic.
Suggested Path
- Dysfunctional toilets have been one of the critical reasons for slippage from being Open Defecation Free, and there is a need to assess for non-usability and take appropriate actions accordingly. For instance, the slippage seen in usable toilets in schools and communities can be investigated and rectified. Swachh Bharat Kosh funds have been allocated to repair dysfunctional toilets; however, out of the INR 399.86 crores that have been released, only INR 129.41 crores have been utilized.
- There is also an evident need to prioritize practical usage of these funds by conducting annual surveys to locate dysfunctional toilets in schools, ensuring their repair, and creating a business model to provide technical support for maintaining and repairing these toilets.
- Human resources for sanitation such as training masons-cum-plumbers, personnel for designing and constructing new sanitation infrastructure, Operations and Maintenance, community mobilization, sanitation, and hygiene promotion are required to be trained through the sanitation chain. Additionally, there is also a need to continuously improve the skill sets of personnel involved in the verification process.
- Campaigns need to be designed for awareness generation of communities. Sustained and concerted efforts are required to ensure holistic, safe, and sustainable sanitation in India. Continuous engagement with communities is necessary to create awareness, change old habits, prevent slippage, and complete ownership of resources created.
- Behavioural change is another critical component of achieving safe sanitation. Sustained behaviour change campaigns at the community levels, as well as household levels, can bring about a difference in the mindset of people.
- There is also a need to increase the capacity for the safe management of faecal waste generated from onsite containment systems. Opportunities for such services should be identified, with due consideration to the economy of scale to ensure the sustainability of services.
- Sewage management could be improved using modern technology and decentralized treatment/management plants in different locations at all Urban local bodies.
- Repair services for urban toilets are as crucial as for rural toilets. It is essential to facilitate the growth of business models for the purpose, and the municipality can take the lead by training persons under skill training programmes of the Government.
- Industrial water use accounts for approximately 19 % of global water usage. The corporate water footprints have to be drastically reduced using various water treatment mechanisms to improve clean water availability to the general public for household consumption. It will allow the industries to reuse water and decrease their water demand.
References
https://www.teriin.org/sites/default/files/2020-01/aligning-Indias-sanitation-policy-with-the-SDGs.pdf
https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/pdfBuilderDownload?name=sustainability-all-in-june-2020
https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/why-water-and-sanitation-must-remain-top-priorities/story-cd1AXNdjJh82S8gu1FrjPK.html
https://www.orfonline.org/research/tracking-indias-progress-in-clean-water-and-sanitation-a-sub-national-analysis-67139/
4. https://ourworldindata.org/water-use-stress
https://www.unicef.org/india/what-we-do/water-sanitation-hygiene
https://assets.ctfassets.net/oe48y40ukei6/B5XmfFUoyR1jOMkbrTyry/cef3b960200f46ad072b05c39dbb4f70/P_G_ISC_Citizenship_report.pdf
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https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/water-and-sanitation/
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https://www.unicef.org/india/what-we-do/water-sanitation-hygiene
9. https://www.jpmorganchase.com/impact/sustainability
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