A consultation was organised by Arghyam Trust on 9th September 2009 at Bangalore, to share civil society experiences regarding sustainable sanitation with the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission was represented at the event by Dr. Mihir Shah. The focus of the consultation was largely on rural sanitation.
Bases on the discussions and inputs from the presentations of the participants, a general consensus was built, based on which specific recommendations were made to the Planning Commission.
Brief report of proceedings
The meeting was inaugurated by Dr. Mihir Shah, Planning Commission and Ms. Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson, Arghyam. This was followed by an introductory presentation by Arghyam team members on Sustainable and Ecological Sanitation, as also about the purpose and agenda of the consultation.
The first session was focussed on Sustainable Sanitation, and included presentations by Water Aid, Gramalaya, UNICEF, Utthan, WSP, TSC District Coodinator and Gram Panchayat members. The second session was focussed on Ecological Sanitation and included presentations by UAS Bangalore, SCOPE, MYRADA and REAL.
The concluding session centred on summarising the key points of the days' discussion and finalising of recommendations to the Planning Commission, by the participants. The related presentations/documents are appended with this announcement.
Some of the questions/issues that were discussed in the meeting
Sustainable Sanitation
Some definitions
Sustainable Sanitation: The main objective of a sanitation system is to protect and promote human health by providing a clean environment and breaking the cycle of disease. A definition of sustainable sanitation that has been used is: “In order to be sustainable, a sanitation system has to be not only economically viable, socially acceptable, and technically and institutionally appropriate, it should also protect the environment and the natural resources.”
Ecological Sanitation ("Ecosan"/ Productive sanitation): is one approach towards creating a sustainable sanitation system by recycling the nutrients found in human excreta. The key features of ecosan are prevention of pollution and disease caused by human excreta and management of human urine and faeces as resources rather than as waste. Conventional approaches to sanitation misplace these nutrients and dispose them and turn the cycle into a linear flow.