Smart sanitation

Wednesday, 07 July 2010 17:25

President of Bolivia Evo Morales lays the first stone at an ecological sanitation demonstration centre in Cochabamba.

SEI makes deal with Bolivian government to tackle sanitation, water and agricultural challenges in local communities.

SEI’s ecosanres programme provides and promotes pro-poor sustainable sanitation around the world by building local capacity.

This is urgent work in Bolivia, where 5 million people have no access to proper sanitation and 2.5 million lack access to clean water. EcoSanRes and its partners helped to set up a government directorate that represents the Bolivian sanitation and housing sectors.

Can offload pressure
In 2008 SEI signed a contract with the Bolivian Government  to help design, promote and put in place sustainable sanitation for poor rural and urban households. SEI is also cooperating with professionals and organisations in related sectors to spread awareness and enmesh sustainable sanitation in wider society.

Bolivia’s water managers are under huge pressure to expand water and sanitation services while protecting aquatic ecosystems and supplies for other productive water uses, like agriculture. This is no easy task when the region’s water supply is threatened by the rapid and dramatic loss of glacier cover in the Andes.

Ecological sanitation can help to meet this challenge through systems that safely recycle organic waste and human manure for crop production. This conserves water and reduces demand for other non-renewable resources like phosphorous, used in conventional fertiliser.

Building capacity through networks
In 2009 SEI, with its partners in Bolivia, trained more than 500 key professionals and more than 100 government personnel in sustainable sanitation. We also ran three regional workshops and carried out nine demonstrations of sustainable sanitation systems, enabling government staff to run demonstrations in the future.

In Bolivia, as well as in many other countries around the world, SEI is building capacity through its network of partners to expand the use of sustainable sanitation over the short and long-term.