BY SHREYA RANGARAJAN
Shreya Rangarajan is a second-year MA student at Johns Hopkins SAIS concentrating in Energy, Resources & Environment, and International Economics. She is interested in designing low carbon solutions for and improving resiliency of service delivery infrastructure in developing countries.
World Toilet Day is on November 19, and there is no better time to share a sanitation success story. Improved sanitation has proven health benefits and is incredibly important for resilience, particularly during COVID-19. Between 2000 and 2017, population using safely managed sanitation services increased from 28% to 45% globally, while close to 2.1 billion gained access to at least basic services. Countries like the Republic of Zambia exemplify this achievement. While progress appears slow when looking at long-term trends, recent data highlight the country’s significant advancements in the sector over the last five years.
Source: Joint Monitoring Program
Notably, the country’s adoption of a Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach has proven effective for improving sanitation. CLTS is an innovative and participatory approach that enables communities to make behavioral changes and to take ownership of latrine construction, in a bid to end open defecation. In order to better understand how CLTS has been implemented in Zambia, it is important to contextualize it amidst a slew of broader policy and institutional reforms that have changed the way sanitation is viewed and governed in the country.
How is Zambia turning the tide on sanitation?
Prioritization by the government: Historically, the Government of Zambia viewed sanitation as being less important than water supply. Most governmental reforms and institutional frameworks did not prioritize sanitation. Since 2015, there has been a tonal shift in the way the Zambian government has approached sanitation. The Ministry of Water Development for example, acknowledged that “despite important improvements in the field of water supply, sanitation continues to lag behind…. It is therefore necessary to find sustainable solutions to scale up sanitation.”[1] In 2018, the government held Zambia’s first ever national Sanitation Summit, in which it further re-emphasized its commitment to improving sanitation by acknowledging that sanitation interventions had to be prioritized in multi-sectoral developmental approaches and that this would require a long-term public commitment through a progressive increase in budgetary allocation.
Source: Twitter
Source: Twitter
Institutional structures for service delivery: Prioritization by the government manifested itself in the establishment of new institutions that were mandated to improve service delivery of sanitation. Most salient are the Ministry of Water Development, Sanitation and Environmental Protection (MWDSEP) as well as the National Water Supply and Sanitation Council (NWASCO). MWDSEP is the policy making body at the national level while NWASCO is the independent regulator responsible for tariff setting, amongst other responsibilities. In 2018, after recognizing the need to refine regulatory frameworks, NWASCO published the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Framework for Provision and Regulation as well as the Urban Onsite and Fecal Sludge Management Framework for Provision and Regulation. These frameworks clearly assigned responsibilities and laid out the legislation at national and sub-national levels, along the sanitation supply chain, from on-site toilets to safe re-use or disposal.
Targeted Policies: With key institutional structures in place, the Government of Zambia has also enacted policies that target specific aspects of sanitation such as the Open Defecation Free Zambia Strategy 2018-2030 (ODF) and the National Urban and Peri-Urban Sanitation Strategy 2015-2030 (NUSS), both of which are viewed as the guiding documents for sanitation. The ODF strategy aims to facilitate and sustain demand for sanitation markets through long term-behavioral changes to end open defecation in Zambia, while “paying special attention to women and girls, and those in vulnerable situations.”[2] NUSS on the other hand, has a broader mandate and its language more closely aligns with the WHO Guidelines on Sanitation and Health and the Sustainable Development Goals agenda. It aims to ensure adequate, affordable, safe, culturally acceptable, and technologically appropriate sanitation services. These two documents are meant to guide the provisions of the National Water, Sanitation and Solid Waste Management Policy, which has been submitted to the Parliament for approval.
Community led total sanitation: Enshrined in all these documents as well as all sanitation efforts Zambia has been the Community led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach which uses a variety of social tools to trigger communities to take action against open defecation. The process begins with identifying certain individuals as “community champions,” who are then trained to conduct “triggering” sessions. The government does not make direct investments in household toilets but instead creates demand for sanitation services. CLTS has been implemented at the district level in Zambia.[3] The protocol for CLTS has been standardized throughout the country, but the community champions have the discretionary authority to make minor adaptations based on local contexts.[4] CLTS has achieved significant success in Zambia, with a documented 15.9% increase in access to improved sanitation facilities and a 10.3% increase in villages that self-reported themselves to be open-defecation free.
Despite these strides, close to two-thirds of the population still lack access to basic sanitation services and 10% still practice open-defecation. Significant financial and resources constraints exist in expanding CLTS. Further, while CLTS can create some demand, it cannot guarantee sustenance of that demand and it is just one approach to tackle sanitation. As the sanitation sector evolves in Zambia, concerted efforts need to be made by the government to expand the scope of sanitation efforts beyond CLTS, to improve community participation in the implementation of on-site solutions and to induce long-term behavioral changes. The government already has all the key institutions in place to do just that and with the right reforms, the country can be well on its way to meet its SDG goals. The National Water, Sanitation and Solid Waste Management Policy is going to be a vital piece of the puzzle and it is in the best interest of the country to implement it as soon as possible.
[1] Government of the Republic of Zambia in National Urban and Peri-urban Sanitation Strategy 2015 – 2030. Ministry of Water Development, Sanitation and Environmental Protection (2015), 4.
[2] Government of the Republic of Zambia in Open Defecation Free Zambia Strategy 2018 – 2030. Ministry of Water Development, Sanitation and Environmental Protection (November 2018).
[3] Lawrence JJ, Yeboah-Antwi K, Biemba G, et al. “Beliefs, Behaviors, and Perceptions of Community-Led Total Sanitation and Their Relation to Improved Sanitation in Rural Zambia.” Am J Trop Med Hyg, 94(3):553-562 (2016).
[4] Morris-Iveson L, Siantumbu B. in Community Led Total Sanitation in Zambia: An Evaluation of Experiences and Approaches to Date. Ministry of Local Government, Housing, Early Education and Environmental Protection. (UNICEF Zambia, 2011).
COVER PHOTO CREDIT: Free use image from Canva Pro.