The Sanitation Challenge: What Does it Mean for Business?

Geneva, 21 January 2008 - If you think healthy populations are good for business, then you should be pleased to notice signs that the world is starting to think about sanitation. One of those signs is that 2008 has been designated the International Year of Sanitation and, if all goes well, sanitation will finally start to get the attention and resources that the sector desperately needs.

Poor sanitation is one of three major factors contributing to water-related death and disease. The other two are lack of access to safe drinking water and inadequate hygiene. The three factors are inseparable; if just one is neglected, then it becomes very difficult to control water-related sickness.

Relatively speaking, sanitation and hygiene have been neglected in much of the world. Only about half of the population in developing countries has access to improved sanitation facilities, compared to close to 100% for developed countries. The least developed countries average about 36%, according to a 2007 World Health Organization and UNICEF report. Altogether, some 2.6 billion people, or 40% of the world’s population, do not have decent sanitation.

As a result, in 2002, “around 1.7 million deaths were attributable to unsafe WSH [water, sanitation and hygiene], among which 90% were children under five years old. Indeed, unsafe WSH is the world’s biggest child killer after malnutrition,” according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

To help put these numbers in perspective, that is the equivalent of 10 Boeing 747 crashes per day, every day of the year, with no survivors and most of the seats filled with children. For the same year, tuberculosis and malaria are estimated to have caused 1.6 and 1.3 million deaths, respectively.

But the mortality statistics show only the tip of the iceberg. Many economic costs arise from poor sanitation and hygiene, ranging from direct healthcare costs to lost school and work days for the ill and their caregivers, losses in worker productivity and time spent gaining access to sanitary facilities.

The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for water supply and sanitation is to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. It is interesting to compare the estimated benefits associated with achieving both of these targets to those of achieving the water supply target alone. Total economic benefits increase by a factor of nearly five when improved sanitation is provided in addition to improved water supply.

People in wealthy countries take good sanitation facilities for granted. The global challenge now is to extend that privilege to everybody else in the world. But while the world is still on track for meeting the MDG drinking water target, if current trends continue it will miss the sanitation target by more than half a billion people, according to UN estimates.

A small number of WBCSD member companies are active in the sanitation sector as providers of enabling technology, equipment, products and services, but the role of the broader business community is not so obvious. The scale of the sanitation problem is big enough, however, that it is worth taking a close look at the question.

To what extent do populations lacking basic sanitation overlap with the markets, operations and supply chains of WBCSD member companies? What is the impact of water-related disease on companies’ activities? How should the global business community respond to the challenge of improving global sanitation? How can businesses at all levels work effectively with governments and civil society to achieve progress in sanitation?

WBCSD members do not have a collective response to these questions today, which is why the Water Project has decided to launch a Sanitation workstream. One of the first steps will be to gain a clearer picture of where companies may be affected by sanitation issues. To do this, the group is encouraging companies to use the Global Water Tool to map their activities in relation to areas that are underserved in sanitation.

A second major component will be to seek examples of business action for improved sanitation and hygiene. This will involve gathering and sharing information on the experience of individual companies, including, for example, employee education programs or participation in community-based projects to improve sanitation and hygiene.

As it has done in the past in its work on water, the Water Working Group intends to bring its members’ experience and perspectives to the global dialogue on sanitation and to make an active and positive contribution to the International Year of Sanitation.

Author WBCSD Publication Date 21 Jan 2008 Document Type WBCSD news Issue/Topic Business Role/CSR Development Water Source WBCSD Include In RSS Business & Development News