IRC: Enhancing Livelihoods through Sanitation

Despite the importance of safe sanitation to health improvements, poverty alleviation and environmental protection, sanitation still has a low profile when compared to water supply. Sanitation is highly deficient in most poor regions of the world, and needs to be put on the agenda in a more challenging manner. It is significant, in this connection, to note that drinking water has had a far higher profile for many years, even though sustained access to clean water and sanitation are closely linked at institutional, policy and implementation levels.

This Thematic Overview Paper goes into the importance of safe sanitation for the livelihoods of poor families. It addresses what poor sanitation means for their resources, including their income and expenditure in cash and kind, and for the environments in which they live and work. While the focus is on the effects of sanitation on the livelihoods of the poor, this TOP also addresses how the livelihoods of the poor affect their potential to improve sanitation.

The paper is available to download from Reliefweb.

An earlier paper, published in June 2007, looks at the historical perspective and addresses different 'types' of sanitation, such as basic sanitation, environmental sanitation, and ecological sanitation. It goes on to explain the elements of a sanitation system and the different stakeholders involved. Approaches to technology choice are discussed and the TOP concludes with a number of relevant books, articles and papers, websites and contacts.