Economic Effects of Sustainable Sanitation - SuSanA

Sustainable sanitation
in the chamber below and leads to a prolonged treatment period of urine since being cross-
contaminated with faeces (Esrey et al. 1998, pp. 34-35 and 39-40).
a) b) c)
Figure 9: Source separating toilets. Picture a) shows a urine diverting dry squatting pan (Uganda), b) a
western style urine diversion dehydration toilet (UDDT) (Mexico) and c) a sketch of a UDDT (own
photographs and Esrey et al. 2001).
3.2 Effects of sustainable sanitation
A confined number of negative effects regarding deficient sanitation have been presented in
the chapters 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4 by discussing the problem of slum sanitation in the context
of rapidly growing informal settlements, the situation of undernourishment or public health
and their relationships to sanitation and the global status quo regarding sanitation itself. The
present chapter will turn the tables and bring to light the positive effects of sustainable
sanitation and create a comprehensive picture of the benefits that could be achieved by its
implementation. Since being of special interest in this thesis, the economic dimension of the
effects will be particularly focused and values will be expressed in monetary terms, where
applicable and obtainable.
Before going into detail, there is one issue that has to be kept in mind: Measuring the effects
of sanitation is a complex assignment. It is impossible to attribute e.g. mortality due to
diarrhoeal diseases to sanitation alone. Rosemarin et al. (2008, p. 9) and Moe and Rheingans
(2006, p. 47) for instance, describe sanitation, water and hygiene as issues, that are strongly
interrelated and ―irrevocably intertwined‖, influencing each other in many different ways.
Hence, isolating particular issues does not reveal reasonable results. As a solution to this
problem aggregated risk factors 25 instead of single diseases have been compiled. All further
considerations will be based on this type of aggregation.
Table 2 (p. 24) presents an overview of the positive effects of sustainable sanitation and their
economic dimensions, if existing. There are various effect categories such as health, socio-
economic, social, gender and political.
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