LETTERS...

John Kalbermatten, USA: Response to the interview with Uno Winblad (NL 3/00)

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One of the articles that caught my attention is your interview with Uno Winblad. I have known Uno for a long time, and admire his work. As the former Senior Adviser, Water and Wastes, of the World Bank during the 1970s and 1980s, how could I not know him. He is truly a "sanitation pioneer". Like many professionals, he and I have had disagreements, fortunately more on nuance than on substance.

For example, I do not consider composting toilets as a feasible solution in most situations in developing countries. They require more attention to operation than the user is capable of providing.

I therefore recommend that pathogen destruction be accomplished by sufficiently long detention time rather than composting, even though composting, when properly operated, can accomplish that task in much shorter times by elevated temperatures. The basic principle, on-site treatment and reuse, remains the same.

I am concerned, however, about some inaccuracies in your interview. I hope you will find some background information useful for future reference. There was no World Bank Water Decade. There was an International Water Supply and Sanitation Decade, promulgated by the United Nations.

UNDP was the lead agency designated by the UN. I was a member of a Steering Committee composed of representatives of UN organisations, which was then headed by the Deputy Administrator of UNDP. Later the Steering Committee was transformed into a collaborative body in which bilateral agencies participated, and later still participating organisations created the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, which continues to promote the expansion of services to all those people without service or only inadequately served.

Sorry, I am not really interested in the bureaucracy of international water supply and sanitation, but this is the very abbreviated history for the record. Today, there are additional organisations active in the field, and I sometimes have the impression that every other day brings news of a new Internet site or discussion group on water issues.

Much more important is what appears to be a misconception about the TAG functions and policies. Let me try to summarize that as well: Like Uno, I realized in the seventies that traditional approaches to water supply and sanitation, often massively financed by the World Bank, were not sustainable by the target population in developing countries. In 1976, the World Bank permitted me to conduct research into more appropriate solutions, and we published the results beginning in 1978.

The publications emphasized that there was no single solution, and that technologies had to be selected to match socio-cultural and financial conditions, and in response to user demands. The publications contained algorithms designed to guide the selection process, designed by Prof. Dr. Duncan Mara, now teaching at Leeds University, who is without a doubt the most brilliant and innovative sanitary engineer I have had the pleasure to work with in the course of my career.

Over the years my associates and I have published extensively, always promoting the idea of selecting the best solutions for specific circumstances. I am not aware that any of my associates then or since have defined a unique African or Asian or even a European solution. Most of my former colleagues agree with me that conventional waterborne excreta disposal is not a good solution, but that where we are forced to consider it, we must at least transform it into ecological sanitation through conservation and reuse.

Most recently, under the leadership of Roland Schertenleib, a group of "devotees" have developed the Household Centered Environmental Sanitation Approach. HCES emphasizes household and community participation, water conservation, waste minimization and reuse. Environmental Sanitation deals not only with excreta but includes municipal waste and rainwater management, recognizing that improving sanitation requires the management of all three sub-sectors.

The World Bank may well have had the greatest visibility during the Decade, and if that was a negative, I certainly have to share responsibility for it. I do believe, however, that that visibility had significant impact in bringing about important changes in how sanitation is perceived and managed today.

Not only did the World Bank financially assist the implementation of appropriate technologies: more importantly, it provided legitimacy for eco-sanitation in the broadest sense. Even the World Bank sanitary engineers stopped calling me potty-engineer towards the end of the Decade. I like to think it was in recognition of the appropriateness of on-site sanitation.

I have asked my partner and former manager of TAG to review Uno's comments about Africa and attach his note for your information.

Mit freundlichen Gruessen

John Kalbermatten

Richard Middleton: Response to the interview with Uno Winblad (NL 3/00)

Having said that, as the original manager of TAG, to which Uno refers quite a lot, I should like to add a few clarifications on matters that Uno may not be fully aware of.

• When TAG was founded (in 1978, prior to the Decade) it was on a shoestring budget: 18 months’ seed money from UNDP to cover me, a secretary, some consultants, and some travel money. TAG had to go out and look for funds from bilateral and other donors to support itself. The idea that it always had "big money” and so could dominate the aid sector was never right. In fact, as a global UNDP project it had a major struggle to influence even the traditional urban sewerage projects in the World Bank, because it was not part of the Bank’s regional structure. The fact that we attracted so much support and staff from many bilaterals, and finally were operating in up to twenty countries at a time, suggests that we must have been doing something right!
• TAG’s mandate was to assist in developing projects that would have a significant impact on service provision (at the insistence of the Indian government, the "pilot project” there covered 110 towns with populations over 100,000). That meant that it had to promote technologies which had a good chance of being accepted, and of working properly. It is true that in Asia this meant the pour-flush toilet and in Africa the VIP - but these were technologies that built on local practice and stood a good chance of success with both the users and the politicians. Elsewhere we promoted other ideas that seemed likely to succeed - the most successful being condominial sewerage in Latin America.
• Uno may be unaware of the science and serious engineering involved: we made major efforts to introduce improvements over existing technologies. For example, for what became the Indian Standard for pour-flush pans we were working with DREG in UK to evaluate flushing hydraulics, the Swedish Institute for Building Research to develop 1-liter cistern flushes, and the Brazilians to make and test pan models! We were even trying to work with Indian researchers to use radioactive isotopes to track pollution from toilets, but it wasn’t successful. In Africa, we had a research grant from the British government to investigate the ventilation system on VIPs, which led to design refinements, simplifications, and cost savings.
• I think it unfair to portray TAG as hostile to ecological sanitation - this is a view that benefits from hindsight! I was not aware that one of the TAG staff had recommended against publishing the second edition of "Sanitation without Water” - if anyone did, it was in a private capacity, not as a formal TAG position. However, I suspect that if I had been consulted I would have agreed. We were of course well aware of Uno’s work in Tanzania, but at that time (and, I suspect, since) there was no evidence that composting latrines had any future as a mass solution in Africa, and our government partners had no interest in TAG helping to promote this technology. We were trying to deal with an "urbanization explosion” there, and it seemed that composting could only be made to work, even on a small scale, with enormous amounts of "software” - promotion and guidance from Uno and his colleagues - which clearly could not easily be replicated on a national scale. Even then, in what Uno calls a "faecophobic culture”, its long-term sustainability seemed questionable. Remember, this was in 1978; attitudes may have changed for the better since then.
• The situation would have been quite different if we had been able to work in countries with a traditional of excreta reuse, such as Vietnam and China. There we would undoubtedly have been promoting ecological sanitation and resource recovery (probably using Uno as a consultant!). However, while I should have loved to work in both countries, we could never get them to express any interest in participating, or get donor support for TAG to explore opportunities there.

Of course, all this happened over 20 years ago. I hope that the Berlin conference is a sign that at last the broader international community is willing to talk seriously about new ideas and alternatives to conventional sewers. Following the Bellagio meeting on HCES, and the presentation by one of Uno’s Chinese collaborators, I am optimistic that ecological sanitation will have an important role to play in our future work.

Uno Winblad: Rejoinder

I also agree with John's recommendations in his 1978 World Bank report: that there is no single solution and that technologies have to be selected on the basis of socio-cultural and financial conditions. (But add nature conditions: climate, soil, groundwater level, floods, availability of water ....)

This open attitude did unfortunately not permeate the Decade, as exemplified in the interview. Richard proves my point: He would have agreed to preventing the publication of the 1985 edition of "Sanitation without Water" if given a chance!

I am happy to hear from John that most of his former colleagues agree that "conventional waterborne excreta disposal is not a good solution" and from Richard that he admits that "ecological sanitation will have an important role to play in our future work".

Uno