Household-Centred Environmental Sanitation

The large majority of the world population without access to adequate water, sanitation,
drainage and solid waste disposal services provides strong evidence that conventional
approaches to Environmental Sanitation are unable to make a significant dent in the service backlog which still exists in most of the developing world.The need to challenge conventional thinking in environmental sanitation is increasingly recognised even in industrialised countries. In February 2000, a group of experts from a wide range of international organisations involved in environmental sanitation met in Bellagio, Italy, and proposed some guiding principles as the underpinning basis for future planning and implementation of environmental sanitation services.These “Bellagio Principles” were subsequently endorsed by the members of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council during its 5th Global Forum in Iguaçu, Brazil in November 2000.

In search for an approach based on the Bellagio Principles and likely to reach the overall goal of “water and sanitation for all within a framework which balances the needs of people with those of the environment to support a healthy life on Earth”, the Environmental Sanitation Working Group of the WSSCC conceived the Household-Centred Environmental Sanitation (HCES) approach.The HCES approach is a radical departure from past central planning approaches as it places the household and its neighbourhood at the core of the planning process.The approach responds directly to needs and demands of the users but attempts to avoid problems resulting from purely “bottom-up” or “top-down” approaches. It offers the promise of overcoming the shortcomings of unsustainable planning and resource management practices of conventional approaches.

This Guideline for Decision-Makers has been developed to provide first guidance on how
to implement the Bellagio Principles by applying the HCES approach. Assistance is given to those willing to include and test this new approach in their urban environmental sanitation service programmes. Since practical experience with the HCES approach is lacking, this Guideline is neither comprehensive nor final, but will have to be developed further on the basis of extensive field experience. This document has been prepared in close collaboration between SANDEC, Kalbermatten Associates and the Secretariat of the WSSCC. Contributions by colleagues from IRC, GTZ, WEDC, and WSP as well as the support from the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research North-South (NCCR North-South) are gratefully acknowledged.