Drinking water supply and sanitation services on the threshold of the XXI century
financial sustainability of the sector. In the large cities in the region, the amount of the initial delivery of water to the distribution network that is not accounted for as billed to users is estimated at 42%, or even higher (for example, between 40% and 75% in Venezuela) (WHO/UNICEF, 2000; Gonz谩lez, 2000). In many cases, the high levels of unaccounted for water are the result of poor commercial management, and are not exclusively due to the high percentage of losses caused by physical leaks in distribution systems. The proportion of the population covered by adequate systems of monitoring and control of drinking water quality is very low in urban areas and insignificant in rural areas: only 24% of the urban population in the region is covered by effective systems for monitoring drinking water quality (PAHO, 2001b). It is estimated that 94% of drinking water in the large cities of the region is effectively disinfected, but almost 18% of the samples violate national standards for microbiological, chemical, physical and organoleptic properties (WHO/UNICEF, 2000). As a result of the cholera epidemic in 1991 (see Box 1),4 the monitoring of drinking water quality and its disinfection has increased in most countries, and efforts are being made to achieve 100% disinfection in the region (PAHO, 2001a).
4.
The Millennium Development Goals
At the Millennium Summit of the United Nations (September 2000), it was agreed to halve by 2015 the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water. At the World Summit on Sustainable Development (26 August to 4 September 2002) this commitment was reaffirmed, and an additional goal was added to the latter: to halve, by the same year, the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation. According to the preliminary estimates of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) (2003), in order to comply with the goal of halving the proportion of people without drinking water supply services, access would have to be provided to over 121 million persons. This would require investments for a total of 16.5 billion dollars, or 1.1 billion per year between 2000 and 2015.5 Of this amount, 93% is investments in the urban sector and 7% in the rural sector. As for sanitation services, access would need to be provided for almost 140 million persons in order to achieve the Millennium Goals (IADB, 2003). This would require a total investment of 22.0 billion dollars between 2000 and 2015, or 1.5 billion per year. Of this investment, 95% would be destined to providing improved sanitation services to the urban population and the remaining 5% to the rural population. A comparison of these estimates with the investments made by the countries of the region in the 1990s (see Table 5) suggests that achieving the Millennium Development Goals should not be an insuperable challenge for the region. There are, however, significant disparities between countries within the region. In terms of investment needs as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP), the countries which will have to make the greatest efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals are Nicaragua, Haiti, Paraguay, Honduras, Santa Lucia, Bolivia, Guatemala, Guyana, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Colombia. It seems that some of them will not 4
5
16
The onset and spread of the cholera epidemic of 1991 are closely related to the deterioration in drinking water supply, sanitation and health services brought by the economic crisis of the 1980s (Brandling-Bennett, Libel and Migli贸nico, 1994). The epidemic caused serious losses in tourism, agriculture, fishing and the external trade of countries in the region (see page 23). It should be noted that these estimates refer only to net investment, that is, they refer only to the construction of new systems and expansion of existing ones in order to expand coverage to the levels set out in the Millennium Development Goals. Consequently, the investments needed to comply with the specified targets are underestimated, as they ignore the investments needed to repair, rehabilitate and maintain in good condition the existing infrastructure, so that those persons who currently have access to services do not lose them or experience a serious deterioration in their quality.