ONE UN - Sanitation as a Foundation for Safe and Resilient Housing Lessons from Low-Income Cities in Asia-Pacific (WUF13)

All right.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Welcome to this one UN event at the 13th World Urban Forum titled Sanitation as a Foundation for Safe, resilient Housing, Lessons from low income cities in Asia and the Pacific.
My name is Sanjivani Singh.
I'm an Economic Affairs Officer with the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, and it is my pleasure to be here with you all today and to moderate this session.
This session is organized by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, together with the Global Water Operators Partnership Alliance of United Nations Human Settlements Program, Habitat for Humanity International, the United Nations Children's Fund, and Citywide Inclusive Sanitation Alliance, Napal.
It also supports the engagement of stakeholders for the implementation of the Development Account 17 project on sanitation services for low income communities in South and Southeast Asia implemented jointly by UN Habitat in collaboration with SCAP, as well as with government of Lao PDR, Nepal, and other national and local stakeholders, and this project will run for the next three years.
The theme of the World Urban Forum, the 13th World Urban Forum is housing the world, safe and resilient cities and communities.
This reminds us that housing cannot be understood only as shelter and really safe and adequate housing depends on the systems that make homes livable.
This includes sanitation, water, drainage, energy, health services, and climate resilient urban planning.
Often sanitation is treated as a technical service, and today we want to position it differently as a foundation of housing safety, public health, dignity, climate resilience, and inclusive urban development.
Sanitation systems fail, public health risks increase, women and girls face greater insecurity and care burdens and low income communities are pushed further into vulnerability.
Our discussion will focus on practical solutions, and we will look at how cities and partners can strengthen climate resilient sanitation, build the capacity of service providers, improve regulation and governance, and connect sanitation more directly with housing, slum upgrading, climate finance, and urban resilience strategies.
So moving on to our opening remarks.
To begin, it is my honor to invite our first opening speaker, His Excellency, Mr.
Death Saambg, Vice Minister of Public Works and Transport for Lao PDR.
Lao PDR is also one of the partner countries under the Development 17 Account Project, and its perspective is central to understanding how sanitation can advance as part of a broader urban development, housing and resilience priorities.
Your Excellency, I invite you to the floor.
Excellency, distinct, delegation, colleague from the United Nations System Development partner.
Li, our local authority, Academy, civil society.
Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of P P and Transport, this is my pleasure to welcome you today.
I would like to thank CAP to habitat, USP habitat for Humility International, GWOPA Sweep, S Nepal, and all our partner for joining this important discussion.
This year term housing, diver safe and lieran cities and communities speak to what many of us see every day fast urban growth, climate change, and gap in basic infrastructure are making life harder for our people, especially vulnerable and low income community.
It all PR, we see sanitation as much more than basic service.
It's protect people health, our development, and dignity of our communities is also how city stand up for flag at climate risk and make housing safer to live in.
When sanitation is poor, not everyone suffer inquiry, movement, children, older people, and person who disabilities are usually most effect.
That is why we sanitation is also about fairness, inclusion, and protecting those who need is more The government of La PDR is working closely with our development partners and N to make our city stronger, improve water and sanitation service, and plan our urban area better.
We are especially grateful for development ACA project on sanitation for low income urban communities in South and Southeast Asia.
It is helping us build our skill, share idea across countries and find solution that work in Chang King.
Today, we have policymaker, expert, partner and city leader all in the room.
Ready to share what worked and what we can learn from each other.
I hope our discussion will lead to stronger partnership and real action that help us move faster forward.
Sustainable development goal, especially SDG six and SDG 11.
Finally, let me reaffirm LaR commitment to working with all of you to build city that are inclusive, resilient, and sustainable for everyone.
I wish all participant productive and successful discussion.
Thank you.
Thank you, Your Excellency, for those important reflections and for highlighting the role of sanitation in safe, inclusive, and resilient urban development.
I now invite Mr.
Navaj Parkour, Joint Secretary of Ministry of Urban Development, Nepal to share Nepal's perspective.
Nepal is also a partner country under the Development 17 Project and the work in Nepal offers valuable lessons for strengthening policy, regulation, and service delivery for low income urban communities.
Mr.
Paya Curl, the floor is yours.
Thank you, ma'am.
Excellent seats, Vice Minister, Ministry of Public Works and Transport Law, respected representatives, various organizations, development partners, our long standing partners.
It is great privilege to be part of this important discussion on Santis and I Foundation for safe and resilient housing, particularly in the context of low income cities across the AI and Pacific region, I would like to begin with a simple but critical proposition.
There is no safe housing without safe sanitation.
As we reflect on the theme of the old program 13, housing the old safe and resilient cities and communities.
I would like to stress that Sensation must be recognized not as a sustainable standalone service, but as a core urban system, fundamental to the safety, functionality, and resilience of cities.
As we gather here to discuss sustainable urban planning, inclusive service delivery, environmental protection and climate resilience, Sensation is a central to achieving this vision.
In many cities across the region, particularly in low income and rapidly urbanizing contexts, sanitation remains one of the most overlooked eight fundamental determinants of housing safety.
Homes are being built, communities are expanding, but san system often lag fragmented, under resourced, and entirely absent.
For example, Nepal, the transition from basic access to safely managed nis and services remains a critical structural challenges With only about 11% of the total households are connected to sew networks and an overwhelming majority, approximately 89% of the population relies on on site sanitation systems, it only a limited number of municipalities have established functional pickle slush management system.
And this is the reality of the region at large.
We have taken major policy and regularity reforms and strengthened national data portal with sanitation indicators in recent years to establish sanitation as a major service delivery of the government measure not only through quantity, but also quality and safety.
I would like to thank Global Water Operators Partnership Alliance and UN Habitat partners for selecting Nepal for continued partnership through various initiatives.
A citywide inclusive sanitation approach provides a framework to achieve this by ensuring that everyone everywhere in the city has access to safely managed sanitation services.
Homes are not safe when sanitation systems fail.
Poorly managed wastewater and pickle slots undermine the very foundations of housing impacting public iron, environmental health.
In dense iron rapidly urbanizing contexts, these s are amplified.
Disproportionately affecting low income and informal settlements where service gaps are greatest and particularly the vulnerable groups as women children, persons with disability, elderly, more minorities and others, scientist protects not just individual households but entire communities.
From lesson across Asia Pacific region, we see that progress is possible when first is the sanitation is integrated into urban planning and housing policies, not treated as afterthought.
Second one is municipal governments are empowered to lead, coordinate, and deliver services.
Third one is partnerships are strengthened bringing together governments, development partners, communities, and the private sector.
And importantly, when we prioritize equity, ensuring that the poorest and the poor most vulnerable are not left behind from the services.
Sanitation is not just about infrastructure slowly, but it is about systems governance and inclusion.
Sanitation is therefore not just about toilets or waste management.
It is about protecting human dignity, sustaining urban systems, and enabling resilient communities.
Pening sanitation within urban development means embedding it into housing policy, infrastructure planning, service delivery and climate strategies, ensuring that systems are inclusive, citywide, and resilient to house the old sustainability and sanitation must be elevated as foundational pillar of urban resilience and community well being.
As we engage in this panel discussion today, I hope we can collectively reflect on how we can elevate sanitation to its rightful place as a foundation for safe housing and resilient cities and how we can translate lesson from our region into scalable sustainable action because untimely, if we are serious about building safe and resilient cities, we must start where it matters most with systems that protect human dignity, health, and the environment people call home.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Paya Curl, for sharing Nepal's experience and for underlining the importance of institutional capacity, regulation, inclusive systems, and city level implementation.
We now move to the next session, which is the scene setting presentation.
We will now move to a scene setting presentation, which will provide the conceptual and technical foundation for the panel discussion.
And it is my pleasure to invite Mr.
Hezekil Pere Water and Sanitation team lead at UN Habitat to present on climate resilient sanitation in urban planning and housing.
Over to you, Hezekil.
Thank you very much.
Moderator, Vice Minister, joint secretary, distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.
Following our Monday experience with blessings of rain here in Baku, we now appreciate the urgent need to discuss the issues around resilience, particularly in areas of sanitation systems and how they can work.
Particularly in the context of climate change and increased vulnerability, not just of infrastructure, but service provision of these essential services.
So please, if you can put up my presentation.
Thank you very much.
The next.
Let's start with the reality of urbanization in a number of our cities in the global South.
Cities are expanding rapidly and often they are beyond the reach of planning systems.
A large share of this growth is in informal settlements, areas that are unserved and highly exposed to climate risks.
At the same time, the floods, for example, that we experienced here, are becoming more frequent in our cities, droughts are becoming more prolonged and heat is becoming more intense.
So in this context, sanitation systems are the first often to fail.
So we have immediate consequences of public health, housing safety, and loss of dignity in situations of this nature.
Next.
So what is climate resilient sanitation? UN habitat and a number of partners belong to this climate resilient Sanitation Coalition for action.
And the idea behind this coalition, one, is to provide evidence of the impact of climate change on sanitation, how climate change is impacting sanitation, and the contribution of poor sanitation to climate change.
And one of the areas where we have made good progress is to define what climate resilient sanitation means.
But in simple words, it means systems that can work under pressure of climate change.
Ensuring that the entire service chain is anticipating climate risks, is reducing vulnerability, and also strengthening the adaptive capacity at every level to ensure that both seaward and non seaward sanitations can remain functional in such conditions.
This is not just about infrastructure.
It's also about systems, it's about governance, and even more importantly, it's about building with resilience in mind.
Next.
So these are some of the key hazards that impact on sanitation, and we can relate to a number of them in our cities next.
When they happen, they impact directly on sanitation.
You know the impact of floods on the sanitation infrastructure.
We know the impact of droughts in water based sanitation systems, and we also know that housing becomes unhabitable in situations where there's failed sanitation system next.
So how do we frame sanitation within the framework of urban planning and housing? This is a very important discussion for this conference.
And I feel that many of the participants discussing housing may feel that sanitation experts in this conference are outsiders.
In fact, if you listen to a number of the ministerial statements that were made on Monday, and the discussions around adequate housing, sanitation actually becomes a very important element, even within the definition of adequate housing itself.
So we look at sanitation as a foundation of adequate housing, and we're not talking about housing just about walls and roofs.
It's also about how people can safely live with dignity and also with health.
And therefore, sanitation protects against disease.
It maintains habitability of housing, particularly habitability during climate shocks and also underpins the safety of the built environment.
Without sanitation, housing investments are fundamentally undermined.
Next.
Why does sanitation matter for housing outcomes? Unsafe sanitation continues to drive disease outbreaks, particularly in slums and informal settlements.
Poor sanitation contributes enormously to environmental degradation and also disproportionately affects or impacts on women and children.
In informal settlements, for example, these risks are magnified.
When we talk about adequate sanitation, we must also explicitly include safely managed sanitation as a core condition of adequate housing.
Next.
What is the planning gap and how can we reduce the silo between sanitation and housing? So today, we face a very significant disconnect between two issues that are intricately linked.
Sanitation is planned separately from housing.
In a number of our countries, the Ministry of Urban Development and housing is often separated from the Ministry of Water and sanitation and sometimes even in situations where departments of sanitation work together with housing tax precedent over sanitation.
So how do we ensure, for example, that we plan for housing with sanitation in mind, ensuring that our climate plans do not overlook sanitation and that our institutions also do not operate in silos.
So the result that we realize in a number of our countries is fragmented investments in housing and sanitation that fail under climate stress.
This is not a technical problem, actually, it is a governance challenge.
Next.
So the way forward really is about integration.
How do we embed sanitation in our housing codes? Our building codes, whatever you call it in your country.
When you talk about housing codes, does it include an element of sanitation as a necessary condition for housing? How do we align land use, drainage systems, and transport systems with sanitation systems? You know that when you talk about seaward systems, seaward systems require pipes for connection.
If you're talking about roads, if you're talking about drainage, you also need to plan systematically with sanitation in mind.
How do we ensure that climate risk assessments are integrated in our urban planning decisions? How do we prioritize services in informal areas and high risk areas? This is what citywide inclusive sanitation looks like in practice.
Next.
But I want to discuss something that I feel is very important that climate resilient sanitation is not just about a service.
It's a transformative urban investment.
It is providing core benefits in a number of areas.
We're talking about public health gains, we are talking about water security.
We're talking about renewable energy.
We're talking about education outcomes, employment for the youth, reducing emissions itself.
So we want to talk about sanitation as a driver of climate response and also a development co benefit.
This means that we're not looking at sanitation as just a cost investment, but a strategic urban investment.
Next, and I'm almost concluding, yes.
So this is the second last slide.
So what are the policy and investment implications for embedding sanitation in urban planning and housing? So to scale impact, there are three shifts that I want to suggest today.
One is that we need to embed sanitation in housing, urban, and climate frameworks.
Second is that we need to move from commitments to bankable investments.
And third, I want to suggest that we align these technical solutions in sanitation with our institutions, with our finance, and with our governance.
Without this alignment, we will not achieve scale.
Lastly, the last slide.
What are the issues that may shape a discussion in this event? I want to suggest three areas.
One is that housing, water sanitation are inseparable.
Cities and local governments are the delivery engines of these important services and integration must move from concept to implementation.
This is an opportunity to mobilize political leadership in support of sanitation.
Yes, political leadership is critical when you talk about sanitation.
We must strengthen system wide coherence that links sanitation directly to urban planning and housing.
We must scale our solutions that reach those left behind.
Let me conclude with one thing.
If we get sanitation right, we will unlock resilient housing.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Hezekiah, for setting the scene so clearly and outlining why climate resilient sanitation is not only a service delivery issue, but a core part of safe housing, urban resilience and systems, and climate responsive planning.
And I think you also highlighted the importance of the means of implementation, including governance and finance.
I think this was echoed by the previous speakers as well.
So thank you very much.
We now transition to our panel, and we have a great lineup of expert speakers and I'd like to invite the speakers to join me on the stage.
If the speakers could move to the stage, that'd be great.
Thank you.
The purpose of this panel is to move from problem statement to practical pathways.
We want to understand what is working and where the main barriers remain and how sanitation can be integrated into housing, informal settlement upgrading, climate adaptation, and urban investment frameworks.
I will first invite each panelist to make short opening reflections of about three to 4 minutes.
After that, we'll move into a moderated exchange, followed by questions by the audience.
I'll kindly ask the speakers to stay within the time.
I think we're currently running a little bit behind schedule, but I think we can catch up.
Um, so that we can leave some time for the audience to ask any questions.
So moving on, I am pleased to introduce our panelists.
I will start first with Mr.
Norio Saito, Director of Water and Urban Development Sector, Office of the Asian Development Bank.
Doctor Saito will bring a regional development finance and infrastructure perspective, including how water and sanitation investments can be climate proofed and scaled.
Doctor Saito, may I invite you to share your opening reflections? Sure.
Thank you very much for that introduction and thank you for having me here in this important session.
Yeah, let me begin by sharing some of the key findings of ADBs Asia Water Development Outlook, which we published in December 2025.
So in a nutshell, this report shows two contrasting realities.
On one hand, 2.7 billion people, about 60% of the population in Asia and the Pacific have been lifted out of extreme water insecurity in just over 12 years.
This is a massive monumental achievement.
But on the other hand, these hard won gains are now at risk of reversal due to infrastructure large shortfall infrastructure investments and environmental degradation and increased climate hazards.
And today we heard inspiring speeches from the representative of Lao PDR and the government of Nepal.
And actually, these two countries are among the top improvers improves in terms of water security.
They have improved a lot on rural household water security and urban water security.
Like in the case of Nepal, over the past 12 years, open deification has been almost been, um, been able to be really moved, 35%, now it's less than 1%.
This is really also thanks to the strong political will of the governments and really the financing, really addressing the key challenges on water security.
Another point I want to share is is the importance of sanitation and the housing.
Probably in this audience, I don't need to repeat again that affordable housing does not really make any meaning without improved safely managed sanitation.
ADB just announced or published affordable housing programmatic approach yesterday.
Now you can Google and find it in our website.
This need of embedding infrastructure and basic services in affordable housing is a cross cutting design principle in this working paper, that's operational approach.
One of the examples that we use is Pakistan emergency response.
You know, Pakistan suffered from a devastating floods in 2022.
In Sindh province, AB provided 400 million of housing, sorry, the loan to really support reconstruction of housing in particularly ind households.
But of course, housing is not sufficient without good water and sanitation services.
So in this loan, the emergency loan, we also included this wash aspects, water sanitation, and also a behavior change and support for the better services to really make sure that the housing rig that is going to be reconstructed comes with better water and sanitation services.
And this loan is going to support 250,000 households reconstruction of housing in sind products in Pakistan.
So this is the one, I think good example that shows that housing also needs to come with better water and sanitation services.
I think I can pause here for this initial introduction.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr.
Santo, for your remarks and for sharing ADB's excellent work in the region.
I will now invite Mr.
Prashanta Mohapatra, Engineer in Chief Orissa, Water and Water Supply and Sewage Board to share his experiences over to you.
Thank you very much for having me here.
We all know housing is very important and at the same time, sanitation is also equally important.
I will present the case study of Odissa what do we have done integrating sanitation into the housing.
In fact, in Odissa, one in four person live in slums in informal settlements.
So the government of Odissa in the Housing and Urban Development Department have already executed a policy that is called ga mission for the upgradation of the informal settlements or the slums.
So what has been done here for the first time in the country or in the whole world, we are given land rights to the informal settlements.
So without, without a secured land tenure, you cannot build your own house.
So we have around 4.2, like households or 0.42 million households, those who are lacking this land tenure, and they have all been provided with this land tenure certificate.
Now, there is a housing policy on which The individuals or these households, they gave, you know, fund from the government for building their own houses.
Now, the slums are developed as a livable habitat, and when they are redeveloped as a livable habitat, so the infrastructure that is necessary is again provided by the municipality.
Now this infrastructure includes the road, the street lights, water supply, drainage, toilets, waste management, all kinds of services are integrated into the slum development, then that becomes a livable habitat.
Now once the slum is developed, then there is a delisting program.
So we have so far out of 2,900 slum settlements in the whole of Odissa state, more than 1,000 such settlements have been delisted, which means that they have been already redeveloped.
And these people, these slum household, they get loan And there is also a change in the municipal Act in which 25% of the municipal budget is earmarked for slum development, which means that you have 100 million rupees or dollar or something, so 25% will straight go into that budget.
And in that slum particular slum, there is they develop a slum dwellers association.
So the slum dweller association will manage the fund.
For the operation and maintenance of the infrast that is already built, so they will be responsible for generating revenues and also operating the system.
So I think I'll stop here.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Mohapatra for your remarks.
I think what stood out to me is really the integrated approach that your government is taking towards slum upgrading and also taking an inclusive approach towards ensuring that the budget is then also addressed to support that.
Thank you so much.
I will now move on to our next speaker and I'd like to invite Mr.
Chris Comerci, Senior Advisor, Water and Environment UNICEF, to provide your opening remarks over to you, Chris.
Hi.
Thanks.
I'm Chris.
I'm UNICEF.
From our perspective, we always look at the most vulnerable community, the most vulnerable aspect of an urban settlement and What I want to talk about a little bit is how do we work with the private sector and the bottlenecks to making accessible and affordable sanitation available? It depends on the area, of course, but in the specific city and you have to do an assessment.
But typically, there are three key bottlenecks that we think about as UNICEF bottleneck to accessible sanitation at the household level for an urban poor family.
The first issue we talk about is markets.
We talk about product development, but also service development.
We have examples, for example, in Indonesia where we looked at different products.
With the private sector saying, yes, this typical septic tank works in a high income family.
But when you shrink your plot size down to something so small, that's no longer suitable.
It's too expensive, first of all, but also there's not enough land for it.
So UNICEF works with the private sector on developing products and then also services.
A lot of it is septic based, like we know, sanitation in the paperic urban areas.
So when a family has to call a one off emptying of a sludge from their septic tank, it's quite expensive.
But if we can organize it and have scheduled suction pumps coming every month, then that cost is shared across the community and that barrier of cost of emptying is no longer as high a barrier as it was before.
So that's the first thing that we like to talk about.
The second one is that sometimes with the private sector, there's a sense that there's no demand.
They're used to a certain market.
They're used to, let's say a modern toilet being sold at a shop and so on, and they don't see that there is actually a market in the urban slums and in the underdeveloped areas.
So there we have to work with not only the private sector to encourage them that there is a market there to explain the market and help them do some sort of business plan to reach that market, but we also have to stimulate the demand.
Demand exists, but sometimes you need a little bit of momentum.
There's different ways to do that, but we typically use something called SBC, which is social and behavioral communication to encourage families that yes, your house is not a house without sanitation.
We heard that earlier today.
I think this is so obvious.
We need to keep repeating it.
But that creates the demand and it can be from someone like UNICEF, but it's also through the civil society and frankly, it has to be through the government to.
We have to build momentum for these types of things through government.
At the national level, but then also at the municipality level and that stimulates the demand and encourages the investment of businesses.
Then the third and final bottleneck that we pretty much see consistently is a financial bottleneck.
We see financial bottlenecks at the household level, but also at the private sector level.
Private sector, for example, may not have money to invest in a sewage truck.
Might not have a simple money to invest in a form for a concrete slab and so on.
Then at the household level, of course, there's that barrier, the cost up front.
How can we prorate that cost over several months or even over years in some cases? That barrier has to be addressed.
There's different ways we address that in different contexts.
But certainly those three issues, if we attack those three and then whatever comes up from your analysis of that particular community, other bottlenecks, then we have seen good results and we do see sanitation level increasing.
We also as a byproduct, which we talked about a little bit just a bit ago, Um, you also create jobs.
You also create employment opportunities for people in that community as well.
From our perspective, I just wanted to highlight that from UNICEF on how we work with communities on breaking down barriers to access sanitation.
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you so much, Chris, for those remarks.
I think you highlighted again the importance of inclusive approaches to sanitation, which is a core theme that we've heard over and over again.
And then also the importance of multi stakeholder engagement and especially the private sector.
So thank you for highlighting that.
We will now move to our next speaker.
I'd now like to invite Mr.
Mario Flores, who is the Director of International Field Operations, Housing and Disaster Resilience and Recovery at Habitat for Humanity International.
Over to you, Mario.
Thank you, Sanji.
I just wanted to make a lighter comment before I go into the topic.
I just found out that Habitat for Humanity, which is an international non governmental organization, along with UN habitat and also along with the habitat International Coalition are turning 50-years-old this year.
So it seems that you need to have habitat in your name to become 50-years-old today.
So yeah, we're arriving to the midlife crisis at the moment.
In terms of sanitation, habitat for humanity is an organization.
It's a housing organization, and we've been working in over 70 countries in the last few years.
And we understand adequate housing as a house that has an integral component, a solution for sanitation.
So we don't understand a house without a sanitation solution.
So for us, when we speak of resilient housing, we speak of housing that includes a proper and an adequate sanitation solution, not as an add on, but as an integral part of the design from the very beginning, from the planning processes.
And it has to be a solution that is informed by risk in order to make it resilience to climate and also to disaster events.
As was highlighted before, sanitation interventions should be included and integrated within broader housing and urban resilience strategies.
It cannot be something separate.
By integrating sanitation as a core service within housing programs, we can ensure that every house includes access to a toilet, safe drinking water supply, energy, and a functional hand washing station.
One reflection I wanted to make because we do a lot of work at the community level, is that sanitation approaches need to go beyond just the provision of the physical facilities or, you know, the physical structures.
Behavioral change strategies are a must if programs are to be deemed successful in achieving successful sanitation practices.
The example I want to bring up to you is a program that we have developed in India.
It's called sensitized to sanitize and it includes this approach by placing a strong emphasis on behavioral change.
So it brings together not only the physical structure, but also a full educational program that involves families, that involves women in particular, and also people with disabilities.
So it's a way to make sure that sanitation structures are properly used.
So Eorban resilience strategies, when we need to target the most vulnerable populations, this is of the essence because we need to ensure that access and usage of sanitation solutions are properly managed.
So it is important to highlight important to highlight integration of sanitation into wider settlement planning and implementation, and also to make sure that these are inclusive solutions for all people living in particularly informal settlements.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Mario, for those comments.
Again, I think highlighting the importance of inclusion and really integrating climate resilience into housing and planning and the approaches to addressing sanitation.
Now we move on to the next speaker.
Last but not least, I'd like to invite miss Yolande Gomez, who is the Senior Water operators Partnerships facilitator at Water Links.
Over to you, Yolanda.
Giving us the space to share our experience.
We are what links, and we are regional platform of OPA, and we have been working in this sector for more than ten years.
At the onset, Let me just indicate that most sanitation facilities across Asia and the Pacific are public run systems.
With this setup, a number of challenges are besetting these utilities, starting with financial weakness that has severe implications on their ability to deliver sanitation services.
You can imagine the host of challenges that they're experiencing, which I think impacts into the capacity building effort.
Tariffs are low.
We all know about that.
Investment is also low.
The technical and procedural know how are weak as there are no regular skills up training of staff owing to budgetary constraints.
Given this, I think as a facilitator of operators partnership program.
The gaps really lies in first, the limited behavioral awareness of how climate hazards interact with sanitation facilities.
We really need to understand that overflowing latrines brought about by flooding and in my part of the country, we always have these typhoons, about 26 of them at least per year.
So this needs really to be understood.
This is where capacity should be built.
Because we know that when latrines overflow due to the flooding, it leads to contamination of the drinking water and finally, it impacts the health issues.
The other thing I want to emphasize in relation to the capacity gaps is that there's an institutional and technical capacity shortage to manage systems.
We have to admit that.
I mean, the capacity is really lacking and the funds to support it, it's not that available.
Finally, tendency to work in silos of bodies and agencies involved in the delivery of sanitation services.
I think it's really high time for us to train our planners and people who are working in the sanitation sector to work together.
We have to remove the silos, otherwise, we will not be able really to move forward and reach our goal.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Yolanda, for those remarks.
I think you raised an important point around, you said behavior change, but it's also around, I think knowledge awareness is what you said to ensure that people are making that connection between increasing climate risks and linking that to both sanitation provision as well as sanitation management.
Thank you very much.
We've heard from all our panelists and I think we've heard some great opening remarks and I think let's give them all a round of applause.
Okay.
I'd like to go now a little bit deeper into the core issues of the session around climate resilience, institutional capacity, financing, regulation, and integration with housing and urban planning.
I think in your opening remarks, many of you have touched on these issues.
But to start, I'd like to go to doctor Sato and I'd like to ask you From ADP's experience, what are the most persistent institutional, financial and technical barriers to integrating sanitation into housing and urban planning frameworks and how have you seen them being overcome over? Thank you for this question.
I hope you can share the slide for this purpose.
Next one, yes.
Yeah, I'm pleased to say, but at the outset that the keynote presentation resonates very well with the point I want to stress here, probably I can make it a bit quicker.
In terms of institutional silos, often the sanitation, housing, other aspects of urban development are under different ministries or departments.
So this is creating institutional silos.
The suggested approach is to really bring sanitation upstream into integrated urban planning, both sanitation and the housing.
And of course, there are many different institutions involved, so we have to make clear at the outset that who's responsible for what tasks, particularly the operation and maintenance.
What we have observed is, okay, we can create assets, but we often face challenges in managing the assets for sustainable service delivery.
So from the beginning, we need to make clear the operation and maintenance arrangement.
In terms of financial challenges, sanitation has usually limited financial returns.
It has high economic benefits but limited financial benefits.
So pilot demonstration is useful.
Just one case that I want to share is Rajasan state in India.
ADB provided 2 million grand to construct the three file sludge treatment plants.
But this really has proven that it makes a lot of sense to have a fe retch treatment plan.
So government really mainstream this and they constructed hundreds of Flesch me to run after demonstrating the economic benefits or the meaning of the Fsltch management.
And the suggestion is to bundle sanitation with housing investment.
We can mobilize some grant facilities or concessional financing to support housing and sanitation together.
But again, sanitation, often the common challenges, again, the funding requirements, how to manage financing for operation and maintenance.
So again, this has to be discussed at the outset, how the budget will come for successfully managing the sanitation.
The last point is about technical challenge.
We need to select suitable sanitation solutions.
So a this CWIS approach often is meaningful to really balance network sanitation with on site sanitation.
Like in India, when we saw this proposal from Madhya Pradesh, they are really focusing on the centralized sanitation system only and the periphees are not covered in the sanitation.
But our team reviewed and we were able to reduce the cost, but also enhance the coverage by mixing this on site and centralized sanitation system.
That way, I think we can address those challenges.
And this is b for infrastructure based on urban planning.
So sanitation, waste management sanitation pick such management, wastewater management should not be afterthought.
We need to plan them early.
That's basically the point I want to stress.
Thank you so much, doctor Saito.
I think for me what stood out is thinking about the diversity of solutions, both the network and the onsite.
That is sometimes not considered and we definitely need to consider that, especially when there is informality in cities.
Thank you.
So now I will move to Mr.
Mohanpatra.
My question to you is, how can the capacity of public sanitation service providers be strengthened to deliver equitable climate resilient services at scale, especially for women, girls, and marginalized groups? Can I have my slide, please? The next one.
As I mentioned, we have in the state around 115 towns and, you know, cities.
So what we have done five cities, the major cities, we have done the sewage system, which covers around 38% of the urban population.
Then we felt that network solution or the sewer solution is not the gold standard and it cannot, we cannot replicate in all our small towns.
So then came the sea rise and the non sewer sanitation.
The fecals loss management.
In the process, we rolled out FSM, and we built 120 fecal treatment plants in all our 115 cities.
Even in cities where we have the STPs also we did the FSTPs so that all get connected.
And we connected even the slum households to these fecal loss management systems.
So in the process, It is a real integration of all the communities into the sanitation system.
Now, these FSTPs that we built were based on the nature based solutions and we found they are quite resilient to all those climate change impacts.
And the other aspect of our FSM program is that we have partnered with community partners, you know, the women sulfal groups and the transgender groups for the operation and maintenance of our plants.
So in the process, they partnered with us and the operation became continuous.
We built their capacity, and I'm very happy to say that we had in the first phase, OPA water operators program or the sanitation operators program.
With OWSSB as Benti, water links as the platform, and the Italians, the smart, Turin as the mentors with the idea to optimize our treatment systems and bring in efficiency, build the capacity of our people and reuse the byproduct, the slurs and all those things.
So in the process, we have ensured climate resiliency of our infrastructure, sustainability of our program, continued operation, and we have been monitoring There are aspects.
So we have also added another layer, digital public infrastructure, digitizing the dislodging services that has been provided.
We have a robust monitoring and evaluation system that helps us in climate resiliency.
With the training and capacity building of our community partners, we ensure that they are adequately trained.
In each of the FSTs two, we have laboratory and there is a women technician, Cen from that community, a graduate in chemistry.
So our capacity is also built so that the performance of the plants, the capacity rely the plants are also monitored.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Mohapatra for sharing your reflections to that question.
I think what came out for me really is the importance of collaborative partnerships and the importance of combining that with the capacity building to ensure that there is appropriate service delivery in the public sector across utilities.
Thank you for that.
I'll now move to Chris.
So, Chris, my question for you is, what is the single most important action that national governments, cities or development partners should take in the next two years to accelerate progress on urban sanitation in Asia in the Pacific? I'll be brief.
I know we're a little behind schedule, and I think we've already talked about this.
My colleagues have said it's governance.
We need clarity and institutions.
So often in countries we see sanitation split amongst the Minister of Urban Development, Ministry of Health, sometimes fits underneath Ministry of Water, even I've seen it under energy.
Um, and it's never just that one minister.
It's always broken up.
So we need clarity on that to be able to regulate it, which leads to the second issue, which is a regulatory environment.
We really need to focus on the regulatory environment around this.
There should never be a house permitted to be built without sanitation.
There should never be a subsidy going to housing without a requirement for sanitation.
There should never be a loan, even a micro loan or microfinance project that's supporting house construction without plans for sanitation.
That type of regulatory environment can only be enforced we have good governance and the governance system that makes sense and allows directed action, let's say, to solve this issue.
I think that's my quick comment on that to get us a little bit back on schedule.
Just look at the governance system in each country.
It's not an easy lift, of course.
It's that wave for a reason and there's a lot of people involved in it and I've been involved in a lot of countries dialogue around it.
It's hard to get to the finish line, but we can make improvements within a two year time frame like you mentioned.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chris, for those remarks.
Moving on to Mario.
Mario, my question to you is what long term planning is required in sanitation service provision for making public services resilient to the impacts of climate change or climate? Yeah.
Thank you.
Well, basically, the emphasis should be in making sure that every housing project that includes sanitation is informed by risk.
There has to be an inventory at the beginning in the planning process to make sure that both disaster and also climate risk are assessed and become part of the design of the solution.
We can call that mitigation by design.
It just means, you know, for every particular intervention to understand historical records in terms of disasters and in terms of climate, and to make sure that the project incorporates elements that will reduce that risk and adaptations.
So there has to be some level of adaptive capacity incorporated into every project and every intervention.
So, uh, Again, it goes beyond just the physical structure, as I also mentioned in my initial comments.
It has to be people centric.
You need to incorporate the role of the target communities and make them participants, not only in the design process, but also in the very important management of the solutions.
Not always you can assign the maintenance and operation of a sanitation system to city authorities.
Many of times, especially in informal settlements, you have to rely on local organizations to provide maintenance and to provide continuing operation to sanitation systems that many times are, um are at the community level, you know, community toilets and things like that.
So you need to make sure that there is an organization within the community that provides that service.
So again, to make sure that solutions are resilient, they need to be informed by risk.
They need to incorporate mitigation by design, and they need to incorporate adaptive capacities.
Thanks so much, Mario.
I think again, we're getting some common messages that are coming through around the importance of, I think climate resilient, integrated planning, and also working with communities, taking people centered approaches, and especially working with local communities to find the right solutions.
Thank you for that.
Then we'll move on to Yandi and my question for you is, what are the findings on the sanitation regulation in Nepal and how Do you see the strengthening of regulation, the importance of strengthening regulation to support the role of sanitation service delivery in Asia and the Pacific? Okay.
Thank you.
As far as the Nepal case that Water Links had worked with, I think the most important finding is that there is really a need to put in place an effective was regulatory body that will be responsible for regulating water and sanitation services in terms of effectively protecting water sources, expansion of water and sanitation services infrastructure, and the rollout of a consolidated water and sanitation service structure.
We all know and as a reported by the speaker from Nepal, they have the law.
But what was lacking really is really to translate the law into a workable and effective structure.
In this case, what Waterlinks did was to help them craft how how should it be done? The processes defined and also really with certain KPIs that we can measure at the end of the day.
Thank you.
Also I want to add that as far as the capacity building gaps are concerned, I think the most effective way of addressing them is through the peer to peer approach, which is which is being promoted by OA, its members and its partners, wherein a more advanced utility is helping another utility within the framework of brotherhood and a solidarity.
This is really a proven approach and I have seen the results of this being a facilitator.
And the beauty of this is that the sanitation worker from an advanced utility is talking to another sanitation service provider in another utility.
So you know it's really a peer to peer approach.
I think this breaks the barrier among these workers in the sanitation sector.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, any.
I think there's definitely a lot of rich experience that we've heard today and there's a lot of rich experience in the region, and I think your point on the importance of sharing that knowledge and peer to peer learning is really essential to ensure that we continue to improve sanitation services in the region.
That brings us to the end of the moderated session.
We will now move to open the floor for questions and reflections from the audience.
I already see a couple of hands.
I think we have time for probably about three questions, but I see two hands already.
Noted? Can we give the gentleman in the back a mic, please? And as you please introduce yourself and your organization and try and keep your question or reflection as brief as possible.
Thank you.
Thank you, San Giovanni.
Thank you, the panel and of course, the guys who said this in before.
My question is about is to the guy from Odisia I'd like to observe that the name of your city was misspelled by the people, the technical team, they keep writing Orissa.
But I know that it's Odisia because I've seen you somewhere make the same presentation.
My question is about how the private sector, the role of the private sector in the sanitation ecosystem in Odisia I'm saying this because I am Kit Bauer.
I'm the Executive Secretary of the Coalition of Private Sector and small and medium enterprises working in sanitation in Africa.
In Africa, about 80% of the people who access to sanitation use non seaw systems that are managed by the private sector.
In some places, they are not recognized.
But what we're trying to do now across the continent is to get them formalized international associations so they can be able to engage with government.
So I'm curious to see how that works.
I see how the private sector is playing a key role.
In Sangal, for instance, where they manage all the treatment plans in the PPP with the government and also quickly add the role of regulation in all of that.
Thank you.
That's a very nice question.
In my state, OSA, it was ORA earlier, ORSSA.
Then we made it ODsA because the way we speak, so it became OD.
Both are right technically.
Coming to the role in OdissA in fact, the entire sanitation is funded by government.
The sewer system that we built funded by government, the non sewer sanitation, again, funded by government.
The FSTPs if you come and discharge, it is also free, no charges.
That is the reason is we want to encourage people to come and discharge.
Don't discharge illegally.
If you charge them, they will not drop anywhere they like certain distance.
We knew that is the issue, so we made them free.
Now, coming to the role of these private people, our STP or the FSTPs are built by them.
We have a good system we have built their capacities.
They are very good in building infrastructure, not only in Odisa in India and even internationally also, also FSTP and when it comes to operation, as I mentioned, it is the community partners who have built their capacity and thanks to the GPA, we have been able to build the capacity of our community in various activities and we are scaling them now.
Now, in these lodging services in FSM, of course, there comes the role of the private people.
What we did, we realize in big cities where we have these FSTPs and even the STPs.
STP it is run by the private, what do we do in the contract itself, we say that you built, then you operate for a certain number of years, sometimes five years, seven years, 15 years, then you transfer, or the contract gets extended.
Now for dislodging operation, we realize that already the private operators were providing the service before we build the treatment plants.
If you could.
Therefore, they have been doing that.
They operate along with the municipal systems, but in small towns, they find it is not viable.
Even that dislodging services is subsidized, the rates are affordable and with the private operators, they are not there, so rates are affordable so that we have the goal of se sanitation.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I saw a couple more hands.
Shall we move to this side of the room to Mr.
Thank you, ma'am for this opportunity.
Especially, I have two questions.
First question goes to doctor Norio and second question to Mr.
Prosaner.
First of all, thank you, Norio, sir, for your appreciative orders for the improvement of sanitation systems.
Basically, the condition improvement in the context of Nepal and that was possible due to support from ADB.
This is the fact I want to raise here.
I am my query basically to user.
If ADB do have any policy programs, that could be very supportive for the management of the squatter settlements.
That could be on site improvement or another could be the landsing or next could be the reallocation of relocation.
Or program.
My query is, do you have any policy program for settlement improvement and the management of the square settlements in the context of Nepal or Southeast Aia region? That's the first question and second question goes to Mr.
Panes.
The activities and the experience sharing of the Oso is very significant.
We are very much happy to hear about the improvement in the scientist and integrated approach of the square settlement improvement.
My query is, what was the financial arrasment the financial modality for the investment from the local government or from the certain sharing from the individuals and the question associated with it, what was the plan for the sustainable maintenance and operation of the system.
Thank you.
Thank you for that point and appreciation to ADBs work in Nepal.
Actually, I forgot to mention that ADB has been supporting small towns, water supply sanitation sector project in Nepal.
We supported more than 90 small towns by now.
And one critical feature of that is we also supported a toilet construction of the poor household through output based a aid approach.
So we ask the communities to share the initial cost for toilet construction, but once the results are delivered, and then our grant resources will come.
That results based approach really motivated the communities to enhance the sanitation aspect.
Going back to your question.
We do have program or we could formulate projects to really support informal settlement communities.
One project I could share is from Taminu in India.
There are many informal settlements or low cost housing in the flood prone areas in that state.
So the by working with the state government, we constructed affordable housing facilities in areas which are free from flood risks.
And then we supported affordable housing together with water and sanitation facilities and then safely resettle those people in the informal communities to the affordable housing facilities.
So similar arrangement can be proposed in Nepal as well.
But also another approach is that if the informal settlements, for whatever reason, need to continue to live in certain areas, then we can also support water or sanitation facilities in those regions.
Dhaka in Bangladesh, we worked with the water authorities, Dhakawasa to support stand posts in the informal settlement or slum areas so that they can directly benefit from water services.
Thank you.
There are two scenarios for your question, for the second question.
First scenario is the informal settlement, where they have got the land rights.
We gave them the land rights.
Land exists and is habitable land.
So there they get the housing loans from the Prime Minister Sawaun.
They get that directly on loan basis.
The common infra, as I mentioned, there are several roads, sanitation, water supply, they are funded by the municipality.
25% of the municipal budget is earmarked for that they are 25%, budget 25% also goes to them, that is not issue.
For the maintenance, they have the slum deal as you, then they generate revenue from various activities funded.
Now the second scenario, So the first scenario covers around 38%.
They are in good land, so certificate is given.
Now, the remaining, wherever they are the land is not suitable.
So they cannot get though they got the certificate, but they cannot build the house there because they could be in areas where it is not suitable to build clotted area, something like that.
So they are covered in a different scheme.
There is a policy for housing So on PPP mode, so the government provides the land, so that land is monetized.
So the private developer build the housing and also build the housing for these people, economic, you know, weaker section people.
So that part is covered.
And there, the government provides around the government provides around 25%.
The person contributes around 25%, and remaining 50% comes from the property developer.
That way that is getting covered.
There is also a corpus fund developed for operation and maintenance.
There is an elaborate policy on that.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I just want to get a gender balance.
I think there was a lady that I see, please go ahead.
Yeah.
Thank you.
My question goes to Mario.
I know this is a very technical thing, sanitation and these all, but here everyone in the panel is also discussing about inclusion and participation in the process.
How easy is the participation and if not, how do you solve those issues? Yeah.
Thank you very much.
We have a number of approaches to we call them participatory approaches, when we get to communities and initiate interactions of Some of the methodologies call for identifying, you know, the different groups or subgroups at the community level.
You know, of course, gender is one of the criteria that we use, but we also look into vulnerable populations like people with disabilities or with chronic illnesses, for example.
And then we also look at groups like youth, and then we try to tailor different approaches to each one of those groups and to make sure that their voices are heard and taken into consideration, you know, when we are in the planning process.
It's not always easy, as you can imagine, sometimes we have to deal with a lot of cultural barriers.
But it's a matter of as an organization, we try to be proactive in making sure that we include the voices of everyone in the community.
One of the methods that we use is it's a participatory approach that was developed by the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.
It's called the Participatory Approach for safe shelter and settlements awareness.
It calls for community representation from all of these different groups to create a community group in which planning takes place, and the final product is a community action plan that usually involves annotation solutions and also a plan on how to go forward with implementation of the project.
So it's a matter of, you know, how you use the resources that you have as an organization to make sure that you include all the voices that are present in the community.
Thank you, Mario and thank you for the question.
I'm going to take one more lady and then that's it.
If you could briefly state your question and then we'll move to the closing over to you.
Hi.
I'm Zebeda.
I'm a student at McGill University.
I really enjoyed the panel.
A lot of you spoke about the role of the private sector.
I was wondering how do you balance the private sectors incentive for profit and the bottom line with the social well being aspect that you've been talking about? Just any of the panelists.
Thank you so much.
I'm going to ask Chris to answer that.
Thanks and great to see you engaged in this topic.
I just briefly, you start with a business plan, and you sit down with the private sector company and then you come up with a business plan.
The challenge is scaling something like that.
The business plan will have a certain amount of profit in it, and then that profit is linked somehow to the investment required.
If they're taking out loans, for example, to be able to let's say for services, if they're taking out a loan to buy a sewage truck to empty at the household level, have a loan and they have a certain interest on that.
What is the role of institutions like ourselves up here to reduce that cost of that loan to allow profit to be made at a higher margin? Then we go into things, one specific example is something that we call an advanced market commitment.
If UNICEF or another organization commits to signing a letter saying this company will be building or will be providing a service for the next five years at this rate, and if they don't, UNICEF will cover it.
Managing that risk, then that lowers the risk for the bank, meaning that that loan will have a lower interest rate, meaning that profit will be up.
There's lots of tools like that, and I won't go into them all, but it's a valid question is how do we manage that and how do we not allow profit gouging? Because in some cases, the communities we're working in are the most vulnerable and the hardest to reach and there's not a lot of competition, and there is maybe just one or two companies.
Really it's almost like behavioral change at the business level on your providing a service for your community because often those people are from that community.
That's I think maybe some thoughts on that.
But it's an excellent question.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chris.
That brings us to the end of that session.
Let's give a round of applause to all our speakers and our audience for those great questions.
It's now my pleasure to invite miss Asa Johnson, who is the head of Guapa UN Habitat, to deliver the closing remarks and reflect on the way forward over to Aa.
Well, thank you very much, everyone.
And I hope everybody agrees that this was a very compact and quite deep conversation that we've covered in the last hour and 15 minutes or almost hour and a half.
I'm not going to be summarizing all of this.
I'm just going to say a few highlights.
I think to start with my first reflection is how fundamental this event is at the World Urban Forum.
I did a little bit of a scan.
I guess it's my job working with Jopa how many water and sanitation events are there at the World Urban Forum.
I think we're very proud as you inhabitat and as those colleagues that work in this sector that there's more such events than I think previous World Urban forums.
Yet I do think that sanitation in particular needs to come out perhaps even more prominently as a guiding light when we start moving as a community to the Next World Urban Forum.
And here, you know, we've heard it so in All speakers have said it in one way or another.
It's a foundation.
You cannot have a house without sanitation.
It has to be fully integrated, et cetera.
I think that's just one main message how important it is that this narrative gets really strong in a place like the World Orban Forum.
And perhaps particularly so because the next takeaway and we've heard it from many different organizations, we've heard from a range of organizations from ADB habitat for humanity as a big NGO, UNICEF, UN partner, et cetera, how important it is to have an integrated approach and That's what we hope to do in places like here in Baku where we would wish for those working in the sanitation community to then really look at what that means in terms of practical collaboration with other urban systems.
We've heard about many different, we can call it barriers.
Everything from behavioral barriers to technical barriers to political, administrative barriers, et cetera I think it's very fundamental and I think we can hear those voices also from our utilities to make sure to look at those perspectives firstly from those we're aiming to serve.
We heard that very much from UNICEF side, very practical.
What does it mean for a community, what should be the size of the water tank? Just really, I think from a strong human rights based perspective, just understand who we're serving.
And maybe at the next level, when you look at service providers, how can we make it easier for them to also provide the services? And we're very proud to have two of our D utility members here from Odisia and from Water links, our regional platform as well.
So how important it is to really firstly have it from that lens.
But of course, in partnership.
I want to particularly thank the Vice Minister who is here with us from Lao PDR and also the Joint Secretary from Nepal.
We're very honored that you've chosen to be with us and to elevate the topic here and of course, from our development partners that I've mentioned already here as well.
So in terms of takeaways and where we go next.
I think we've heard a lot around scaling up solutions, further systems of exchange.
Of course, from the place where we are working with pA, we work a lot with twinning with peer to peer between utilities.
That's one fundamental way of doing this more.
But such exchanges need to happen at many different levels.
So not only, of course, in the peer to peer utilities.
But what brought us together here in this event, and we're very appreciative to you and Tessa for the development account project that we're collaborating together with you and ESCP and many thanks to you and ECP for co convening this event gives us an opportunity to really look at how climate responsive sanitation can really look like in some of the countries of Southeast Asia.
We are at the start of this process and it's a three year program, as our colleague, Sanjiv from ECAP said, and we look forward to sharing as we go along in this story and hopefully be able to use such funding, which is catalytic funding within the UN system, to be able to catalyze more funds, scale up and do even more in partnership with many of you.
So I think that's what I would like to say, and going out very humbled by the things at stake, but also how this is really at the heart of dignity.
It's the foundation as we've said.
I hope that we can go into other forums here within the Wilderman Forum and to continue to raise the significance of the fact that integration is non negotiable.
And that we need to really talk about sanitation.
Let's say with some few last words that the world is watching how we have our growing cities.
As the world is watching and as we plan for that, let's ensure that sanitation stays alongside very centrally.
Before I end, of course, just a few words of thanks to the member states, Laos, Lao PDR and Nepal, of course, first and foremost, to SCAP, to Habitat for Humanity.
Happy 50th birthday to all of us, to UNICEF, to Sewise Nepal.
And to all of you here in the room who've chosen to stay and have a very meaningful exchange here.
So many thanks and wishing you a continued meaningful engagement at WUF.
Thank you.
Thank you, A, for those wonderful closing remarks.
I think I have nothing left to say, but just to thank everyone for staying with us.
Thank you, especially to the Vice Minister and the Joint Secretary for staying for the entire time.
I know how busy you are.
Thank you to the panelists and thank you to the audience.
We really appreciate your contribution, and we look forward to continuing the collaboration and the conversation.
Thank you, everyone.
Have a great day.