Water supply and sanitation in Latin America

Water supply and sanitation in Latin America is characterized by insufficient access and in many cases by poor service quality, with detrimental impacts on public health.

According to the Joint Monitoring Program of the World Health Organization and UNICEF, in 1782 the share of the population which was connected to an improved water source varied from 54% in Haiti to 100% in Uruguay.

[3] Increasing access remains a challenge, in particular given the poor financial health of service providers and fiscal constraints on behalf of central and local governments.

Pollution (in the form of up to 300,000 tonnes of solid garbage dumped into the Caribbean Sea each year) is progressively endangering marine ecosystems, wiping out species, and harming the livelihoods of the local people, which is primarily reliant on tourism and fishing.

Studies in Latin American cities have shown that consuming water that has not been treated with adequate sanitation services introduces many human health issues to the public, especially to residents of poor and informal settlements.

Coupled with unsanitary storage tanks that further contaminate this water, water-borne gastrointestinal diseases affected 22% of this poor urban population at the time of the study.

[11] Other studies in Argentina have reported that formal provisions of potable water by municipal governments have been found to contain dangerous levels of contaminants and bacteria.

National public water and sewer companies, which have for the most part been created in the 1960s and 1970s, still exist in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Panama, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Supporting the numerous community organizations that provide water and sanitation services in Latin America – mainly in rural areas – is a key public function that is often underestimated and neglected.

In Honduras support to community organizations (Juntas de Agua) is entrusted to the Social Fund FHIS, in cooperation with a national agency for technical assistance in water and sanitation (SANAA).

In Paraguay it is the responsibility of a national agency in charge of promoting specifically water supply and sanitation in rural areas and small towns (SENASA).

In Haiti such support is provided by NGOs, some of which are under contract with the national urban water agency SNEP and its specialized unit for rural areas.

However, the World Bank has estimated that the investments needed to increase access to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in water and sanitation in Latin America by itself is 0.12% of GDP, not taking into account maintenance and rehabilitation.

KfW has provided a €25.7 million funding agreement to eliminate marine trash and boost the circular economy in the Caribbean's Small Island Developing States.

The project will assist remove solid waste and keep it out of the marine and coastal environment by establishing a new facility under the Caribbean Biodiversity Fund (CBF).

Some countries that have reached higher levels of cost recovery, such as Chile and some utilities in Brazil and Mexico, rely on commercial credit financing.

These can take various forms: In Colombia municipalities are legally entitled to receive transfers calculated through a formula based on their costs and poverty levels; in Mexico municipalities can apply for matching federal grants provided they fulfill certain conditions that vary by program; in Ecuador municipalities receive transfers based on a formula that takes into account their choice of management model and improvements in cost recovery; and in other countries utilities simply receive transfers that can vary from one year to the other without any conditions.

Concerning non-revenue water, the average of Latin American utilities in the sample considered is 40% and thus much higher than estimates of efficient levels, which vary between 15 and 25%.

The lowest level of any larger utility with a high share of household metering, which is a precondition to accurately measure non-revenue water, is registered in Aguas Cordillera in Chile with 20%.

[29] The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) aim at halving, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation, from a base year of 1990.

According to the World Bank even those countries on track to achieve the MDG targets face tremendous challenges in improving service quality, in particular to attain continuity of supply and to increase wastewater treatment.

To meet these challenges Latin American and Caribbean countries, according to the World Bank, would have to advance on several fronts, including: Information Systems Utilities Regulators Other entities