Inter-American Development Bank
facebook
twitter
youtube
linkedin
instagram
Abierto al públicoBeyond BordersCaribbean Development TrendsCiudades SosteniblesEnergía para el FuturoEnfoque EducaciónFactor TrabajoGente SaludableGestión fiscalGobernarteIdeas MatterIdeas que CuentanIdeaçãoImpactoIndustrias CreativasLa Maleta AbiertaMoviliblogMás Allá de las FronterasNegocios SosteniblesPrimeros PasosPuntos sobre la iSeguridad CiudadanaSostenibilidadVolvamos a la fuente¿Y si hablamos de igualdad?Home
Citizen Security and Justice Creative Industries Development Effectiveness Early Childhood Development Education Energy Envirnment. Climate Change and Safeguards Fiscal policy and management Gender and Diversity Health Labor and pensions Open Knowledge Public management Science, Technology and Innovation  Trade and Regional Integration Urban Development and Housing Water and Sanitation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Volvamos a la fuente

Agua, saneamiento y residuos solidos

  • HOME
  • CATEGORIES
    • AquaFund
    • Featured
    • Gender
    • Hydro-BID
    • Innovation and data
    • Knowledge
    • Optimal sanitation
    • Solid waste
    • Source of Innovation
    • Unacccounted for water
    • WASH
    • Wastewater
    • Water and sanitation
    • Water resources
  • Authors
  • English
    • Español

Rights for all: water and sanitation 4,000 meters above sea level

March 21, 2019 Por Lourdes Álvarez Prado Leave a Comment


World Water Day calls for ensuring water for all. Peru’s Andean communities are taking steps to warrant water and sanitation rights 4,000 meters above sea level.

In Romatambo, Peru, at the foothills of the snow-covered Caullaraju, on the white Andes Mountains and 4,000 meters above sea level, temperatures usually drop below 0° Celsius (32° Fahrenheit) in the summer and never exceed 10° C (50° F) in the winter. This beautiful and lonely place is where Maria and her husband live. Their combined ages total more than 120 years.

For thousands of years, this steep site has been home to Quechua communities, one of the human groups with less access to drinking water and sanitation in Peru.

The latrine built by Maria’s children, who now live in the city and visit her once a month, was more than 70 meters from her house. Cold temperatures and solitude –the closest neighbors live nearly 800 meters away– limited the use of the latrine, badly beaten by a combination of outdoor exposure and poor construction using inadequate materials.

These harsh conditions are shared by millions of people around the world, particularly in rural areas.

The Sustainable Development Goals adopted in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly include the human right to water and the human right to sanitation in the section about goals on universal access to basic services and universal access to safely managed drinking water and sanitation services, including an end to open defecation.

While over the past few decades access to drinking water and sanitation services has improved dramatically in the region, huge gaps between urban and rural areas still remain. In 2015, according to the UN Joint Monitoring Program, 2.7 million rural area dwellers had to walk at least 30 minutes to reach a safe source of water. The numbers swell if we take into account the more than 15.2 million people in rural areas who were drinking from unprotected sources or from surface waters.

In this context, four pilot projects financed by Aquafund, a multidonor program managed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), are working hard to ensure that those human rights reach all sites, including those 4,000 meters above sea level.

The sanitation unit –with dual-chamber dry toilet, sink with drinking water and shower– built under the pilot program financed in Peru, not only brought the bathroom closer to Maria (it was built two steps away from her house door), but thanks to a boiler connected to an improved kitchen stove, she could enjoy a hot-water shower for the first time.

Many gaps to bridge

Investing in sanitation infrastructure in scattered rural sites calls for special conditions that need careful attention.

But the gap is not only about access, it is also about gender. Most of the water-fetching burden in rural areas is borne by women and girls who walk for hours carrying water containers of up to 20 liters. According to JMP data, women and girls are in charge of hauling water in 8 out of every 10 households.  This not only means that they have less time for productive, educational or recreational activities – it also entails health and personal safety hazards.

Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, more than 19.6 million people living in rural areas share sanitation facilities or use unimproved facilities such as pit latrines without slab, and more than 14.1 million continue to practice open defecation. Lack of bathrooms at schools hampers girls’ attendance, especially during their menses. Several studies have shown that student enrollment rises by 15% in communities where schools have drinking water and bathrooms, which sheds light on the multisectoral impact of drinking water and sanitation access.

Universal availability of these services, which means safe, affordable, readily available and quality access for all men and women, requires reaching out to the most remote communities. Typically, these communities comprise spread-out houses far from urban areas, challenging access, low population density, low income and educational levels, great ethnical diversity, low presence of public institutions, and limited access to basic health and education services.

In 2017 the IDB issued a and sanitation rights in Latin America and the Caribbean, laying out the regulative criteria to ensure universal access to these services.

A pilot plan to ensure rights

The Multi-donor Aquafund is a thematic fund issued by the IDB and financed with resources from the Bank as well as from the following donor partners: the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID); the Swiss government, through the Swiss Cooperation Agency for Development (COSUDE) and the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (SECO); the government of Austria; and the PepsiCo Foundation. Since 2011, Aquafund has financed projects in Colombia, Honduras, Mexico and Peru aimed at developing intervention models for the access to drinking water and sanitation services in spread-out rural areas. A total of 3,546 people benefited from new or improved access to drinking water and 2,818 people from new or improved access to at least basic sanitation services.

The intervention models to attend to the needs for spread-out rural areas’ access to drinking water and sanitation services pose specific challenges at institutional, environmental, technical, social, and financial level. They also require defining post-construction-support management mechanisms adjusted to each community’s characteristics to ensure the sustainability of the systems.

Pilot tests suggest a need to adapt technologies to dispersion scenarios, implementing systems that are simple to operate and generally aimed at self-sufficiency. It is also vital to take into account social aspects (women’s role, interculturalism) and behavioral change (paying bills, washing hands, menstrual hygiene, use of facilities, protection of the source, responsible consumption, etc.), as well as providing training on new facilities’ operation and maintenance, and involving public institutions to ensure service appropriation and sustainability.

Every day now, Maria washes her face while contemplating the Caullaraju and looks at herself in the mirror that she bought for her new bathroom. She proudly shows off her home and makes the point that her grandchildren, when they come to visit, can use her bathroom “as if they were in the city.” Maria and her family saw not only their living standards rise, but their dignity too.

 


Filed Under: Featured

Lourdes Álvarez Prado

Lourdes works in the WSA's effectiveness team, supporting country teams in the preparation, implementation and closure of programs, with a focus on improving the evaluability and sustainability of the results achieved. Lourdes holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences and Technology, and a M.Sc. in Environmental Management.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

FOLLOW US

Suscribete

Search

Recent Posts

  • The challenges Irma, Morelia and Sobeida face to obtain water in Guatemala
  • The Future of Sócrates in Pampa Hermosa
  • Innovation meets resilience: Tackling desertification in the Atacama Desert
  • Innovate & Integrative: A Study Tour Journey Through South Korea’s Water, Sanitation, and Solid Waste Management Schemes and Technologies
  • Water Transforms Lives in Rural Communities of Ecuador

Footer

Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo
facebook
twitter
youtube
youtube
youtube

    Blog posts written by Bank employees:

    Copyright © Inter-American Development Bank ("IDB"). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons IGO 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives. (CC-IGO 3.0 BY-NC-ND) license and may be reproduced with attribution to the IDB and for any non-commercial purpose. No derivative work is allowed. Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC- IGO license. Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license.


    For blogs written by external parties:

    For questions concerning copyright for authors that are not IADB employees please complete the contact form for this blog.

    The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDB, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent.

    Attribution: in addition to giving attribution to the respective author and copyright owner, as appropriate, we would appreciate if you could include a link that remits back the IDB Blogs website.



    Privacy Policy

    Derechos de autor © 2025 · Magazine Pro en Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

    Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo

    Aviso Legal

    Las opiniones expresadas en estos blogs son las de los autores y no necesariamente reflejan las opiniones del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, sus directivas, la Asamblea de Gobernadores o sus países miembros.

    facebook
    twitter
    youtube
    This site uses cookies to optimize functionality and give you the best possible experience. If you continue to navigate this website beyond this page, cookies will be placed on your browser.
    To learn more about cookies, click here
    x
    Manage consent

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    Non-necessary
    Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
    SAVE & ACCEPT