Investments in sanitation must focus on rural areas

To reduce the water and sanitation gap in Latin America, it is necessary for the States to focus on providing services to the most vulnerable populations, especially the inhabitants of rural areas, of small cities, and marginal areas in large cities. 

This is one of he main agreements achieved in the Declaration of Lima, subscribed during the IV Latin American Conference on Sanitation, where most of the countries of the region reiterated their commitment to achieve the goals regarding water and sanitation, within the Objectives of Sustainable Development. 

The event emphasized four key aspects that the countries of Latin America must take into consideration to achieve a wider and better quality coverage of these services:

• Policy and Institutional Framework: it is essential to identify the challenges faced by the execution of public policies in Latin America and the Caribbean to reduce the gaps and inequalities in the provision of water and sanitation services.   

• Management and financing models: the guidelines adopted for the implementation of these patterns must allow the countries of the region to achieve the universalization of the services with quality and sustainability. For this, it is necessary to analyze the important world trends with respect to urbanization, climate change, comprehensive management of water resources, and water security. 

• Use of technology: in past years, important scientific advances have taken place that may provide innovating tools to the countries of the region to improve the provision of services. To incorporate these technologies in future projects it is first necessary to identify the different strategies for urban and rural areas. 

• Culture of water and public health: the most efficient strategies must be studied to promote the development of responsible behaviors regarding the care and preservation of water resources, especially emphasizing the impacts of sanitation on the health of the population (with arguments based on principles such as equality, human rights, ethnicity, and territoriality). 

These proposals aim at improvements of investment strategies to advance toward a comprehensive management of water resources, as well as increases in the productivity of water in its different uses, which is essential to guarantee the sustainability of the water and sanitation services.