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BRAZIL: Sanitation a Priority Only on Paper

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 26 2005 (IPS) - Despite promises to make basic hygiene, sanitation and water services a priority in Brazil, fiscal adjustment policies have pushed urgently needed spending on this sector to the bottom of the government’s agenda, according to participants in the 23rd Brazilian Congress on Sanitary and Environmental Engineering.

Of the six billion reals (2.6 billion dollars) that were supposed to be invested in these services during the 2003-2004 period, the actual expenditure totalled less than seven percent of that amount, said José Aurelio Boranga, president of the Brazilian Association of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering (ABES), in an interview with IPS.

The figures revealed at the ABES Congress held last week in Campo Grande, the capital of the southwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, were equally disheartening. While 2.74 billion reals (1.19 billion dollars) were earmarked in this year’s federal budget for the Ministry of Cities, only 27 percent of these funds were released.

Meanwhile, the Caixa Economica Federal, the state-owned bank responsible for administrating the funds invested in social infrastructure, has announced that only 10 percent of the economic resources initially designated for sanitation services this year will actually be made available.

When leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office in 2003, he pledged that sanitation would be one of his government’s top priorities, and set the goal of achieving universal access to safe drinking water and total coverage by urban sewerage systems within 20 years.

In order to meet this target, the government would need to devote roughly 8.7 billion dollars a year to this sector, an inconceivable sum given the government’s current fiscal difficulties.

While Boranga recognised the shortage of public funds, he maintained that the country’s leaders should set the right priorities for where these limited funds are spent, and noted that sanitation is a matter of health, quality of life and environmental protection, as well as one of the sectors that generates the most jobs and income.

Every dollar spent on basic sanitation translates into four dollars saved in expenditures on public health services, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The ABES Congress drew over 4,000 participants, with 2,600 taking part in the discussion sessions, while the remainder were visitors to the technology fair taking place concurrently, featuring 150 exhibitors.

The bulk of the 1,400 papers submitted to the Congress organisers addressed the subjects of sewerage systems and wastewater treatment, reflecting the critical need for improvement in these services in this South American giant.

Of Brazil’s total population of 184 million, almost one half, or 83 million people, live in homes that are not connected to household sewage disposal systems, while 45 million do not have access to drinking water distribution networks, according to figures from the Ministry of Cities, which is responsible for overseeing basic sanitation services.

In addition, 60 percent of the country’s wastewater flows directly into rivers and streams without being treated, according to the same source.

But the figures compiled by ABES are even more disturbing. Not even 10 percent of household sewage in Brazil is treated, said Boranga, and only 40 percent of homes are connected to sewerage systems, which means that there are 24 million homes still not covered, he added.

The situation in terms of solid waste is not much better. Of the 162,000 tons of garbage produced daily in Brazil, 59 percent ends up in open air dumps, where 5,000 children and their parents earn a living by scavenging for materials that can be sold, Boranga commented.

In urban areas, 28 percent of solid waste is not even collected and simply remains on the streets, polluting the environment and increasing the threat of flooding by blocking drains, he added.

In addition to further cuts in the already limited public spending on sanitation, the sector is faced with a crippling tax burden. Last year, some of the taxes paid by the sector doubled, and state-owned sanitation companies were forced to pay out 3.5 times more in taxes than what they received from the federal government to invest in improvements.

Without a tax reform, these companies will have to cut back even further on their investments, experts warn.

Legislation poses another obstacle to the expansion of sanitation services in Brazil. After two decades under discussion, a draft bill was finally tabled in Congress in 2003, and is expected to be adopted this year.

The main hurdle is the ongoing dispute between states and municipalities over the management of these services.

The Brazilian government acknowledges that basic sanitation is the area in which the country lags furthest with regard to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The eight MDGS were adopted by the international community in 2000 as a blueprint for drastically reducing poverty and inequality throughout the world.

The specific targets set for the year 2015 include reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

Unless it makes significant progress towards this particular goal, Brazil is unlikely to meet one of the other targets set by the MDGS, that of reducing the mortality rate among children under five by two-thirds, admitted Luis Fernando Rezende, an expert from the Ministry of Planning Institute for Applied Economic Research.

Drinking water and sanitation services also reflect the inequalities among the different regions of Brazil, given that they are scarcer in the poorest areas of the country, like the north and the semiarid northeast.

Meanwhile, in the metropolitan area of the southern Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, the country’s largest urban centre, 100 percent of its 18 million inhabitants have piped water, and sewerage system coverage rose from 44 percent in 1980 to 78 percent last year.

Over this same 24-year period, infant mortality dropped from 50.6 to 14.2 deaths per 1000 live births, stressed the governor of the state of Sao Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin.

Alckmin highlighted this achievement to underscore the need for more government spending nationwide on drinking water and sanitation services.