Yhony Martinez Hernandez | Universidad Antonio Ruiz de MOntoya (original) (raw)
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Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH
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The spread of public services and social infrastructure has been essential to reduce poverty and ... more The spread of public services and social infrastructure has been essential to reduce poverty and inequality in developing countries. Water and sanitation infrastructure has proved to be particularly relevant in any development strategy. However, in spite of improving water and sanitation availability, the great majority of people in developing countries have to cope with very low coverage of wastewater treatment plants. Sewer is usually disposed into watercourses without any treatment whatsoever. This has had serious consequences in terms of spreading diseases and reducing well being, particularly of the poor. The main explanation for this low coverage is the required high investment costs of wastewater treatment plants. On their turn, high investment costs are closely dependent upon an engineer decision in terms of technological option to achieve very high environmental standards for the wastewater treated. This standard is usually aimed at 100% cleanup goal. This paper argues that environmental standards should be based upon the optimum level of pollution subjected to safe health requirements and overall environmental gains. This means that investments on wastewater treatment plants must be based on cost-effectiveness (CE) considerations, allowing a gradually crescent environmental standard implementation process. If CE procedure is followed, wastewater treatment will have higher social gains per monetary unit of investment in the initial stages of implementation due to an achieved less degraded watercourse.
The spread of public services and social infrastructure has been essential to reduce poverty and ... more The spread of public services and social infrastructure has been essential to reduce poverty and inequality in developing countries. Water and sanitation infrastructure has proved to be particularly relevant in any development strategy. However, in spite of improving water and sanitation availability, the great majority of people in developing countries have to cope with very low coverage of wastewater treatment plants. Sewer is usually disposed into watercourses without any treatment whatsoever. This has had serious consequences in terms of spreading diseases and reducing well being, particularly of the poor. The main explanation for this low coverage is the required high investment costs of wastewater treatment plants. On their turn, high investment costs are closely dependent upon an engineer decision in terms of technological option to achieve very high environmental standards for the wastewater treated. This standard is usually aimed at 100% cleanup goal. This paper argues that environmental standards should be based upon the optimum level of pollution subjected to safe health requirements and overall environmental gains. This means that investments on wastewater treatment plants must be based on cost-effectiveness (CE) considerations, allowing a gradually crescent environmental standard implementation process. If CE procedure is followed, wastewater treatment will have higher social gains per monetary unit of investment in the initial stages of implementation due to an achieved less degraded watercourse.