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. Water and sanitation services are provided by a vast array of mostly local service providers under an often fragmented policy and regulatory framework. Financing of water and sanitation remains a serious challenge. Access Access to water and sanitation remains insufficient, in particular in rural areas and for the poor. It also differs substantially among and within countries. According to the Joint Monitoring Program of the World Health Organization and UNICEF, in 2004 the share of the population which was connected to an improved water source varied from 54% in Haiti to 100% in Uruguay. Altogether, 50 million people, or 9% of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean did not have access to improved water supply, and 125 million or 23% did not have access to improved sanitation. 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. After the Mediterranean, the Caribbean Sea is the second most polluted sea. 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.
As far as sanitation is concerned, only 51% of the population has access to sewers. Only an estimated 15% of the collected wastewater finds its way into wastewater treatment plants, which often are not properly functioning.Pan American Health Organization/Division of Health and Environment: Regional Report on the Evaluation in the Region of the Americas, Washington, 2001, p. 24 and p. 81 26% of the population has access to forms of sanitation other than sewers, including septic tanks and various types of latrines. Many scholars have found that while 20% of potable water is effectively treated in Latin America, there is sufficient infrastructure to treat 30% to 35% of water.
Water use
The per capita water use in Latin America varies greatly among countries, among cities in the same country, and between urban and rural areas, and obviously among those with a house connection, a public tap or no improved water source at all. The average net urban water use (i.e. excluding distribution losses) was estimated at 240 liter/capita/day,ADERASA Benchmarking report 2005, p. 22, based on a non-representative sample of 50 utilities of various sizes in 9 countries a level that is about as high as in the United States and almost twice as high as in Central Europe. The highest water use can be found in some utilities in Brazil and Argentina, where water resources are abundant and water use is almost 500 liter/capita/day.Mendoza in Argentina, where there is less than 10% metering, and Aguas Cordillera in Brazil The lowest water use is in Aguas de Illimani serving La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, with less than 50 liter/capita/day. In rural areas water use is sometimes even lower than this level.
Health Effects 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. Low-income urban residents consuming polluted water are more likely to become ill with "poverty diseases" such as gastrointestinal and infectious water-borne diseases, as well as chronic diseases that degrade human health over time. Consumption of contaminated water and lack of access to clean water are also associated with health disorders that stem from emotional and physical stress and water-use conflicts. One of the most notable disease outbreaks in Latin America was the region's 1991-1993 cholera epidemic.
One study in the shantytowns of Lima, Peru reported that approximately 15% of these poor settlements have in-house water provisions, which forces these residents to obtain water from informal water vendors not administered by local governments or utility companies. The quality of this water is unhealthy, their origin and state of sanitization is unclear, and this water has reportedly contained visible contaminants. 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. 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. 10% of the country's population are exposed to consuming arsenic found in the water they consume, principally in areas that lack water treatment infrastructure.
Quality of service
Even for those having access to water supply, poor quality of service is often experienced, in the form of intermittent supply, low pressure and poor drinking water quality. However, differences in service quality between countries and between cities in Latin America are vast, and some service providers achieve a quality of service on par with developed countries.
Institutional responsibility See also List of responsibilities in the water supply and sanitation sector in Latin America and the Caribbean
Service provision
Responsibility for water supply and sewerage service provision in Latin American countries is vested either in municipalities, or in regional or national companies.Foster, Vivien: Ten Years of Water Service Reform in Latin America: Toward an Anglo-French Model, World Bank, Water Supply and Sanitation Sector Board Discussion Paper Series No. 3, January 2005.World Bank 2005 Water Municipalities are in charge of water and sanitation service provision in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru. In some countries, such as in Colombia and Mexico, municipalities took over this responsibility from national service providers during the decentralization of the 1980s. Subsequently, especially the larger municipalities have often created specialized municipal (and sometimes inter-municipal) public utilities, whose finances are kept separate from the city's finances. While in most cases the companies are public, in a few notable cases they are mixed or private companies operating under concession, lease or management contracts. Chile and Venezuela are examples of countries that have created regional water companies; however, in the case of Venezuela, the United Nations reports that Venezuela remains one of the poorest in water service provision in this region.Appropriate Technology for Sewage Pollution Control in the Wider Caribbean Region, Caribbean Environment Programme Technical Report #40 1998 available online at UNEP State-level regional water companies also exist in all 26 states of Brazil, where they provide services on behalf of some (but not all) municipalities in each state. 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. About 90% of urban water and sanitation services in Latin America are provided by public entities. Many private concession contracts signed during the 1990s in Latin America have been either renegotiated or cancelled. The most notable cancellations include the concession for Aguas Argentinas in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the concessions for Cochabamba and La Paz, Bolivia. Private and mixed companies, however, continue to provide services in many cities of Colombia, in most of Chile, some Brazilian cities, and in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
In rural areas, the provision of water services is usually the responsibility of community organizations (Juntas de Agua). While the infrastructure is funded primarily by transfers from the national governments, typically community labor and sometimes cash contributions are mobilized. When communities are associated in the choice of service level and other key choices, this instills a sense of ownership that makes it more likely that communities will maintain the infrastructure.
Policy and regulation
At the level of national governments, responsibility for policies in water and sanitation is typically fragmented between various Ministries, making the development of coherent policies in areas such as transfers to local service providers a challenging undertaking. The economic regulation of service providers is sometimes entrusted to Ministries and sometimes to autonomous regulatory agencies. These agencies sometimes cover only water and sanitation or multiple infrastructure sectors; they can be either at the national (as in Chile, Colombia and Peru) or at the state level (as in Argentina and in some states of Mexico). Their functions vary and may include tariff approvals, monitoring of service quality and handling of complaints. Environmental regulation is entrusted to environmental agencies and the regulation of drinking water quality to Ministries of Health.
Supporting community organizations
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. Responsibility for this function, if it is defined at all, can be assigned to a government Ministry and its regional branches, a Social Fund or municipalities. Often NGOs also carry out this function, either on their own initiative and with their own resources, or under contract by the government.
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 El Salvador it is done by the Social Fund FISDL and various NGOs. In Peru it is carried out through NGOs and municipalities with the support of a national program (PRONASAR) implemented by the Ministry of Housing. 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 Ecuador it is carried out under a national program (PRAGUAS) by consultants working for the Ministry of Housing. In Panama such support is provided by the Ministry of Health. 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. There thus is a wide variety of institutional arrangements to support community organizations, so that one cannot speak of a uniform model for such support in Latin America.
Financial aspects
Tariffs According to a 2006 World Bank study average water tariffs in Latin America are the highest of any region of the developing world. Tariffs are about four times higher than in South Asia, three times higher than in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and almost twice as high as in East Asia. However, tariffs are less than half as high as in OECD countries. Based on a sample of 23 major cities in Latin America the average residential water tariff for a monthly consumption of 15 cubic meter was US$0.41, equivalent to a monthly bill of only about US$6.Foster, Halpern and Komides, 2005, p. 21, drawing on data from the Latin American water regulator association ADERASA
Cost recovery