Targeted sanitation subsidies for climate vulnerable households
June (below) verses October (above) in Samroang Saean Village, Kampong Chhnang Province, Cambodia (iDE / Tyler Kozole)
This Water, WASH & Climate story was authored by Tyler Kozole, iDE
Our story is from a climate vulnerable part of Cambodia, the Tonle Sap Lake. The Tonle Sap is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia and is home to over three million people. In the rainy season, the lake expands to five times its size, inundating the surrounding countryside.
Communities around the lake have learnt to live with this annual flood, building elevated homes on stilts and houses that float, but water and sanitation remain a major challenge. Improved sanitation coverage is nonexistent in some villages and the water that surrounds many households for months each year is at constant risk of contamination.
June verses October (above) in flood-prone Samroang Saean Village, Kampong Chhnang Province, Cambodia
Ms Yun’s story
As farmers in Samroang Saean village, which floods for at least four months of the year, Ms Yun Srey Lak and her husband could not prioritise the cost of installing a toilet over providing food for the family. The burden of not having a latrine weighed heavily. In the dry season, without a toilet, Srey Lak, her husband and two daughters would cut through the tall bushes around their home with a machete to find a private place to go. For the family, the fear of encountering snakes and sexual predators never left.
Ms Yun and her children stand by their newly installed piped latrine pit; a watermark from previous flooding is visible on the brick wall behind them (Miguel Jeronimo)
In the rainy season, the children would simply squat over the edge of their home to defecate into the water, and risk falling from the home. The adults would take the family boat out to find privacy up to 100 metres away, a dreaded task, especially during storms. While Srey Lak admired the toilets some of the neighbors had, the family could not afford one and had no plans to install one.
The need for targeted subsidies
Around the Tonle Sap, while many households don’t have the means to ensure safe sanitation, some do. Some have the financial ability to adapt their home by elevating their land or building taller, strong latrine structures that stay above the water. Not everyone needs help. In such a context, when some families can afford toilets and others, like Srey Lak’s, can’t, a blanket solution for the community to receive toilets can have negative impacts. By providing everyone - including those who can afford a toilet - with a subsidy, development implementers risk undercutting local businesses and encouraging households to wait indefinitely for a subsidy of their own. The challenge is, how can implementers specifically target families like Ms Srey Lak’s, who truly need the support?
An innovative subsidy approach targeting climate vulnerable households
Through their Water for Women Impact and Innovation project, iDE and Causal Design are exploring this question. The team is implementing an action research project on adapting targeted sanitation subsidies for climate vulnerable households. This has involved first modifying iDE’s existing sanitation subsidy mechanism to target the most climate-vulnerable households for eligibility. The tool includes metrics for assessing vulnerability based on climate, socioeconomic, and gender factors. The subsidy mechanism has been trialed for seven months in a randomised controlled trial, with the goal of assessing if and how the subsidies make an impact on sanitation uptake among climate vulnerable households. Ultimately, with learnings from this research, iDE intends to scale a climate-vulnerable sanitation subsidy to its entire operating area.
As a sector, there is a need to develop, test and share practical, low-cost methods for identifying household level climate vulnerability. This is critical to reach the most vulnerable with climate-resilient sanitation and avoid leaving people behind. Market-sensitive approaches are imperative to ensure long-term sustainability of sanitation access after development implementers have left.
Before purchasing a toilet with the support of an iDE climate-targeted subsidy, the family were forced to hack into the bushland behind their home to find privacy
(iDE/ Miguel Jeronimo)
This story was first shared as part of the This is Water, WASH & Climate: Stories from Practice, on 22 June 2022 during the Water, WASH & Climate Virtual Symposium. It has since been edited with permission.
An inclusive community is a climate resilient community. In an uncertain and rapidly changing world, there is no greater priority than ensuring that water and WASH systems are future-proofed for climate resilience, social cohesion, accountability and wellbeing. Embedding the voice of women and marginalised people in water and WASH systems is one of the most effective pathways to strengthen equity and inclusion, so that the ‘invisible’ becomes visible, and valued. Valuing diversity, and diverse perspectives, strengthens prospects for a more climate resilient and socially cohesive future.
This story was first shared as part of the This is Water, WASH & Climate: Stories from Practice on 22 June 2022 during the Water, WASH & Climate Virtual Symposium. It has since been edited with permission. For more information about the session and Water & WASH Futures events visit https://washfutures.com/. Key Water and WASH Futures partners are the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the International WaterCentre, Water for Women, the Asian Development Bank and the Australian Water Partnership.
To learn more and continue the discussion on how to achieve SDG 6 in a changing climate, join us in Brisbane at the Water and WASH Futures Conference 13-17 February 2023.
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