The quest for safely managed sanitation for all in Bhutan

In a rural village in Bhutan, these two villagers are working together to build a new toilet for their household, which will provide safe sanitation and also protect the local groundwater from contamination.

Their village is part of Water for Women’s Beyond the Finish Line project with SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, which is accelerating safely managed sanitation services within the country’s national Rural Sanitation and Hygiene Programme (RSAHP), contributing to improved health conditions, wellbeing, gender-equality and social inclusion in eight districts. 

Bhutan has made significant progress in improving rural sanitation and hygiene in recent years, supported by high levels of ownership, uptake of innovations and an emerging WASH sector. However, like many developing nations, access to improved services and monitoring of safely managed WASH remains a challenge.

Safely managed water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) plays a vital role in protecting groundwater sources. When people practise open defecation or WASH infrastructure, such as septic tanks and sewers fail due to inadequate emptying or maintenance or are compromised by climate-related crises like flood and drought, groundwater can become polluted, rendering it unsafe for community use and harmful to the environment.

Australia proudly supports the Government of Bhutan's vision for all its citizens to have access to improved sanitation facilities by 2022.* Since commencing in 2018, the Beyond the Finish Line project has supported a more than 20 percent increase in safely managed sanitation services in seven of the eight districts under the program, where there is also no major difference in toilet ownership and sanitation standards for male and female-headed households, and the quality of facilities better in households with people with disabilities with 94 percent of these now using a safely managed sanitation facility. 

While Bhutan has one of the highest water availabilities per capita in the world, groundwater is important contributor to the water pool, scarce in rugged mountainous regions but tapped at an individual level in some flatter areas, including Punakha, one of the eight districts where the Beyond the Finish Line project is being implemented.¹

Water-related disease remains one of the major health concerns in the world, and groundwater pollution is a particular problem that can take decades or even centuries to recover from. 

Protecting and managing Bhutan’s water resources through inclusive, safely managed WASH will continue to be crucial in preventing water-borne diseases, limiting the transmission of illnesses, and ensuring a climate-resilient and sustainable future for all.

Photo: SNV Netherlands Development Organisation / Aidan Dockery

^1. https://kuenselonline.com/abstraction-of-groundwater-in-mountainous-regions/ and https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/190540/water-bhutan-future.pdf [p55]