ABSTRACT
Any assessment of the chances of meeting the Millennium Development target for water and sanitation must begin with three caveats. First is the need to distinguish between the target for water supply and that for sanitation. Although both targets are mutually reinforcing and equally important, meeting the sanitation target is the far more daunting challenge for a variety of reasons, including lack of political will and commitment at the highest level, low effective demand for sanitation among the unserved, inadequate financing, the lack of institutions at the national level responsible for sanitation, the relatively low pay and status associated with work in the sanitation field as opposed to work in other sectors, and nearly universal cultural taboos surrounding discussion (much less the handling) of human excreta. In addition, the scale of the problem is far greater for sanitation than for domestic water supply; more than twice as many people (2.6 billion) lack access to sanitation than lack access to water supply (1.1 billion) (WHO/UNICEF JMP 2000).
