Decentralised Sanitation And Wastewater Treatment

Introduction
Presently, 1.1 billion people lack access to improved water supply and 2.6 billion to improved sanitation. In the vicious poverty/ill-health circle, inadequate water supply and sanitation are both underlying cause and outcome: invariably, those who lack adequate and affordable water supplies are the poorest in society (Cit. UNESCO World Water
Development Report, 2006). In 2002, the estimated mortality rate due to water sanitation hygieneassociated diarrhoeas and other water/sanitation-associated diseases was
57,029,000. A large part of those affected by water-related mortality and morbidity are children under five (Cit. UNESCO World Water Development Report, 2006).
The United Nations have declared 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation (IYS) to address this preventable tragedy by raising awareness for the global sanitation crisis which consists one of the major obstacles to human development in many developing countries. BGR, as the German implementation agency for development cooperation in the groundwater sector, addresses sanitation issues since long time in many projects from the angle of groundwater protection. Lacking or insufficient sanitation
facilities threaten the quality of groundwater resources which provide drinking water to many people. The vicious circle of dissipating pollutants and contaminated drinking water is shown in the figure.