O sanitation it constitutes a set of infrastructures and measures adopted by the government in order to generate better living conditions for the population. In Brazil, this concept is established by law No. 11.445/07, comprising the set of structural services of water supply, sanitary sewage, solid waste management and cleaning and drainage of garbage and rainwater urban areas.
In general terms, we can say that in the last 20 years, the diffusion of basic sanitation services in Brazil has undergone profound advances. However, there are still many problems, mainly related to regional inequalities regarding the availability of infrastructure, a reflection of the uneven development of the territory Brazilian.
Data from the National Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) state that 98% of the Brazilian population has access to drinking water, but about 17% of all households do not have a piped water supply, having access to this resource through cisterns, rivers and weirs. In a division between city and countryside, there is a difference: 99% of the urban population has access to drinking water, while in rural areas, this rate drops to 84%.
The population with access to the sanitary system or septic tank is smaller, around 79% in 2010, which reveals the large number of households located in locations with open sewers. In addition, around 14% of the country's inhabitants do not benefit from the garbage collection service and 2.5% do not have electricity supply.
Regional inequalities in these matters are striking. While the most developed cities in the country, such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, present indices of sewage treatment of 93%, other capitals, such as Belém (7.7%) and Macapá (5.5%), do not enjoy the same privilege.
In addition, there is also intra-urban inequality (that is, within cities), with an absence of water, sewage and even electricity services in suburbs and slums. According to international human rights premises, depriving groups of people of basic services like these for the simple fact of not being legal owners of their lands constitutes a crime and an aggression to the humanity.
However, the weight of fees and taxes charged by the State for the maintenance of these services does not follow a properly established proportion. This means that the amounts charged weigh more on the pockets of the poorer populations than on the richer population. For the United Nations, the ideal would be that these charges do not exceed 5% of the family budget, which does not happen in most cases today.
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The National Basic Sanitation Plan (Plansab)
With the scope of changing the situation of basic sanitation in Brazil, the Brazilian government instituted the Plansab (National Basic Sanitation Plan), which consists of a set of goals and objectives to transform the reality of this sector in the country. Among these goals are some of the Millennium Goals, implemented by the UN, which are: a) to reduce by half, by 2015, the proportion of inhabitants without access to water and basic sanitation; b) significantly improve the living conditions of 100 million people living in slums by the year 2020.
In addition, another stipulated goal is to achieve the universalization of basic sanitation structures throughout the country by the year 2033. However, this effort, according to estimates by bodies such as the Instituto Trata Brasil, requires an investment of at least R$15 billion per year, while the State has been investing, on average, R$9 billion.
On the other hand, the forecasts established by Plansab reveal an estimate of R$508.4 billion reais between 2014 and 2033. These values are expected to meet structural needs by the end of this period.
The most important thing about this issue, from now on, in addition to the intensification of investments public at the federal, state and municipal levels, is the popular pressure for the democratization of services Sanitary. A 2013 UN report revealed that only one in four people without basic sanitation complains for their rights, which reveals the need for greater mobilization to meet this type of demand.
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¹ Image Credits: Valter Campanato/ABr and Wikimedia Commons
By Rodolfo Alves Pena
Graduated in Geography
