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A INFORMAL UPDATE PAPER ON THE STATUS OF COMMUNITY LED TOTAL SANITATION (CLTS) IN NEPAL By Chrissie Wellington, 2005 Introduction and background Safe drinking water and adequate sanitation are the basic right of every citizen and are vital for improving health and alleviating poverty. In adopting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) countries pledged to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015. Although Nepal has shown some progress in improving access to drinking water, the country remains plagued by extremely low levels of sanitation. The population with adequate access to sanitation was only 27% in 2002 (WHO/UNICEF, 2004). Inadequate access to safe water combined with poor sanitation and personal hygiene practices have detrimentally impacted upon the health and quality of life of millions of Nepalis, especially the poorest and most vulnerable. In the Tenth Plan, His Majesty’s Government of Nepal (HMGN) declared its intention to provide sanitation facilities to 7.421 million people (5.613 million from rural and 1.808 million from urban areas) by 2007. It is recognised that the “[d]evelopment of this sector will…produce healthy manpower, additional income generation and less health expenditure on treatment of diseases” (National Planning Commission, 2002). Despite the best efforts of many agencies working in Nepal, new approaches to expanding sanitation provision are still needed if the government is to meet its targets and the needs of its people. Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is an innovative approach that empowers local communities to stop open defecation and to build and use latrines without external hardware subsidies. Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tools are used to help the community understand the poor sanitation situation and the associated impacts. Motivated by a sense of disgust and shame communities themselves commit to improving the situation by whatever means are available. The role of the NGO is to facilitate this process. The pioneer and leading advocate of CLTS is Dr Kamal Kar who initiated the first pilot of CLTS in 2000 in a small community in Bangladesh, while working as a participatory development consultant for WaterAid Bangladesh in collaboration with the Village Education Resource Centre (VERC). Kamal Kar has since facilitated the spread of CLTS to other areas of Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Indonesia, China, Mongolia, Nepal and Uganda. The key principles, processes and experiences in Bangladesh were documented in the seminal IDS Working Paper by Dr Kar entitled ‘Subsidy or self-respect? Participatory total community sanitation in Bangladesh’ (Kar, 2003). Subsequent publications, including a draft update of Working Paper 184, are detailed in the reference list at the end of this paper. CLTS in Nepal In July 2004, following a visit to Nepal by Kamal Kar, a small number of INGOs/NGOs - namely WaterAid Nepal, Plan Nepal and Nepal Water for Health (Newah) 1 – took the 1 Note that Newah are the local implementing partner for WaterAid’s projects, and two of those implemented by Plan Nepal.