How Paraguay became one of the countries that best distributes water in the world

There is no more vital resource for human beings than water. However, today access to this precious asset is highly inequitable.

According to the United Nations Organization (UN), today a quarter of humanity does not have access to a safe source of water.

Look: Paraguay: the mayor who was riddled with bullets by hitmen dies, after five days of agony

It is the poorest population in the world. And it is that, in general, access to water is determined by economic capacity.

The richer a country is, the wider its coverage network. And, in developing or underdeveloped countries, the wealthiest populations have more water availability than the poorest, and the urban ones more than the rural ones.

But this does not happen everywhere. There is one country in particular that is considered an example that you don’t have to be rich to be able to provide water equally to the entire population.

In this note we explain how Paraguaya small Mediterranean country anchored between Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia, managed to guarantee universal access to water for its population, with a more equitable distribution than that of the wealthiest countries in the region.

“A Question of Governance”

Part of the problem with access to water has to do with the fact that it is a scarce commodity.

Although our planet contains more water than land, more than 97% is salt water, not suitable for human consumption or irrigation.

And of that 3% of fresh water, two thirds is frozen, either in glaciers or ice.

This means that the almost 8 billion inhabitants of the planet depend either on the very few sources of non-salty surface water (lakes, swamps and rivers, which represent less than 1% of the total fresh water) or on the underground waterwhich is our main source.

GETTY IMAGES

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “groundwater provides half of all the water used by households around the world, a quarter of all the water used for irrigation agriculture and a third of the water supply. water required for industry”.

But to take advantage of this resource under the ground – in the places where it exists – equipment and investment are required, and to bring it to homes, a distribution network must be built.

This is why the human factor is key to explaining the inequities that exist in access to water.

“The global water crisis today is primarily a governance issue rather than resource availability“, recently assured the regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Luis Felipe López-Calva.

“Water is a basic service and a human right that States must guarantee equally to all citizens, regardless of where they live in the territory or how much they can pay for the service,” he said.

López-Calva denounced that “in Latin America and the Caribbean, as in much of the world, access to water continues to be very uneven“.

But he stressed that “these inequalities are not inevitable,” and as an example he cited Paraguay.

The 15th largest economy in Latin America has “almost universal coverage of access to drinking water,” he noted.

But Paraguay’s merits do not end there, he said. Compared to other Latin American nations that also guarantee a basic service to almost their entire population, such as Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, this South American country stands out for being the one that distributes water more evenly.

“In Latin America and the Caribbean, as in much of the world, access to water continues to be very unequal,” the UNDP regional director recently warned. (GETTY IMAGES)

“In Paraguay there is less than 2 percentage points of difference in access to water between rural/urban areas or between the richest/poorest groups,” said the UNDP official.

This makes it the country in the region with more equitable access to water.

And not just from the region. Paraguay has also been recognized by the NGO Water Aid for being one of the countries in the world that has increased the distribution of water to rural regions the most.

At the beginning of this century, about half of the inhabitants of these areas had access to this precious resource, a figure that today doubled.

A Water Aid spokeswoman told BBC Mundo that, according to the most recent figures compiled in 2020 by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program for water supply, sanitation and hygiene (JMP), the 99.6% of Paraguayans have at least “basic access” to water.

how they did it

The engineer Sara López, the person most responsible for guaranteeing access to drinking water in the country, explained that the key to success was a law enacted 50 years ago by the then de facto government of Alfredo Stroessner.

Law 369, of 1972, created the body that López directs today: the National Environmental Sanitation Service of Paraguay (Senasa).

But it is not the typical government agency that is responsible for distributing water.

Because the same law implemented a new community model that decentralized water managementcreating a new figure: the Sanitation Boardswho receive technical assistance and training from Senasa.

“They are community organizations made up of residents of each locality, and they are the ones who operate and maintain the water systems,” López told BBC Mundo.

Assembly of a Sanitation Board in Paraguay. (SENASA)

The official estimated that Paraguay currently operates some 4,000 Sanitation Boardsranging from the smallest, in the smallest towns, to the largest, which are responsible for bringing water to up to 50,000 inhabitants.

There are also another 1,000 Sanitation Commissions, as the community groups that have not yet obtained the legal status granted by the Ministry of Public Health and Social Welfare, on which Senasa depends, are known.

And it is that another peculiarity of the water law is that it placed the body that is in charge of supervising the distribution of this precious resource under the orbit of that portfolio, since, according to López, access to a safe water source is a topic of “preventive health”.

Sanitation Boards

López explained that the Boards are made up of just five people: a president, vice president, secretary, treasurer and member, who are elected through a Constituent Assembly.

“They work ad honorem, they do not receive a salary or per diem and are replaced every five years,” he said.

Nevertheless, operate “as a commercial company, hiring operators, administrators, technicians and plumbers” among others.

These professionals do receive a salary, which is obtained from the rates charged for water.

“There is a basic rate for basic monthly consumption, which is 12,000 to 15,000 liters per month, and whoever uses more pays more,” the official said.

As for prices, “the first rate is defined with the help of Senasa, but later each Assembly determines the prices.”

SENASA

Lopez comments that “water is cheap in Paraguay”since an average of US$3 is paid for 12,000 liters.

How is the water obtained?

“The Sanitation Boards can operate the systems because they are simple,” the official explained.

“A well of more or less than 150 meters is drilled and the water is pumped to an elevated tank, from where it is distributed by gravity. It does not need any other type of pumping,” he says.

The drilling is in charge of Senasa, which also usually provides the water tanks.

“The system is simple to operate and maintain for people who are not very qualified,” the official points out.

“As the water that comes out of the well is of good qualitythe only thing we ask is that the system be disinfected,” he says.

For his part, Walter Godoy, Senasa’s project assistant, explained to BBC Mundo that the State finances 82% of the workswhile the communities provide the rest.

“15% of the community’s costs is the labor to install the pipes and the land where they are installed, and only 3% is paid in cash, which is equivalent to between US$70 and US$100,” he said.

The communities are responsible for installing the pipe. (SENASA)

“In indigenous communities, the State finances 100% of the works,” he added.

This virtuous community system, which takes advantage of the availability of groundwater, has allowed Paraguay double access to safe water in a few decades.

“In 1990 we had coverage of 50% of the country, but with this model we were able to rapidly and strongly increase coverage throughout the republic,” says López.

“If we compare this increase with that experienced by other countries, Paraguay stands out as one of the most improved countries in the world“, highlighted López-Calva, from the UNDP.

“This change is not the result of a sudden increase in the amount of water available in the country, but the result of intentional investments to improve water governance,” he stressed.

Sara López, director general of Senasa, and the Paraguayan president, Mario Abdo Benítez, receive recognition from the Ñupy San Rafael community, after inaugurating a new water well. (SENASA)

What’s missing

Although the system of Sanitation Boards has allowed Paraguay to bring water to almost its entire population, there is a small strip that continues to be excluded, admits the general director of Senasa.

“In the eastern region of the country, where 97% of the population lives, there is abundant groundwater and there the most vulnerable and most dispersed populations are covered, but in the Paraguayan Chaco, in the east, there are many indigenous communities, some 200,000 people, and there the source is more difficult because groundwater is salty“, he explained.

For this reason, the main source of water there is the collection of rainwater, a process made difficult by the extreme drought that the region has experienced in the last two years.

The indigenous communities of the Chaco use tanks to collect rainwater, which function as community cisterns. (SENASA)

“I think that in the Chaco we are not reaching the poorest populations, at least not in a sustainable way, because we arrived, but after a while we have to return,” lamented the official.

“This is the pending matterwhere we must make greater effort”.

Source: Elcomercio