A critical factor in the success of Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) in Asia and Africa is held to be that community members, after the initial stages of “ignition” and adoption of safe hygienic and sanitation practices, rise up the “sanitation ladder” to install and use better sanitation facilities. This, it is felt, is driven by two factors:

a) That the behaviour change associated with CLTS adoption is fully ingrained;

b) That households have more finance or resources as the health cost of diarrhoea and other illnesses associated with poor hygiene are reduced.

However, it has proven conceptually and practically difficult to differentiate between the forces that drive people to adopt CLTS in the first place from those which subsequently raise them up the sanitation ladder. In some cases the same force that starts the process ensures its continuation – but this need not always be so. Research to date has made some progress in identifying this process, but it is clear that more work is needed.

Initially, staff and consultants from the Village Education Resource Centre and WaterAid Bangladesh undertook a participatory multidisciplinary study. A total of 136 people (67 males and 69 females) provided data on 424 families. Of these families, 55 were classified as hardcore poor, 208 as poor, 158 as middle class and seven as rich. A summary of the outcome is in the box below.

People’s travel on the sanitation ladder – a summary

Despite regional variations and variations by category of families, it is clearly evident that people made significant upward movement on the sanitation ladder.

• Poor families (the largest single category, with 208 from the 424 sample) are the best performers in moving to upper rungs of the ladder.

• Middle class families are the second largest category (158 families) and represent the second highest performer.

• Hardcore poor (represented by 55 of the 424 sample) are relatively slow movers.

• The seven families identified as rich also moved towards better latrine options.

Every category of family showed gradual progression. Over a three year period, families invested resources in better latrine options, accompanied by better personal hygiene and community environmental cleanliness practices. Only 22 of the 424 families were using hygienic latrines in 2003, but all were doing so by the end of 2006.

It was hoped that each category of family would follow a gradual progress of replacing low-cost models as they expired with improved models, hand in hand with increasing health awareness, income, and reduction of waterborne diseases. However, this did not always happen - middle income families seemed to sustain a lower model of latrine for a longer period than other categories of users.

This article is based on text initially written by staff members from VERC and then reported, in edited form in Shayamal, S., Kashem, M. Rafi, M. and Ryan, P. (2008). Moving up the sanitation ladder : a participatory study of the drivers of sustainability and progress in community led total sanitation. In: Beyond construction : use by all : a collection of case studies from sanitation and hygiene promotion practitioners in South Asia. London, UK, WaterAid and Delft, The Netherlands, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. Available at http://www.irc.nl/content/download/133979/380876/file/ch-20.pdf

This article is an edited version prepared by Peter Ryan.

Tags: participatory management, rural wash, sanitation, south asia