CLTS

End of last week I learned about Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS).  It’s a movement that’s swept through the sanitation development sector in the last three or four years.  It emerged in response to the realization that the decades of subsidizing latrine building was not going to solve the sanitation issue.  There wasn’t enough money to build latrines for everyone, and those that were built were often left unused, locked or ended up broken.  People who’d been defecating in the bush for generations weren’t going to completely change their behaviors just because there was now a latrine.  In most cases, the villagers didn’t believe in the need for having a latrine.  If there’s no belief, there will be no behavior change. 

CLTS was pioneered in Bangladesh by Kamal Kar.  If you want to see a video about it, watch this.  It’s pretty interesting.  In short, CLTS is a behavior change model based on generating disgust and shame.  It’s about getting people to come to the realization that they are eating and drinking shit—their own shit and other people’s shit.  Only later in the process is health brought up—in terms of diarrheal illness that the community experiences and health costs related to them.  But primarily, it’s about eating shit.  The language used is coarse--shit, shit, shit.  Embarrassing people is encouraged. 

Interestingly for us, CLTS is repeatedly adamant about not explicitly advocating for the construction of latrines or for specific latrine models—people are supposed to come to the realization on their own that latrines will help them stop eating shit.  People are supposed to come up with their own solutions and designs to building latrines.  Note, however, that CLTS is not completely consistent with this because during a CLTS event, CLTS moderators draw a simple latrine as an example (albeit late in the day during the CLTS event).  And the CLTS training manual mentions that moderators can “share and explain about low and moderate cost latrine options. . . including the sources of their availability. . .”  I think that the CLTS theorists just don’t want to lead the whole effort with latrine designs and latrine advocacy.

Anyhow, CLTS is the big buzz amongst the Cambodian Ministry for Rural Development and the NGOs.  Though it has a few rules, CLTS is mostly open source, so each government and each NGO in each country has freedom to adapt it to more closely match their target populace and their own ideals.  I’m pretty certain the Ministry for Rural Development has made a few changes to the methodology, but I’m still tracking them down.  Not sure how major they are.  One thing I’m fairly certain of is that the resistance of CLTS to advocate for certain latrine designs is leading to some problems in Cambodia.  Amazingly enough, it turns out that if you don’t know how to properly built something, you usually do a pretty crappy job the first time.  And the second time.  And the third time.  Ever tried to build a chair?  How do you think your first one would come out?  

The CLTS insistence that villagers develop their own latrine designs and constructions is, in my opinion, flawed.  Most villagers are building dirt pit dry latrines.  They’re cost-free (minus self-labor) but they’re far from ideal for many reasons that I’ll get to in a later post.  But for now, it’s enough to know that a significant number of the dry pits built as a result of CLTS efforts have been collapsing due to soil instability during the wet season.  The villagers affected are left without proper sanitation for the rest of that wet season and have to redig a new pit the following year.  Often, the pit isn’t redug and the villagers return to open defecation.  When it is redug, it often collapses again the next wet season.  It’s not a sustainable sanitation approach here in Cambodia.  I’m not sure how to marry the IDE technology solutions with the agnosticism of CLTS, but I am sure that it needs to be done.

By wanting a $10-20 initial price-point, are we fighting the CLTS efforts?  How do we say that our $10-20 latrine is the first step when CLTS is saying that a hand-made dry pit is the first step?  Do we need a zero price-point (or $2-$5) design included in our material (i.e., a dry pit design with a dirt pit—maybe lined with local free bamboo—covered with a bamboo and clay slab with a thatch superstructure—cash expenditure only for nails and for a pipe for pit ventilation)?

I also wonder how this might affect the IDE marketing effort.  How closely will IDE work with CLTS?  Will IDE be in the villages at the same time as CLTS folks or shortly after?  When will IDE share its designs and how will that fit in with the CLTS philosophy?  Should IDE’s marketing efforts echo the same coarse language and push some of the same buttons as CLTS (disgust and shame)?  Given our premise of an upgradeable latrine (a stair-step model, if you will), is the first big step about not eating shit?