Entries from August 2008
El Salvador’s President Elías Antonio Saca and Environment Minister Carlos Guerrero launched this week the “Green Network” [Red Verde]. The Network seeks to get the private sector involved in environmental projects aimed at helping the nation’s neediest schools – in the process helping the quality of life for kids, helping the environment and contributing to mitigate the effects of global climate change.
The projects proposed by the Network address five areas: safe water; energy savings; school recycling; reforestation; and firewood saving.
The water project will involve providing schools identified as lacking access to clean water with a rainwater catchment system plus purifying filters.
Read more: Keith R., The Temas Blog, 28 Aug 2008 : MARN – Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales [in Spanish], 25 Aug 2008
Categories: El Salvador · School sanitation · Water collection · Water treatment
Tagged: corporate responsibility, rainwater harvesting, S0806-LAC, schools
Venezuelan government authorities expect potable water services to reach 100% of the population by 2010, said foreign relations deputy minister for Europe Alejandro Fleming said in a speech at Expo Zaragoza 2008.
Currently, 93% of the country’s population has access to potable water and has already reached the Millennium Development Goal for potable water coverage.
Venezuela is currently working on a desalination project to provide water to isolated communities on the country’s coast.
Fleming called on the rest of the world to follow his country’s example by making water part of the public domain that “can never be privatized”.
Source: BNamericas [subscription site], 27 Aug 2008
Categories: Policy & legislation · Venezuela
Tagged: water privatisation
Brazil’s Amazonas state will obtain a US$154 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to finance the construction of drainage, sewage, solid waste collection and disposal systems. The project will benefit people living in areas prone to flooding and waterborne disease in its capital, Manaus.
The project will finance works in the Igarapés of Educandos/Quarenta and São Raimundo watersheds, home to more than 600,000 people. The IDB loan will finance urban renewal and reorganization, including the construction of drainage, flood control structures and homes. It will also finance the execution of socio-cultural activities needed to resettle the families living in risky areas. Approximately 15,500 people will be free from the frequent flood impacts after the program’s completion.
By controlling the direct discharge of sewage and solid waste to the Igarapés, the program will also contribute to the improvement of the Igarapés’ water quality. The aim is to reduce the incidence of severe diarrhea by more than half, and the level of biodegradable organic matter (BOD5) from 240 mg/l to approximately 20 mg/l. Another outcome is the reduction in the number of squatter settlements by 5 percent in Manaus.
Source: IDB, 08 Aug 2008
Categories: Brazil · Financing
Tagged: Inter-American Development Bank, urban sanitation
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is moving forward with an ambitious portfolio of projects in Haiti, the nation that poses the greatest development challenges in the Western Hemisphere.
[...]
The Haitian government [ains to expand] coverage of potable water to 70% of the population by 2010, up from about half the population at present. The IDB, the leading source of financing for water projects in Haiti, has focused its activities in promoting institutional reform in the sector and expanding services in secondary cities and rural communities. It is also funding studies on water services in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan region.
A $54 million loan is financing the improvement of potable water services in Jacmel, Les Cayes, Ouanaminthe, Port-de-Paix and Saint-Marc. In Saint-Marc, $10 million in civil works have been completed and clean water is flowing to dozens of public water kiosks and to thousands of individual connections. Currently the Haitian government is holding a tender to select a consulting firm to provide technical advice to the SNEP utility on managing of Saint-Marc’s water system.
Work in the other four cities should be completed over the next two years. A favorable sign is that there now is a foreign company participating as a contractor. Until recently, one of the problems hindering progress of infrastructure projects was the lack of foreign competitors due to their perception of Haiti’s security risks. A Dominican firm and a Haitian firm are due to carry out a $7.4 million project in Port-de- Paix, which Public Works Minister Frantz Vérella estimates will be finished in 10 months.
Besides that urban program, late in 2006 the IDB approved a $15 million soft loan for a project to bring potable water and sanitation services to rural areas. Studies have been completed and construction is to begin by end-2008 in the region surrounding Jeremie, the largest city on Haiti’s southwestern coast. These small-scale projects will be carried out through a participatory process, in which local residents will decide whether to take part in the program, choose the systems best suited to their needs and their capacity to operate and maintain them, and establish local water user committees to run the services.
Source: IDB, 18 Jul 2008
Categories: Financing · Haiti · Rural WASH · Urban WASH
Tagged: Inter-American Development Bank
Bank will finance drainage, wastewater treatment and improve living conditions for 220,000 people in northern Brazil
The Belém municipality in northern Brazil will obtain US$68.7 million from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for a sanitation and urban environmental program in Estrada Nova watershed, which is home to about 220,000 people.
Read more: IDB, 09 Jul 2008
Categories: Brazil · Financing · Urban WASH
Tagged: Inter-American Development Bank
