The dynamics and sustainability of Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS): mapping challenges and pathways

Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) represents a radical alternative to conventional top-down approaches to sanitation, and offers hope of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This paper deals in detail with the idea of dynamic systems, teasing out the ways in which socio-technical-ecological systems interact to produce particular outcomes.

The paper clarifies that CLTS is a novel approach that was pioneered in Bangladesh and then spread to other countries in Asia and Africa. It presents the following findings about CLTS:

• The CLTS approach is linked to comprehensive goals of poverty reduction and social justice
• CLTS does not offer pre-designed sanitary solutions but aims towards generating a drive for each community to build its own facilities, utilising local technologies and knowledges
• the stability and durability of CLTS is, to a large extent, determined by the force and permanence of behaviour change
• changes in landscape and environment shape people’s behaviour in profound ways, and affect the potential emergence of particular socio-technical regimes
• promoting CLTS is more difficult in situations of inequality and social diversity.
  

The authors recommend the following:

• in adopting a CLTS approach, it is essential to be sensitive to cultural and religious norms and practices
• gender relations need close investigation, and there is a need to devise designs that take into account the CLTS impacts on marginalised groups
• to have the desired impact of improving sanitation practices, other issues such as nutrition, drainage, and solid waste management should not be ignored
• relying on the presence of natural leaders and champions is needed not only at the community and district levels, but also at the national policy level.