Soumya Balasubramanya

Evolution of households' responses to the groundwater arsenic crisis in Bangladesh: information on environmental health risks can have increasing behavioral impact over time

A national campaign of well testing through 2003 enabled households in rural Bangladesh to switch, at least for drinking, from high-arsenic wells to neighboring lower-arsenic wells. We study the well-switching dynamics over time by re-interviewing, in 2008, a randomly selected subset of households in the Araihazar region who had been interviewed in 2005. Contrary to concerns that the impact of arsenic information on switching behavior would erode over time, we find that not only was 2003-2005 switching highly persistent but also new switching by 2008 doubled the share of households at unsafe wells who had switched. The passage of time also had a cost: 22% of households did not recall test results by 2008. The loss of arsenic knowledge led to staying at unsafe wells and switching from safe wells. Our results support ongoing well testing for arsenic to reinforce this beneficial information.

Towards sustainable sanitation management: Establishing the costs and willingness to pay for emptying and transporting sludge in rural districts with high rates of access to latrines

Motivation Proper management of fecal sludge has significant positive health and environmental externalities. Most research on managing onsite sanitation so far either simulates the costs of, or the welfare effects from, managing sludge in situ in pit latrines. Thus, designing management strategies for onsite rural sanitation is challenging, because the actual costs of transporting sludge for treatment, and sources for financing these transport costs, are not well understood. Methods In this paper we calculate the actual cost of sludge management from onsite latrines, and identify the contributions that latrine owners are willing to make to finance the costs. A spreadsheet-based model is used to identify a cost-effective transport option, and to calculate the cost per household. Then a double-bound contingent valuation method is used to elicit from pit-latrine owners their willingness-to-pay to have sludge transported away. This methodology is employed for the case of a rural subdistrict in Bangladesh called Bhaluka, a unit of administration at which sludge management services are being piloted by the Government of Bangladesh. Results The typical sludge accumulation rate in Bhaluka is calculated at 0.11 liters/person/day and a typical latrine will need to be emptied approximately once every 3 to 4 years. The costs of emptying and transport are high; approximately USD 13 per emptying event (circa 14% of average monthly income); household contributions could cover around 47% of this cost. However, if costs were spread over time, the service would cost USD 4 per year per household, or USD 0.31 per month per household—comparable to current expenditures of rural households on telecommunications. Conclusion This is one of few research papers that brings the costs of waste management together with financing of that cost, to provide evidence for an implementable solution. This framework can be used to identify cost effective sludge management options and private contributions towards that cost in other (context-specific) administrative areas where onsite sanitation is widespread.

Impacts Assessments without True Baselines: Assessing the Relative Effects of Training on the Performance of Water User Associations in Southern Tajikistan

Conducting rigorous evaluations of whether the process of creating new institutions affects their performance of mandated duties presents several challenges. Not only is assignment to process often not random, but when the process of creating new institutions starts, outcomes and other performance-influencing covariates are not measurable because the yet-to-be created institutions are not functioning at baseline. This paper compares the performance of 74 ‘treated’ water user associations (WUAs) in Tajikistan that were created using a longer training process with 67 ‘control’ WUAs that were created using shorter training, to assess the impact of training on WUA performance of mandated duties. First, propensity scores were constructed to estimate the probabilities of being ‘treated’ by treatment status. These results guided the application of the difference-in-difference technique with right-hand side covariates in a context where field measures of outcomes and other performance-influencing covariates were made after the new institutions were created and functioning. The first measures were taken within 12–18 months of the new institutions being functional and the second measures were taken 24 months after the first. This choice of methods introduces a bias due to measurement error causing an underestimate of the treatment effects, while controlling for biases due to time-invariant and time-varying unobservables. An alternative method that only compared the differences in outcomes at a single point in time after the new institutions were created would have provided an inaccurate estimate of the effects of the intervention. This is a context in which methods such as synthetic controls are impossible to employ due to the nature of the intervention, other macroeconomic structural changes, and severe data restrictions. The methodology employed here generates evidence that, while biased toward generating an underestimate of effect, can still be useful and informative for policy and management purposes, and for evaluating the impact of process on the functioning of new institutions in transition settings.

Economic Incentives Can Enhance Policy Efforts to Improve Water Quality in Asia

This article describes the conceptual advantages of including economic incentives in the basket of policy alternatives available for motivating improvements in water quality. With a particular focus on Asia, we discuss the incentives available for encouraging reductions in point and nonpoint source pollutants in urban, rural, and peri-urban settings. Several countries in Asia are implementing some form of economic incentives, either directly, in the form of effluent taxes or subsidies, or in combination with regulatory measures that help to ensure water quality standards are achieved. We also describe the importance of institutional capacity and political will in support of economic incentives, and the increasing usefulness of incentive programmes as economies develop and expand. The discussion includes several examples of programmes in China and Thailand, along with observations from India, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines.