Drinking water supply and sanitation services on the threshold of the xxist century

The paper analyses the status of drinking water supply and sanitation services in Latin America and the Caribbean at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The first section of the study consists of an analysis of access to water and sanitation. Wastewater treatment is lagging behind, and there are still serious deficiencies in access to services especially for low-income groups and in rural areas. These have negative impacts on the health of the population but also affect the environment, the economy, and the availability of water for various uses. The second section contains an analysis of the reforms carried out in recent years. The reforms in the various countries have shown many common features: institutional separation of the functions of sectoral policy-making, economic regulation and systems administration; extension and consolidation of the decentralization process in the provision of services; a general interest in promoting private participation; formulation of new regulatory frameworks; and the requirement, since the crisis of the 1980s, that services should move towards being self-financing, and when that occurs, that subsidy arrangements should be set up for low-income groups.