Shit Matters: The Potential of Community-Led Total Sanitation

Sanitation remains one of the biggest development challenges of our time, and a long neglected issue associated with taboos and stigma. Despite growing attention and efforts, many top-down approaches to sanitation have failed, reflecting that simply providing people with a toilet does not necessarily guarantee its use. The Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach offers a more promising alternative, focusing on facilitating a profound change in people's behavior through participatory techniques. By raising local people's awareness of the linkages between open defecation and disease through the release of powerful emotions such as disgust and shame, they are encouraged to analyze their own sanitation situation and take action themselves.

With chapters by leading scholars and practitioners in sanitation policy and practice as well as critical reflections from key players in CLTS, Shit Matters offers important insights into the workings of CLTS on the ground, covering critical aspects of the social, ecological, technological, financial and institutional dynamics surrounding CLTS. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in development, health, public policy and sanitation issues. [authors abstract]