Agenda 21 envisages a growth pattern that will be environmentally sound and will ensure equity for all. This is considered absolutely essential to relieve the great poverty that is deepening in the developing world. But this hope depends on decisive political action to now begin managing resources to ensure both sustainable human progress-and survival. In the Calcutta wetlands, treating wastewater as a resource instead of a pollutant clearly meets the challenge of finding a growth model for a sustainable future. The time is ripe to switch from the capital-intensive programs of the past to a sustainable alternative where money need not be a constraint.
Rural women collect the snails for money, and ducks feed on the snails.
Duck droppings are good for the fish. Municipal sanitation in many cases depends on multinational financing, and it is an obligation of the funding agencies to fulfill the United Nations mandate to avoid the prevailing top-down approach in favor of consultation at the community level and infusion of community wisdom. Still, institutionalising community involvement is a recent concept, and it has not been easy to achieve. It will need a deeper understanding of the interests that bind individual groups and market forces. This is the kind of perceptual change that does not easily come to the classical mindset of those who promote development.