A warm welcome to you all in Surabaya for what will be an important conference for IWA and for wider sanitation sector development.

In peri-urban areas in low-income countries, conventional centralized approaches to wastewater management have generally failed to address the needs of communities for the collection and disposal of domestic wastewater and faecal sludges from on-site sanitation. Not surprisingly, the demand for well operating, efficient and affordable wastewater treatment systems is therefore increasing internationally, especially in regions where adequate wastewater treatment systems do not exist and uncontrolled discharge of wastewater endangers environmental health and water resources.

The potential for growth in this area is vast. New policy and environmental regulations passed by many governments imply that those discharging wastewaters (such as small and medium enterprises and housing estates) will be held responsible for wastewater pollution and must therefore treat wastewater adequately on-site prior to discharge to the environment. There is a growing body of science and practice which demonstrates the opportunities for implementing wastewater management systems, based on a decentralized approach that may lead to wastewater re-use and resource recovery as well as improvements in local environmental health conditions. Decentralized approaches also offer increased opportunities for local stakeholder participation in planning and decision-making.

This focus of this conference – on not only the technical, engineering components for decentralised systems, but on the social, institutional and financial variables – is timely and much in demand.

It remains for me to thank you, our members, partners and sponsors, our cooperation with BORDA, and the many supporting organizations and donors, in making this event possible.

Despite the increasing likeliness that the millennium development goals related to water sanitation will not be achieved, large scale investments have been made over the last decade for sanitation infrastructure, especially for centralized sewerage systems and wastewater treatment plants in urban areas and for low-cost on-site sanitation systems in poor urban and rural areas. Whereas high costs and low-connection rates cloud the sustainability and expected positive impacts of the latter effort, a lack of initial informed choice and inconvenient use and maintenance of facilities can be attributed to the former efforts directed at the poor.

On the other hand, intermediate decentralized waste water treatment solutions and modular combinations of wastewater treatment technology and sanitation services have gained importance during the last decade throughout low- and medium term income countries in the south. Technical advancement and innovation in the field of infrastructure and equipment design, fabrication and implementation have increased efficiency and effectiveness of hardware, whereas systematic and standardized procedures have been developed and successfully tested to increase community participation and involvement.

In Indonesia, a multi-stakeholder collaboration of independent service providers, national sector decision making institutions, municipal actors and community representatives have successfully shown within the “Sanitation by Communities Program”, SANIMAS, that decentralized wastewater treatment and sanitation services can be successfully established as third innovative option besides “centralized” and “on-site” services.

As co-hosts of the conference in one of the “hub” of DEWATS, Indonesia, we look forward to a fruitful exchange of good and best practices between practitioners, sector decision makers and researchers to promote and mainstream decentralised wastewater treatment and sanitation services further as a professional option within the sector.