Universal basic income

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income 

In 2013, eight million 5-cent coins (one per inhabitant) were dumped on the Bundesplatz, Bern to support the 2016 Swiss referendum for a basic income (which was rejected, 77%–23%).

Universal basic income (UBI), also called unconditional basic income, citizen's basic income, basic income guarantee, basic living stipend, guaranteed annual income, universal income security program or universal demogrant, is a sociopolitical financial transfer concept in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive a legally stipulated and equal financial grant paid by the government without a means test. A basic income can be implemented nationally, regionally, or locally. If the level is sufficient to meet a person's basic needs (i.e., at or above the poverty line), it is sometimes called a full basic income; if it is less than that amount, it may be called a partial basic income.

There are several welfare arrangements that can be viewed as related to basic income. Many countries have something like a basic income for children. Pension may be partly similar to basic income. There are also quasi-basic income systems, like Bolsa Familia in Brazil, which is conditional and concentrated on the poor, or the Thamarat Program in Sudan, which was introduced by the transitional government to ease the effects of the economic crisis inherited from the Bashir regime. The Alaska Permanent Fund is essentially a partial basic income, which averages $1,600 annually per resident (in 2019 currency). The negative income tax (NIT) can be viewed as a basic income in which citizens receive less and less money until this effect is reversed the more a person earns.

Several political discussions are related to the basic income debate, including those regarding automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and the future of the necessity of work. A key issue in these debates is whether automation and AI will significantly reduce the number of available jobs and whether a basic income could help prevent or alleviate such problems by allowing everyone to benefit from a society's wealth, as well as whether a UBI could be a stepping stone to a resource-based or post-scarcity economy. The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic prompted some countries to send direct payments to citizens.

History

See also: Basic income around the world

Antiquity

See also: Cura Annonae

In an early example, Trajan, emperor of Rome from 98–117 AD, personally gave 650 denarii (equivalent to perhaps US$260 in 2002) to all common Roman citizens who applied.

16th to 18th century

In his Utopia (1516), English statesman and philosopher Sir Thomas More depicts a society in which every person receives a guaranteed income. Spanish scholar Johannes Ludovicus Vives (1492–1540) proposed that the municipal government should be responsible for securing a subsistence minimum to all its residents "not on the grounds of justice but for the sake of a more effective exercise of morally required charity." Vives also argued that to qualify for poor relief, the recipient must "deserve the help he or she gets by proving his or her willingness to work." In the late 18th century, English Radical Thomas Spence and English-born American philosopher Thomas Paine both had ideas in the same direction.

Paine authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution. He is also the author of Agrarian Justice, published in 1797. In it, he proposed concrete reforms to abolish poverty. In particular, he proposed a universal social insurance system comprising old-age pensions and disability support and universal stakeholder grants for young adults, funded by a 10% inheritance tax focused on land.

Early 20th century

Around 1920, support for basic income started growing, primarily in England.

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) argued for a new social model that combined the advantages of socialism and anarchism, and that basic income should be a vital component in that new society.

Dennis and Mabel Milner, a Quaker married couple of the Labour Party, published a short pamphlet entitled "Scheme for a State Bonus" (1918) that argued for the "introduction of an income paid unconditionally on a weekly basis to all citizens of the United Kingdom." They considered it a moral right for everyone to have the means to subsistence, and thus it should not be conditional on work or willingness to work.

C. H. Douglas was an engineer who became concerned that most British citizens could not afford to buy the goods that were produced, despite the rising productivity in British industry. His solution to this paradox was a new social system he called social credit, a combination of monetary reform and basic income.

In 1944 and 1945, the Beveridge Committee, led by the British economist William Beveridge, developed a proposal for a comprehensive new welfare system of social insurance, means-tested benefits, and unconditional allowances for children. Committee member Lady Rhys-Williams argued that the incomes for adults should be more like a basic income. She was also the first to develop the negative income tax model. Her son Brandon Rhys Williams proposed a basic income to a parliamentary committee in 1982, and soon after that in 1984, the Basic Income Research Group, now the Citizen's Basic Income Trust, began to conduct and disseminate research on basic income.

Late 20th century

In his 1964 State of the Union address, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson introduced legislation to fight the "war on poverty". Johnson believed in expanding the federal government's roles in education and health care as poverty reduction strategies. In this political climate the idea of a guaranteed income for every American also took root. Notably, a document, signed by 1200 economists, called for a guaranteed income for every American. Six ambitious basic income experiments started up on the related concept of negative income tax. Succeeding President Richard Nixon explained its purpose as "to provide both a safety net for the poor and a financial incentive for welfare recipients to work." Congress eventually approved a guaranteed minimum income for the elderly and the disabled.

In the mid-1970s the main competitor to basic income and negative income tax, the Earned income tax credit (EITC), or its advocates, won over enough legislators for the US Congress to pass laws on that policy. In 1986, the Basic Income European Network, later renamed to Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), was founded, with academic conferences every second year. Other advocates included the green political movement, as well as activists and some groups of unemployed people.

In the latter part of the 20th century, discussions were held around automatization and jobless growth, the possibility of combining economic growth with ecological sustainable development, and how to reform the welfare state bureaucracy. Basic income was interwoven in these and many other debates. During the BIEN academic conferences there were papers about basic income from a wide variety of perspectives, including economics, sociology, and human right approaches.

21st century

In recent years the idea has come to the forefront more than before. The Swiss referendum about basic income in Switzerland 2016 was covered in media worldwide, despite its rejection. Famous business people like Elon Musk and Andrew Yang have lent their support, as have high-profile politicians like Jeremy Corbyn.

In the US Democratic Party primaries, a newcomer, Andrew Yang, touted basic income as his core policy. His policy, referred to as a "Freedom Dividend", would have provided American citizens US$1000 a month.

Response to COVID-19

As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic and related economic impact, basic income and similar proposals such as helicopter money and cash transfers were increasingly discussed across the world. Most countries have implemented forms of partial unemployment schemes, which effectively subsidized workers' incomes without work requirement. Some countries like the United States, Spain, Hong Kong and Japan introduced direct cash transfers to citizens.

In Europe, a petition calling for an "emergency basic income" gathered more than 200,000 signatures, and polls suggested widespread support in public opinion for it. Unlike the various stimulus packages of the US administration, the EU's stimulus plans did not include any form of income-support policies.

Basic income vs negative income tax

Two ways of looking at basic income when combined with a flat income tax, both of which result in the same net income (orange line). 1. (red) stipend with conventional tax for income above the stipend. 2. (blue) Negative tax for low-income people and conventional tax for high-income people.

The diagram shows a basic income/negative tax system combined with flat income tax (the same percentage in tax for every income level).

Y is here the pre-tax salary given by the employer and y' is the net income.

Negative income tax

For low earnings there is no income tax in the negative income tax system. They receive money, in the form of a negative income tax, but they don't pay any tax. Then, as their labour income increases, this benefit, this money from the state, gradually decreases. That decrease is to be seen as a mechanism for the poor, instead of the poor paying tax.

Basic income

That is however not the case in the corresponding basic income system in the diagram. There everyone typically pays income taxes. But on the other hand everyone also gets the same amount in basic income.

But the net income is the same

But, as the orange line in the diagram shows, the net income is anyway the same. No matter how much or how little one earns, the amount of money one gets in one's pocket is the same, regardless of which of these two systems is used.

Basic income and negative income tax are generally seen to be similar in economic net effects, but there are some differences:

• Psychological. Philip Harvey accepts that "both systems would have the same redistributive effect and tax earned income at the same marginal rate" but does not agree that "the two systems would be perceived by taxpayers as costing the same".
• Tax profile. Tony Atkinson made a distinction based on whether the tax profile was flat (for basic income) or variable (for NIT).
• Timing. Philippe Van Parijs states that "the economic equivalence between the two programs should not hide that the fact that they have different effects on recipients because of the different timing of payments: ex-ante in Basic Income, ex-post in Negative Income Tax".

Perspectives and arguments

Play media

Short film explaining different arguments for UBI

Basic income and automation

There is a prevailing opinion that we are in an era of technological unemployment – that technology is increasingly making skilled workers obsolete.

Prof. Mark MacCarthy (2014)

One central rationale for basic income is the belief that automation and robotisation could lead to a world with fewer paid jobs. U.S. presidential candidate and nonprofit founder Andrew Yang has stated that automation caused the loss of 4 million manufacturing jobs and advocated for a UBI (which he calls a Freedom Dividend) of $1,000/month rather than worker retraining programs. Yang has stated that he is heavily influenced by Martin Ford. Ford, in his turn, believes that the emerging technologies will fail to deliver a lot of employment; on the contrary, because the new industries will "rarely, if ever, be highly labor-intensive". Similar ideas have been debated many times before in history—that "the machines will take the jobs"—so the argument is not new. But what is quite new is the existence of several academic studies that do indeed forecast a future with substantially less employment, in the decades to come. Additionally, President Barack Obama has stated that he believes that the growth of artificial intelligence will lead to increased discussion around the idea of "unconditional free money for everyone".

Basic income and economics

Some proponents of UBI have argued that basic income could increase economic growth because it would sustain people while they invest in education to get higher-skilled and well-paid jobs. However, there is also a discussion of basic income within the degrowth movement, which argues against economic growth.

The cost of basic income is one of the biggest questions in the public debate as well as in the research. But the cost depends on many things. It first and foremost depends on the level of the basic income as such, and it also depends on many technical points regarding exactly how it is constructed. According to Karl Widerquist it also depends heavily on what one means with the concept of "cost".

Basic income and work

Many critics of basic income argue that people in general will work less, which in turn means less tax revenue and less money for the state and local governments. Although it is difficult to know for sure what will happen if a whole country introduces basic income, there are nevertheless some studies who have attempted to look at this question.

• In negative income tax experiments in the United States in the 1970 there was a five percent decline in the hours worked. The work reduction was largest for second earners in two-earner households and weakest for primary earners. The reduction in hours was higher when the benefit was higher.
• In the Mincome experiment in rural Dauphin, Manitoba, also in the 1970s, there were slight reductions in hours worked during the experiment. However, the only two groups who worked significantly less were new mothers, and teenagers working to support their families. New mothers spent this time with their infant children, and working teenagers put significant additional time into their schooling.
• A study from 2017 showed no evidence that people worked less because of the Iranian subsidy reform (a basic income-reform).

Regarding the question of basic income vs jobs there is also the aspect of so-called welfare traps. Proponents of basic income often argue that with a basic income, unattractive jobs would necessarily have to be better paid and their working conditions improved, so that people still do them without need, reducing these traps.

Philosophy and morality

By definition, universal basic income does not make a distinction between "deserving" and "undeserving" individuals when making payments. Opponents argue that this lack of discrimination is unfair: "Those who genuinely choose idleness or unproductive activities cannot expect those who have committed to doing productive work to subsidize their livelihood. Responsibility is central to fairness." Proponents argue that this lack of discrimination is a way to reduce social stigma.

Basic income, health and poverty

The first comprehensive systematic review of the health impact of basic income (or rather unconditional cash transfers in general) in low- and middle-income countries, a study which included 21 studies of which 16 were randomized controlled trials, found a clinically meaningful reduction in the likelihood of being sick by an estimated 27%. Unconditional cash transfers, according to the study, may also improve food security and dietary diversity. Children in recipient families are also more likely to attend school and the cash transfers may increase money spent on health care.

The Canadian Medical Association passed a motion in 2015 in clear support of basic income and for basic income trials in Canada.

Academics on basic income

See also: List of advocates of basic income

Economists

• James Meade advocated for a social dividend scheme funded by publicly owned productive assets.
• Bertrand Russell argued for a basic income alongside public ownership as a means of shortening the average working day and achieving full employment.
• Guy Standing has proposed financing a social dividend from a democratically accountable sovereign wealth fund built up primarily from the proceeds of a tax on rentier income derived from ownership or control of assets—physical, financial, and intellectual. Standing also generally argues that basic income would be a much simpler and more transparent welfare system.
• Douglas Rushkoff, a professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at the City University of New York, has stated that he sees basic income as a sophisticated way for corporations to get richer at the expense of public money.
• Milton Friedman, world famous economist, supported UBI by reasoning that it would help to reduce poverty. He said: "The virtue of [a negative income tax] is precisely that it treats everyone the same way. [...] [T]here's none of this unfortunate discrimination among people."
• Eric Maskin has stated that "a minimum income makes sense, but not at the cost of eliminating Social Security and Medicare".
  
• Simeon Djankov, professor at the London School of Economics, argues the costs of a generous system are prohibitive.
• Ailsa McKay, a Scottish economist, has argued that basic income is a way to promote gender equality. She has specifically argued that "social policy reform should take account of all gender inequalities and not just those relating to the traditional labor market" and that "the citizens' basic income model can be a tool for promoting gender-neutral social citizenship rights".

Other academics

• Erik Olin Wright argues that basic income will empower labor by giving the workers greater bargaining power.
• Harry Shutt proposed basic income and other measures to make most or all businesses collective rather than private. These measures would create a post-capitalist economic system.
• Philippe Van Parijs, a Belgian philosopher, has argued that basic income at the highest sustainable level is needed to support real freedom, or the freedom to do whatever one "might want to do".
• Karl Widerquist and others have proposed a theory of freedom in which basic income is needed to protect the power to refuse work.
• Frances Fox Piven argues that an income guarantee would benefit all workers by liberating them from the anxiety that results from the "tyranny of wage slavery" and provide opportunities for people to pursue different occupations and develop untapped potentials for creativity.
• André Gorz, a French sociologist, saw basic income as a necessary adaptation to the increasing automation of work, yet basic income also enables workers to overcome alienation in work and life and to increase their amount of leisure time.

Pilot programs and experiments

Main article: Basic income pilots

 

Omitara, one of the two poor villages in Namibia where a local basic income was tested in 2008–2009

Since the 1960s, but in particular since 2010, several pilot programs and experiments on basic income have been conducted. Some examples include:

1960s−1970s

• Experiments with negative income tax in United States and Canada in the 1960s and 1970s.
• The province of Manitoba, Canada experimented with Mincome, a basic guaranteed income, in the 1970s. In the town of Dauphin, Manitoba, labor only decreased by 13%, much less than expected.

2000−2009

• The basic income grant in Namibia, launched in 2008 and ended in 2009.
• An independent pilot implemented in São Paulo, Brazil launched in 2009.

2010−2019

• Basic income trials run in 2011-2012 in several villages in India, whose government has proposed a guaranteed basic income for all citizens. It was found that basic income in the region raised the education rate of young people by 25%.
• Iran introduced a national basic income program in autumn 2010. It is paid to all citizens and replaces the gasoline subsidies, electricity and some food products, that the country applied for years to reduce inequalities and poverty. The sum corresponded in 2012 to approximately US$40 per person per month, US$480 per year for a single person and US$2,300 for a family of five people.
• In Spain, the ingreso mínimo vital, the income guarantee system, is an economic benefit guaranteed by the social security in Spain, but in 2016 was considered in need of reform.
• The GiveDirectly experiment in a disadvantaged village of Nairobi, Kenya, the longest-running basic income pilot as of November 2017, which is set to run for 12 years.
• A project called Eight in a village in Fort Portal, Uganda, that a nonprofit organization launched in January 2017, which provides income for 56 adults and 88 children through mobile money.
• A two-year pilot the Finnish government began in January 2017 which involved 2,000 subjects. In April 2018, the Finnish government rejected a request for funds to extend and expand the program from Kela (Finland's social security agency).
• An experiment in the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands, launched in early 2017, that is testing different rates of aid.
• A three-year basic income pilot that the Ontario provincial government, Canada, launched in the cities of Hamilton, Thunder Bay and Lindsay in July 2017. Although called basic income, it was only made available to those with a low income and funding would be removed if they obtained employment, making it more related to the current welfare system than true basic income. The pilot project was canceled on 31 July 2018 by the newly elected Progressive Conservative government under Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
• In Israel, in 2018 a non-profit initiative GoodDollar started with an objective to build a global economic framework for providing universal, sustainable and scalable basic income through new digital asset technology of blockchain. The non-profit aims to launch a peer-to-peer money transfer network in which money can be distributed to those most in need, regardless of their location, based on the principles of UBI. The project raised US$1 million from eToro.
• The Rythu Bandhu scheme is a welfare scheme started in the state of Telangana, India, in May 2018, aimed at helping farmers. Each farm owner receives 4,000 INR per acre twice a year for rabi and kharif harvests. To finance the program a budget allocation of 120 billion INR (US$1.6 million as of June 2020) was made in the 2018–2019 state budget.

2020−present

• Swiss non-profit Social Income started paying out basic incomes in the form of mobile money in 2020 to people in need in Sierra Leone. Contributions finance the international initiative from people worldwide, who donate 1% of their monthly paychecks.
• In May 2020 Spain introduced minimum basic income, reaching about 2% of the population, in response to COVID-19 in order to "fight a spike in poverty due to the coronavirus pandemic". It is expected to cost state coffers three billion euros ($3.5 billion) a year."
• In August 2020, a project in Germany started that gives a 1,200 Euros monthly basic income in a lottery system to citizens who apply online. The crowdsourced project will last three years and be compared against 1,380 people who do not receive basic income.
• In October 2020, HudsonUP was launched in Hudson, New York, by The Spark of Hudson and Humanity Forward Foundation to give $500 monthly basic income to 25 residents. It will last five years and be compared against 50 people who are not receiving basic income.
• In May 2021 the government of Wales, which has devolved powers in matters of Social Welfare within the UK, announced the trialling of a universal basic income scheme to "see whether the promises that basic income holds out are genuinely delivered".

Examples of payments with similarities

Alaska Permanent Fund

The Permanent Fund of Alaska in the United States provides a kind of yearly basic income based on the oil and gas revenues of the state to nearly all state residents. More precisely the fund resembles a sovereign wealth fund, investing resource revenues into bonds, stocks, and other conservative investment options with the intent to generate renewable revenue for future generations. The fund has had a noticeable yet diminishing effect on reducing poverty among rural Alaska Indigenous people, notably in the elderly population. However, the payment is not high enough to cover basic expenses (it has never exceeded $2,100) and is not a fixed, guaranteed amount. For these reasons, it is not considered a basic income.

Macau

Macau's Wealth Partaking Scheme provides some annual basic income to permanent residents, funded by revenues from the city's casinos. However, the amount disbursed is not sufficient to cover basic living expenses, so it is not considered a basic income.

Bolsa Familia

Bolsa Família is a large social welfare program in Brazil that provides money to many low-income families in the country. The system is related to basic income, but has more conditions, like asking the recipients to keep their children in school until graduation. As of March 2020, the program covers 13.8 million families, and pays an average of $34 per month, in a country where the minimum wage is $190 per month.

Other similar welfare programs

• Pension: A payment which in some countries is guaranteed to all citizens above a certain age. The difference from true basic income is that it is restricted to people over a certain age.
• Child benefit: A program similar to pensions but restricted to parents of children, usually allocated based on the number of children.
• Conditional cash transfer: A regular payment given to families, but only to the poor. It is usually dependent on basic conditions such as sending their children to school or having them vaccinated. Programs include Bolsa Família in Brazil and Programa Prospera in Mexico.
• Guaranteed minimum income differs from a basic income in that it is restricted to those in search of work and possibly other restrictions, such as savings being below a certain level. Example programs are unemployment benefits in the UK, the revenu de solidarité active in France and citizens' income in Italy.
• Full and partial basic income: When the level of the basic income is high enough for people to live purely from that income, it is sometimes referred to as a "full basic income". If not, it is often referred to as a "partial basic income". No country has yet introduced either to all its citizens.

Petitions, polls and referenda

• 2008: An official petition for basic income was launched in Germany by Susanne Wiest. The petition was accepted, and Susanne Wiest was invited for a hearing at the German parliament's Commission of Petitions. After the hearing, the petition was closed as "unrealizable."
• 2013–2014: A European Citizens' Initiative collected 280,000 signatures demanding that the European Commission study the concept of an unconditional basic income.
• 2015: A citizen's initiative in Spain received 185,000 signatures, short of the required number to mandate that the Spanish parliament discuss the proposal.
• 2016: The world's first universal basic income referendum in Switzerland on 5 June 2016 was rejected with a 76.9% majority. Also in 2016, a poll showed that 58% of the EU's population is aware of basic income, and 65% would vote in favour of the idea.
• 2017: Politico/Morning Consult asked 1,994 Americans about their opinions on several political issues including national basic income; 43% either "strongly supported" or "somewhat supported" the idea.
• 2018: The results of a poll by Gallup conducted last year between September and October were published. 48% of respondents supported universal basic income.
• 2019: In November, an Austrian initiative received approximately 70,000 signatures but failed to reach the 100,000 signatures needed for a parliamentary discussion. The initiative was started by Peter Hofer. His proposal suggested a basic income of €1,200 for every Austrian citizen.
• 2020: A study by Oxford University found that 71% of Europeans are now in favour of basic income. The study was conducted in March, with 12,000 respondents and in 27 EU-member states and the UK. A YouGov-poll likewise found a majority for universal basic income in United Kingdom and a poll by University of Chicago found that 51% of Americans aged 18–36 support a monthly basic income of $1,000. In the UK there was also a letter, signed by over 170 MPs and Lords from multiple political parties, calling on the government to introduce a universal basic income during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 2020: A Pew Research Center Survey, conducted online in August 2020, of 11,000 U.S. adults found that a majority (54%) oppose the federal government providing a guaranteed income of $1,000 per month to all adults, while 45% support it.
• 2020: In a poll by Hill-HarrisX, 55% of Americans voted in favour of UBI in August, up from 49% in September 2019 and 43% in February 2019.
• 2020: The results of an online survey of 2,031 participants conducted in 2018 in Germany were published: 51% were either "very much in favor" or "in favor" of UBI being introduced.
• 2021: A Change.org petition calling for monthly stimulus checks in the amount of $2,000 per adult and $1,000 per child for the remainder of the COVID-19 pandemic had received almost 3 million signatures.

See also

• Citizen's dividend
• Economic, social and cultural rights
• Equality of outcome
• Estovers – Allowance out of an estate
• FairTax § monthly tax rebate
• Geolibertarianism
• Global basic income
• Guaranteed minimum income
• Happiness economics
• Humanistic economics
• Involuntary unemployment
• Job guarantee
• Left-libertarianism
• Limitarianism (ethical)
• List of advocates of basic income
• List of basic income models
• Living wage
• Moral universalism
• New Cuban economy
• Old Age Security
• Post-work society
• Quatinga Velho
• Rationing
• Redistribution of income and wealth
• Social safety net
• Speenhamland system
• "The Triple Revolution"
• Universal basic services
• Universal Credit
• Universal value
• Universalism
• Wage subsidy
• Welfare capitalism
• Workfare
• Working time

 

Guaranteed minimum income

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income

Guaranteed minimum income (GMI), also called minimum income (or mincome for short), is a social-welfare system that guarantees all citizens or families an income sufficient to live on, provided that certain eligibility conditions are met, typically: citizenship; a means test; and either availability to participate in the labor market, or willingness to perform community services.

The primary goal of a guaranteed minimum income is reduction of poverty. In circumstances when citizenship is the sole qualification, the program becomes a universal basic income system.

Elements

A system of guaranteed minimum income can consist of several elements, most notably:

• Calculation of the social minimum, usually below the minimum wage
• Social safety net that helps those without sufficient financial means survive at the social minimum through payments or a loan, generally conditional on availability for work, performance of community services, some kind of social contract, or commitment to a social integration trajectory
• State child support
• Student loan and grants
• State pensions for the elderly
• Disability pensions for those who physically can't work

Differences from basic income

Main article: Universal basic income

Basic income means the provision of identical payments from a government to all of its citizens. Guaranteed minimum income is a system of payments (possibly only one) by a government to citizens who fail to meet one or more means tests. While most modern countries have some form of GMI, a basic income is rare.

History

Pre-modern antecedents

Persian monarch Cyrus the Great ( ca 590-ca 529 B.C.), whose government used a regulated minimum wage, also provided special rations to families when a child was born.

The Roman Republic and Empire offered the Cura Annonae, a regular distribution of free or subsidized grain or bread to poorer residents. The grain subsidy was first introduced by Gaius Gracchus in 123 B.C., then further institutionalized by Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar.

The first Sunni Muslim Caliph Abu Bakr, who came to power in 632 C.E., introduced a guaranteed minimum standard of income, granting each man, woman and child ten dirhams annually. This was later increased to twenty dirhams.

Modern proposals

In 1795, American revolutionary Thomas Paine advocated a citizen's dividend to all United States citizens as compensation for "loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property" (Agrarian Justice, 1795).

French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte echoed Paine's sentiments and commented that 'man is entitled by birthright to a share of the Earth's produce sufficient to fill the needs of his existence' (Herold, 1955).

The American economist Henry George advocated for a dividend paid to all citizens from the revenue generated by a land value tax.

In 1963, Robert Theobald published the book Free Men and Free Markets, in which he advocated a guaranteed minimum income (the origin of the modern version of the phrase).

In 1966, the Cloward–Piven strategy advocated "overloading" the US welfare system to force its collapse in the hopes that it would be replaced by "a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty".

In his final book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967), Martin Luther King Jr. wrote

I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective—the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.

— from the chapter titled "Where We Are Going"

In 1968, James Tobin, Paul Samuelson, John Kenneth Galbraith and another 1,200 economists signed a document calling for the US Congress to introduce in that year a system of income guarantees and supplements.

In 1969, President Richard Nixon's Family Assistance Plan would have paid a minimum income to poor families. The proposal by Nixon passed in the House but never made it out of committee in the Senate.

In 1973, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote The Politics of a Guaranteed Income, in which he advocated the guaranteed minimum income and discussed Richard Nixon's Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI) proposal.

In 1987, New Zealand's Labour Finance Minister Roger Douglas announced a Guaranteed Minimum Family Income Scheme to accompany a new flat tax. Both were quashed by then Prime Minister David Lange, who sacked Douglas.

In his 1994 "autobiographical dialog", classical liberal Friedrich Hayek stated: "I have always said that I am in favor of a minimum income for every person in the country".

In 2013, the Equal Life Foundation published the Living Income Guaranteed Proposal, illustrating a practical way to implement and fund a minimum guaranteed income.

In 2017, Harry A. Shamir (US) published the book Consumerism, or Capitalism Without Crises, in which the concept was promoted by another label, as a way to enable our civilization to survive in an era of automation and computerization and large scale unemployment. The book also innovates a method to fund the process, tapping into the underground economy and volunteerism.

Other modern advocates include Ayşe Buğra (Turkey), The Green Economics Institute (GEI), and Andrew Coyne (Canada).

Funding

Tax revenues would fund the majority of GMI proposals. As most GMI proposals seek to create an earnings floor close to or above poverty lines amongst all citizens, the fiscal burden would require equally broad tax sources, such as income taxes or VATs. To varying degrees, a GMI might be funded through the reduction or elimination of other social security programs, such as unemployment insurance.

Another approach for funding is to acknowledge that all modern economies use fiat money and thus taxation is not necessary for funding. However, the fact that there are no financial constraints does not mean other constraints, such as on real resources, do not exist. A likely outcome based on the economic theory known as Modern Monetary Theory would be a moderate increase in taxation to ensure the extra income would not cause demand-pull inflation. This hypothetical Chartalist approach can be seen in the implementation of quantitative easing programs where, in the United States, over three trillion dollars were created without requiring taxes.

Examples around the world

Brazil

Minimum income has been increasingly accepted by the Brazilian government. In 2004, President Lula da Silva signed into law a bill to establish a universal basic income. This law is primarily implemented through the Bolsa Família program. Under this program, poorer families receive a direct cash payment via a government issued debit card. Bolsa Família is a conditional cash transfer program, meaning that beneficiaries receive their aid if they accomplish certain actions. Families who receive the aid must put their children in school and participate in vaccination programs. If they do not meet these requirements, they are cut off from aid. The program has been criticised as vote-buying, trading productive individuals' earning for the votes of welfare recipients As of 2011, approximately 50 million people, or a quarter of Brazil's population, were participating in Bolsa Família.

Canada

Main article: Mincome

Canada has experimented with minimum income trials. During the Mincome experiment in Manitoba in the 1970s, Mincome provided lower-income families with cash transfers to keep them out of poverty. The trial was eventually ended but this was due to budget shortfalls and a change in government.

The province of Ontario began a minimum income experiment in 2017. Approximately 4000 citizens began to receive a stipend based on their family situation and income. Recipients of this program could receive upwards of $10,000 per year. Government researchers used this pilot as a way of testing to see if a minimum income can help people meet their basic needs. On August 31, 2018, following a change in government, incoming Premier Doug Ford announced that the pilot would be cancelled at the end of the current fiscal year.

China

China's Minimum Livelihood Guarantee also called dibao, is a means-tested social assistance scheme introduced in 1993 and expanded to all Chinese cities in 1999.

Cyprus

In July 2013, the Cypriot government unveiled a plan to reform the welfare system in Cyprus and create a 'Guaranteed Minimum Income' for all citizens.

France

In 1988, France was one of the first countries to implement a minimum income, called the Revenu minimum d'insertion. In 2009, it was turned into Revenu de solidarité active (RSA), a new system that aimed to solve the poverty trap by providing low-wage workers a complementary income to encourage activity.

India

Modern independent India developed many means and livelihood tested cash transfer programs through Direct Benefit Transfer at both the federal and the state level. At the federal level, these include minimum income social pension programs such as National Social Assistance Scheme, guaranteed employment program like National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 or a disability aid like Deendayal Disabled Rehabilitation Scheme. At the state level, there can be additional minimum income programs, one such being "Laksmir Bhandar" run by the state of West Bengal that transfers a minimum aid to families without work in the state.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia has a Citizen’s Account Program which provides a basic income to registered citizens. In December 2017, immediately before the program began, more than 3.7 million households had registered, representing 13 million people, or more than half the population as of 2013, between one fifth and one third of Saudi residents are estimated to be non-citizens.

Spain

Main article: es:Ingreso mínimo vital

In Spain, the ingreso mínimo vital is an economic benefit guaranteed by the Social security in Spain in its modality no contributory. The IMV is defined as a "subjective right" and is intended to prevent poverty and social exclusion of people who live alone or integrated into a coexistence unit when they are in a situation of vulnerability due to lack of sufficient financial resources to cover their basic needs. The benefit, which is not fixed and varies depending on various factors, ranges between 462 and 1015 euros per month, is expected to cover 850,000 households (approximately 2.5 million people) and will cost the government 3 billion euros per year.

United States

No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933

The United States has multiple social programs that provide guaranteed minimum incomes for individuals meeting certain criteria such as assets or disability. For instance, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is a United States government program that provides stipends to low-income people who are either aged (65 or older), blind, or disabled. SSI was created in 1974 to replace federal-state adult assistance programs that served the same purpose. Today the program provides benefits to approximately eight million Americans. Another such program is Social Security Disability Insurance (SSD or SSDI), a payroll tax-funded, federal insurance program. It is managed by the Social Security Administration and is designed to provide income supplements to people who are restricted in their ability to work because of a disability, usually a physical disability. SSD can be supplied on either a temporary or permanent basis, usually directly correlated to whether the person's disability is temporary or permanent.

An early guaranteed minimum income program in the U.S. was the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), established by the Social Security Act. Where previously the responsibility to assist needy children lay in the hands of the states, AFDC transferred that authority to the federal government. Over time, the AFDC was often criticized for creating disincentives to work, leading to many arguing for its replacement. In the 1970s, President Richard M. Nixon proposed the Family Assistance Program (FAP), which would replace the AFDC. FAP was intended to fix many of the problems of the AFDC, particularly the anti-work structure. Presidential nominee George McGovern also proposed a minimum income—in the form of a Universal Tax Credit. Ultimately, neither of these programs was implemented. Throughout the decade, many other experimental minimum income programs were carried out in cities throughout the country, such as the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiments. In 1996, under President Bill Clinton, the AFDC was replaced with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. This would block grant funds to the states to allow them to decide how aid would be distributed.

Another guaranteed minimum income program in the U.S. is the Earned Income Tax Credit. This is a refundable tax credit that gives poorer families cash assistance every year. The EITC avoids the welfare trap by subsidizing income, rather than replacing it.

See also

• Basic income
• Constitutional economics
• Guaranteed Annual Income
• Guaranteed Income Supplement
• Guaranteed Minimum Pension
• Homelessness in the United States
• Job guarantee
• Living wage
• New Cuban Economy
• Social credit
• Social dividend
• Wage slavery

Ecological sanitation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_sanitation 

 

Ecosan concept showing a separation of flow streams, treatment and reuse

Ecological sanitation, commonly abbreviated as ecosan (also spelled eco-san or EcoSan), is an approach to sanitation provision which aims to safely reuse excreta in agriculture. It is an approach, rather than a technology or a device which is characterized by a desire to "close the loop", mainly for the nutrients and organic matter between sanitation and agriculture in a safe manner. One of the aims is to minimise the use of non-renewable resources. When properly designed and operated, ecosan systems provide a hygienically safe system to convert human excreta into nutrients to be returned to the soil, and water to be returned to the land. Ecosan is also called resource-oriented sanitation.

Definition

The definition of ecosan has varied in the past. In 2012, a widely accepted definition of ecosan was formulated by Swedish experts: "Ecological sanitation systems are systems which allow for the safe recycling of nutrients to crop production in such a way that the use of non-renewable resources is minimized. These systems have a strong potential to be sustainable sanitation systems if technical, institutional, social and economic aspects are managed appropriately."

Prior to 2012, ecosan has often been associated with urine diversion and in particular with urine-diverting dry toilets (UDDTs), a type of dry toilet. For this reason, the term "ecosan toilet" is widely used when people mean a UDDT. However, the ecosan concept should not be limited to one particular type of toilet. Also, UDDTs can be used without having any reuse activities in which case they are not in line with the ecosan concept (an example being the 80,000 UDDTs implemented by eThekwini Municipality near Durban, South Africa).

Use of the term "ecosan"

The term "ecosan" was first used in 1995 and the first project started in 1996 in Ethiopia, by an NGO called Sudea. A trio, Dr Torsten Modig, Umeå University, Almaz Terrefe, teamleader, and Gunder Edström, hygiene expert, chose an area in a dense urban area as a starting point. They used urine diverting dry toilets (UDDTs) coupled with reuse activities.

In the ecosan concept, human excreta and wastewater is regarded as a potential resource – which is why it has also been called "resource oriented sanitation". The term "productive sanitation" has also been in use since about 2006.

Comparison with the term "sustainable sanitation"

The definition of ecosan is focusing on the health, environment and resource aspect of sustainable sanitation. Thus ecosan is not, per se, sustainable sanitation, but ecosan systems can be implemented in a sustainable way and have a strong potential for sustainable sanitation, if technical, institutional, social and economical aspects are cared for appropriately. Ecosan systems can be "unsustainable" for example if there is too little user acceptance or if the costs of the system are too high for a given target group of users, making the system financially unsustainable in the longer term.

Overview

Poster by EcoSanRes program: Closing the loop on Sanitation (2005)

 

Ecosan closing the loop poster (in French), by the NGO CREPA in 2005, UDDTs are used in this example

The main objectives of ecological sanitation are to reduce the health risks related to sanitation, contaminated water and waste; to prevent groundwater pollution and surface water pollution; and to reuse nutrients or energy contained within wastes.

Resource recovery

Further information: Resource recovery

The statement in the definition of ecosan to "safely recycle" includes hygienic, microbial and chemical aspects. Thus, the recycled human excreta product, in solid or liquid form, shall be of high quality both concerning pathogens and all kind of hazardous chemical components. The statement "use of non-renewable resources is minimized" means that the gain in resources by recycling shall be larger than the cost of resources by recycling.

Ecosan is based on an overall concept of material flows as part of an ecologically and economically sustainable wastewater management system tailored to the needs of the users and to the respective local conditions. It does not favor a specific sanitation technology, but is rather a certain philosophy in handling substances that have so far been seen simply as wastewater and water-carried waste for disposal.

Reuse as fertilizer

Further information: Reuse of excreta

The first proponents of ecosan systems had a strong focus on increasing agricultural productivity (via the reuse of excreta as fertilizers) and thus improving the nutritional status of the people at the same time as providing them with safe sanitation. Disease reduction was meant to be achieved not only by reducing infections transmitted via the fecal-oral route but also by reducing malnutrition in children. This link between WASH, nutrition, a disease called environmental enteropathy (or tropical enteropathy) as well as stunted growth of children has risen to the top of the agenda of the WASH sector since about 2013.

Agricultural trials around the world have shown measurable benefits of using treated excreta in agriculture as a fertilizer and soil conditioner. This applies in particular to the use of urine. Reuse trials in Zimbabwe showed positive results for using urine on green, leafy plants such as spinach or maize as well as fruit trees. Another study in Finland indicated that the use of urine and the use of urine and wood ash "could produce 27% and 10% more red beet root biomass". Urine has been proven in many studies to be a valuable, relatively easy to handle fertilizer, containing nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and important micro-nutrients.

Phosphorus recovery

Another aspect that ecosan systems are trying to address is the possible upcoming shortage of phosphorus. Phosphorus has an important role for plant growth, and therefore in fertilizer production, but is a limited mineral resource. The situation is similar for potassium. Known mineral phosphate rock reserves are becoming scarce and increasingly costly to extract – this is also called the "peak phosphorus" crisis. One review of global phosphate supply suggested that if collected, phosphate in urine could supply 22% of the total demand.

Benefits

Benefits of ecosan systems include:

• Minimizing the introduction of pathogens from human excreta into the water cycle (groundwater and surface water) - for example groundwater pollution by pit latrines.
• Conservation of resources through lower water consumption, substitution of mineral fertilizer and minimization of water pollution.
• Less reliance on mined phosphorus and other non-renewable resources for fertilizer production.
• Reduced consumption of energy in fertilizer production: Urea is a major component of urine, yet we produce vast quantities of urea by using fossil fuels. By properly managing urine, treatment costs as well as fertilizer costs can be reduced.

Challenges

The ecosan approach has been criticized for being overly focused on reuse in agriculture, whilst neglecting some of the other criteria for sustainable sanitation. In fact, ecosan systems can be "unsustainable", for example, if there is too little user acceptance or if the costs of the system are too high for a given target group of users, making the system financially unsustainable in the longer term.

Some proponents of ecosan have been criticized as being too dogmatic, with an over-emphasis on environmental resource protection rather than a focus on public health protection and provision of sanitation at a very low cost (for example UDDTs, which some people call "ecosan toilets", may be more expensive to build than pit latrines, even if in the longer term they are cheaper to maintain).

The safety of ecosan systems in terms of pathogen destruction during the various treatment processes is a continuous topic of debate between proponents and opponents of ecosan systems. However, the publication of the WHO Guidelines on Reuse, with its multiple barrier concept, has gone a long way in establishing a common framework for safe reuse. Nevertheless, the question remains whether ecosan systems can ever be scaled up to reach millions of people and how they can be made sufficiently safe to operate. The initial excitement in the early 2000s by the ecosan pioneers has changed into a realization that changing attitudes and behaviors in sanitation takes a lot of patience.

Acknowledgement for ecosan came with the awarding of the Stockholm Water Prize in 2013 to Peter Morgan, a pioneer of handpumps and ventilated pit latrines (VIPs) in addition to ecosan-type toilets (the Arborloo, the Skyloo and the Fossa alterna). Peter Morgan is renowned as one of the leading creators and proponents of ecological sanitation solutions, which enable the safe reuse of human excreta to enhance soil quality and crop production. His ecosan-type toilets are now in use in countries across the globe, centred on converting a sanitary problem into a productive resource.

Also many of the research projects that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have been funding since about 2011 in sanitation are dealing with resource recovery – this might well be a legacy of the ecosan concept, even if the term "ecosan" is not used by these researchers.

Technologies used in ecosan systems

Possible technology components for sustainable sanitation, of which ecosan is a sub-set focussing on the reuse possibilities

Ecosan offers a flexible framework, where centralized elements can be combined with decentralized ones, waterborne with dry sanitation, high-tech with low-tech, etc. By considering a much larger range of options, optimal and economic solutions can be developed for each particular situation. Technologies used in ecosan systems often - but not always - include elements of source separation, i.e. keeping different waste streams separate, as this can make treatment and safe reuse easier.

The most common technology used in ecosan systems is the urine-diverting dry toilet, but ecosan systems can also use other technologies, such as vacuum toilets coupled with biogas plants, constructed wetlands, composting toilets and so forth.

Examples of ecosan projects worldwide can be found in a list published by GIZ in 2012, as well as in those case studies published by the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance that are focused on reuse activities.

History

Further information: History of water supply and sanitation

Excreta reuse in dry sanitation systems

The recovery and use of urine and feces in "dry sanitation systems", i.e. without sewers or without mixing substantial amounts of water with the excreta, has been practiced by almost all cultures. The reuse was not limited to agricultural production. The Romans, for example, were aware of the bleaching attribute of the ammonia within urine and used it to whiten clothing.

Many traditional agricultural societies recognized the value of human waste for soil fertility and practised the "dry" collection and reuse of excreta. This enabled them to live in communities in which nutrients and organic matter contained in excreta were returned to the soil. Historical descriptions about these practices are sparse, but it is known that excreta reuse was practiced widely in Asia (for example in China, Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea) but also in Central and South America. However, the most renowned example of the organised collection and use of human excreta to support food production is that of China. The value of "night soil" as a fertilizer was recognized with well-developed systems in place to enable the collection of excreta from cities and its transportation to fields. The Chinese were aware of the benefits of using excreta in crop production more than 2500 years ago, enabling them to sustain more people at a higher density than any other system of agriculture.

In Mexico the Aztec culture collected human excreta for agricultural use. One example of this practice has been documented for the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan which was founded in 1325 and was one of the last cities of pre-Hispanic Mexico (conquered in 1521 by the Spanish): The population placed the sweepings in special boats moored at docks around the city. Mixtures of sweepings and excreta were used to fertilize the chinampas (agricultural fields) or to bolster the banks bordering the lake. Urine was collected in containers in all houses, then mixed with mud and used as a fabric dye. The Aztecs recognized the importance of recycling nutrients and compounds contained in wastewater.

In Peru, the Incas had a high regard for excreta as a fertilizer, which was stored, dried and pulverized to be utilized when planting maize.

In the Middle Ages, the use of excreta and greywater in agricultural production was the norm. European cities were rapidly urbanizing and sanitation was becoming an increasingly serious problem, whilst at the same time the cities themselves were becoming an increasingly important source of agricultural nutrients. The practice of directly using the nutrients in excreta and wastewater for agriculture therefore continued in Europe into the middle of the 19th century. Farmers, recognizing the value of excreta, were eager to get these fertilizers to increase production and urban sanitation benefited. This practice was also called gong farmer in England but carried many health risks for those involved with transporting the excreta and fecal sludge.

Traditional forms of sanitation and excreta reuse have continued in various parts of the world for centuries and were still common practice at the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Even as the world became increasingly more urbanised, the nutrients in excreta collected from urban sanitation systems without mixing with water were still used in many societies as a resource to maintain soil fertility, despite rising population densities.

Decline in recovery of nutrients from human excreta in dry systems

Recovery of nutrients from excreta in non-sewered sanitation systems was addressing the sanitation problems in settlements in Europe and elsewhere and was contributing to securing agricultural productivity. However, the practice did not become the dominant approach to urban sanitation in the 20th century and was gradually replaced with sewer-based sanitation systems without nutrient recovery (apart from agricultural reuse of sewage sludge in some cases) – at least for cities that can afford it.

There were four main driving factors that led to the demise in the recovery and use of excreta and greywater from European cities in the 19th century:

• Growth of urban settlements and increasing distance from agricultural fields.
• Increasing water consumption and use of flush toilet: Water flushing greatly increased the volume of sewage, at the same time diluting the nutrients, making it virtually impossible for them to be recovered and reused as they previously were.
• Production of cheap synthetic fertilizers, making any efforts to recover and reuse the nutrients and organic material from the large volumes of sewage obsolete.
• Political intervention as a consequence of the perceived need for a change with regards to how to deal with odorous substances: Up until the end of the nineteenth century the dominant theory on the spread of illness was the miasma theory. This theory stated that everything that smelled had to be gotten rid of because inhaling bad smells was thought to lead to illness.

The use of (odorous) animal manure in agriculture has continued through to this day, probably because the odor of manure was not thought to contribute to human illnesses.

The recovery of nutrients from wastewater still continues in two forms:

• Wastewater reuse or resource recovery: Use of raw, treated or partially treated wastewater for irrigation in agriculture (with the associated health risks if it is done in an improper way which is often the case in developing countries); and
• Application of sewage sludge to agricultural lands which is not without controversy in many industrialized countries due to the risks of polluting soils with heavy metals and micropollutants if not managed properly (see biosolids).

Research from 1990s onwards

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) funded the "SanRes R&D programme" during 1993 to 2001 which lay the foundation for the subsequent "EcoSanRes programme" carried out by Stockholm Environment Institute (2002–2011). A publication by Sida called "Ecological sanitation" in 1998 compiled the knowledge generated to date about ecosan in a popular book which was published as a second edition in 2004. The book has also been translated into Chinese, French and Spanish.

The German government enterprise GIZ also had a large "ecosan program" from 2001 to 2012. Whilst the term "ecosan" was preferred in the initial stages of this program, it was from 2007 onwards more and more replaced by the broader term "sustainable sanitation". In fact, the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance was founded in 2007 in an attempt to broaden the ecosan concept and to bring together various actors under one umbrella.

Research into how to make reuse of urine and feces safe in agriculture was carried out by Swedish researchers, for example Hakan Jönsson and his team, whose publication on "Guidelines on the Use of Urine and feces in Crop Production" was a milestone which was later incorporated into the WHO "Guidelines on Safe Reuse of Wastewater, Excreta and Greywater" from 2006. The multiple barrier concept to reuse, which is the key cornerstone of this publication, has led to a clear understanding on how excreta reuse can be done safely.

Workshops and conferences

Initially, there were dedicated "ecosan conferences" to present and discuss research on ecosan projects:

• A first workshop on ecological sanitation was held in Balingsholm, Sweden in 1997, where all the then established ecosan experts, such as Håkan Jönsson, Peter Morgan (winner of the 2013 Stockholm Water Prize), Ron Sawyer, George Anna Clark and Gunder Edström participated.
• Workshop in Mexico in 1999 with the title "Closing the Loop - Ecological sanitation for food security"
• Ecosan conference in Bonn, Germany in 2000
• First international ecosan conference in Nanning, China in 2001
• Second ecosan conference in Lübeck Germany in 2003
• Third ecosan conference in Durban, South Africa in 2005
• Ecosan conference in Fortaleza, Brazil called "International Conference on Sustainable Sanitation - Water and Food Security for Latin America" in 2007

Since then the ecosan theme has been integrated into other WASH conferences, and separate large ecosan conferences have no longer been organised.

Disputes amongst experts

During the 1990s, when the term ecosan was something new, discussions were heated and confrontational. Supporters of ecosan claimed the corner on containment, treatment and reuse. The proponents of conventional sanitation systems on the other side defended pit latrines and waterborne sewage systems. Ecosan supporters criticized conventional sanitation for contaminating waterways with nutrients and pathogens. Since about 2007, the two opposing sides have slowly found ways of dealing with each other, and the formation of the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance in that year has further helped to provide a space for all sanitation actors to meet and push into the same direction of sustainable sanitation.

Examples

Urine-diversion dehydration toilets ("ecosan toilets") at May Sa'iri school, (Ethiopia)

• Sweden is the leader in Europe to put ecosan into practice at a larger scale. For example, Tanum Municipality in Sweden has introduced urine separation toilets due to their very rocky and challenging terrain initially, and later also to recover phosphorus.
• Sweden has also made it possible in 2013 to certify safe and sanitized blackwater (urine and human excreta) from blackwater systems and for further use as a recognized fertilizer. Such blackwater systems could be vacuum toilets or septic tanks. The criteria for the certification have been developed by the Swedish Institute for Agricultural and Environmental Engineering and may pave the way for farmers to use human waste for agricultural production. The Federation of Swedish Farmers have been active in this development. Furthermore, the Swedish EPA in their last proposal in 2014 has downgraded the hygiene risk associated with urine.
• Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) ran a large worldwide ecosan research programme called "Ecosanres" from 2001 to 2011. One of the "dry ecosan" pilot projects (i.e. with using dry toilets) of this programme was a large scale implementation of UDDTs in multi-story buildings together with other technologies to allow resource recovery from excreta. This project was called the Erdos Eco-Town Project in a town called Erdos in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. It was a collaboration between the Dongsheng District government in Erdos and the Stockholm Environment Institute and aimed to save water and provide sanitation services in this drought-stricken and rapidly urbanizing area of northern China. For a variety of technical, social and institutional reasons, the UDDTs were removed after only a few years and the project failed to deliver in the area of nutrient recovery. This project is now well documented and has raised more awareness of the challenges and disadvantages of "urban ecosan".
• The Rich Earth Institute in Brattleboro, Vermont, USA, is an NGO dedicated to reclaiming human urine as fertilizer. They have established the only community-scale urine nutrient reclamation program in the United States and are researching and developing treatment technologies to optimize the use of urine as fertilizer.
• SOIL in Haiti built what they call "ecosan toilets" (UDDTs) as part of the emergency relief effort following the 2010 Haiti earthquake. More than 20,000 Haitians are currently using SOIL ecological sanitation toilets and SOIL has produced over 400,000 liters of compost as a result. The compost is used for agricultural and reforestation projects. SOIL's composting process is effective in inactivating Ascaris eggs – an indicator for helminth eggs in general – in the excreta collected from the dry toilets within 16 weeks. The composting and monitoring methods used by SOIL in Haiti may serve as an example for other international settings.
• Sanitation First, an NGO in the UK is building ecosan facilities (UDDTs) in various parts of the developing world. They predominantly work in Tamil Nadu (India), where the Tamil Nadu State Government provides subsidies for their work. They have also constructed ecosan in other parts of rural India, Kenya and Sierra Leone. According to their website, 58,000 people worldwide are using their ecosan toilets in 2021.
• The NGO CREPA which was operating in the French-speaking West Africa region (now called WSA – Water and Sanitation in Africa) was very active in ecosan promotion from 2002–2010 with a strong focus on UDDTs coupled with reuse in agriculture, especially in Burkina Faso.