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- Abwasserbehandlung (1)
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- Kommunales Wassermanagement (1)
- Municipal water governance (1)
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- Wastewater treatment (1)
Water pollution is a major issue in developing countries. 2.2 of the 2.3 billion people who suffer annually from waterborne diseases live in this part of the world. Moreover, it causes the deterioration of aquatic ecosystems the living of billions of poor people depend on. A major source of water pollution is the discharge of untreated municipal wastewater. On average, cities in developing countries discharge 80-90% of their sewage untreated. Though treatment of municipal wastewater remains a huge challenge in developing countries, the situation is not equally adverse all over the place. Treatment rates vary substantially across localities. From this observation, the question arises what drives and what impairs wastewater treatment. No quantitative analysis of this topic has been performed yet at the municipal level in a developing country.
Therefore, this thesis investigates the impact of social factors on municipal wastewater treatment in Mexican municipalities in order to gain insights on what improves wastewater treatment in a developing country. 846 of 2,456 Mexican municipalities treat a share of their municipal wastewater that ranges from single-digit percentages to full coverage while the majority of municipalities treats no wastewater. The study relies on econometric techniques to scrutinize 10 hypotheses on the relationship between social factors and wastewater treatment. More precisely, it applies binary outcome models to estimate the conditional probability wastewater treatment takes place in a municipality for a sample of 2,290 Mexican municipalities. In addition, it applies the Tobit and Fractional logit model to estimate the percentage of treated municipal wastewater depending on social factors for 425 municipalities.
The thesis identifies geographic spillovers, environmental federalism, institutional aspects like the corporatization of municipal water service, urbanization, per capita income and its distribution as significant influencing factors. A significant effect of education, ethnic heterogeneity, female participation in municipal politics and water scarcity is not found. In addition, the involvement of superior government tiers of a developing country in the funding of municipal wastewater treatment infrastructure seems to mitigate the influence of social factors on wastewater treatment. Based on these findings, the thesis develops policy recommendations to improve municipal wastewater treatment in developing countries.