Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística

About the publication - 2004

The release of the Sanitation Atlas by the IBGE is a unique opportunity to unveil, in a direct way, the deep regional inequalities existing in this sector that, even today, makes the universalization and improvement of the services of water supply, sewage, waste collection and urban drainage a target yet to be reached by the State and achieved by the society.

In this context, the Sanitation Atlas provides a privileged reading of the transdisciplinary nature of sanitation, which, in its classic definition, comprises a set of actions aiming at changing the environmental conditions to prevent the diffusion of pathogenic vectors and foster public health and the welfare of the population. As a result, health gains an international definition that considers it complete social, mental and physical welfare and not only the absence of diseases.

The need to approach environmental, health and sanitation problems in a intertwined way and the recognition of the importance of salubrity of the natural environment changed by man are aspects that must be retrieved by a geographic approach of the sanitation subject. It follows that other factors should be approached, like the increase in the density of the urban population, the industrial and agricultural expansion – which brought scarcity and pollution of the water resources –, as well as the natural aspects of hydrography and topography of the terrain, climate and vegetation, among others. The extension of the items surveyed caused the diversification of the sources of information, including not only the IBGE surveys, especially the 2000 Population Census, but also information from other organizations that much contributed to enrich the proposed agenda. The scope acquired by sanitation unveils in the sequence of subjects approached in the 2004 Sanitation Atlas, which was built aiming at approaching different angles to analyze basic sanitation today in Brazil.