Basic sanitation and the delay until 2070: the most basic infrastructure of productivity

It is impossible to build a thirty-story building of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and advanced digital services on a foundation that still coexists with nineteenth-century open ditches. In Brazil, we often treat basic sanitation merely as an environmental or social assistance agenda, disconnected from discussions on GDP, industrial competitiveness, and talent development. This is a severe economic diagnostic error.

The country's most complete official data, consolidated in the 2024 edition (base year 2023) of SINISA (National Basic Sanitation Information System, which succeeded the former SNIS at the Ministry of Cities), reveal the magnitude of our civilizational debt: only 59.7% of the total Brazilian population is served by a sewage collection network (rising to 61.6% when looking at the specific subset of urban households served by a collection network). Even more alarming: of all the sewage volume generated in the country, only 49.4% receives treatment before being returned to rivers, reservoirs, and seas, while water supply network coverage reaches 83.1% of the total population.

In other words, in the middle of the twenty-first century, more than half of all the sewage produced in the eighth largest economy on the planet is still discharged in natura into nature.

1. From 2033 to 2070: the mathematics of delay

In 2020, Brazil approved the New Legal Framework for Basic Sanitation (Law No. 14,026/2020), establishing clear universalization targets by December 31, 2033: ensuring that 99% of the population has access to drinking water and that 90% of the population has sewage collection and treatment.

The problem appears when we confront the legal target with the average speed of network expansion over the past two decades. Technical surveys by Instituto Trata Brasil show that, where there was no opening for structured concessions and a leap in investments, the annual advancement of indicators was a fraction of a percentage point per year. Maintaining the country's historical inertial pace, Brazil would not reach universalization in 2033, but only around 2070, almost forty years after the deadline promised by law.

2. How the lack of sewage destroys human capital and the PISA

What is the relationship between a sewage treatment plant and the scarcity of programmers or engineers in the Brazilian market twenty years later? Everything.

Internationally awarded medical and economic literature shows that a child's first one thousand days of life (from gestation to two years of age) are decisive for the formation of brain synapses and cognitive capacity. Children who grow up in areas without sewage collection and without regular treated water suffer repeated episodes of acute diarrhea, parasitosis, and gastrointestinal infections.

These infections prevent the proper absorption of essential nutrients for the developing brain and cause millions of school absences in childhood. Econometric studies conducted in Brazil demonstrate that workers who lived in municipalities without basic sanitation have, on average, lower education, significantly lower scores in math and reading exams, and wages up to 10% to 15% lower in adult life when compared to young people with a similar socioeconomic profile who grew up with treated water and sewage.

When we ask ourselves why only 28% of young Brazilians reach the minimum math level in PISA against 65% in the OECD, we must remember that an expressive portion of these students study and live in neighborhoods where the most elementary sanitary infrastructure has not yet arrived.

3. The direct impact on the cash flow of companies and the State

In addition to sabotaging the formation of the next generation, the sanitation deficit charges a daily toll on current operations:

1. Absenteeism and drop in work productivity: every year, the Unified Health System (SUS) and the supplementary network record hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and millions of leaves of absence due to waterborne diseases (including dengue and arboviruses that proliferate where there is no adequate drainage and management of water and waste). These are millions of working hours lost in factories, commerce, and services.
2. Waste of water resources and energy: almost 38% of all drinking water captured, treated with chemicals, and pumped with electrical energy in Brazil is lost in leaks and diversions before reaching the citizen's tap. This is a monumental destruction of operational efficiency.
3. Real estate devaluation and tourism loss: coastal cities and urban hubs lose billions in tourism revenue and asset valuation because their beaches and urban rivers become unfit due to the discharge of untreated sewage.

4. The way out involves regulatory engineering and private investment

With 91.4% of the federal primary budget committed to mandatory expenses, the Brazilian State does not have the fiscal cash to finance alone the more than R$ 500 billion needed to universalize sanitation.

The good news is that, in the states and municipalities that respected the 2020 Legal Framework and held structured auctions on B3 (as occurred in regional blocks in Rio de Janeiro, Alagoas, Amapá, Mato Grosso do Sul, Paraná, and in the privatization of Sabesp in São Paulo), the volume of contracted investments tripled in a few years.

For business leaders and citizens, demanding an end to regulatory insecurity in sanitation is not just defending the environment: it is demanding the most basic infrastructure without which no country can have a healthy population, children learning at school, and first-world productivity.

Continue deepening: also read Railways vs. highways: how a 1950s choice makes Brazil spend up to 3x more on freight and What Brazil needs to do to become a developed country?. Also explore the Brazil 2050 Agenda with interactive simulator and the Brasília Arcade.

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References and verifiable readings

• Ministry of Cities (2024). SINISA - National Basic Sanitation Information System: 2024 Edition Results (base year 2023).
• Instituto Trata Brasil (2024-2025). Sanitation Ranking and Studies on Economic and Social Benefits of Universalization.
• Brazil (2020). Law No. 14,026, of July 15, 2020: New Legal Framework for Basic Sanitation.