Most towns, cities and mega-cities in India face serious problems in providing adequate sanitation, sewers and wastewater management systems. Insufficient or even non-existing management of municipal and industrial wastewater results in immense environmental problems and increasing hygienic risks for the growing urban population thereby hampering poverty alleviation and a sustainable development of the Indian society.

Ecological sanitation ("ecosan") is a market proven cost effective and environmental sound concept that can help to struggle these problems. The objective of the ecosan concept is to produce a hygienically safe and useful resource out of human wastes, which can not only improve the environmental situation, but also improve living conditions in a sustainable way.

Although ecosan is becoming more and more known in India and several projects have raised awareness and acceptance of innovative sanitation systems, there is a significant lack of qualified personnel and people who actually implement projects at the grassroots level, being skilled and qualified people the core of success when implementing such projects. Therefore, the main objective of the project ECOSAN-CAPACITY, funded as part of the component B "Capacity Building" of the European Commission AsiaProEco Program, is

"to build capacity for future ecosan implementation, thus increasing the number of ecosan experts in India capable of implementing ecosan projects on their own".

The project ECOSAN-CAPACITY aims to generate local expertise and knowledge in ecological sanitation (ecosan) by the carrying out of training activities sensitive to three different stakeholder groups: (1) authorities and governmental representatives, (2) multiplicators and consultants and (3) implementers and users, based on a participatory cross-institutional approach.