Lessons in Urban Community Led Total Sanitation from Nakuru, Kenya, 2015.
Authors: Kath Pasteur and Preetha Prabhakaran
Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is an innovative methodology for mobilising communities to completely eliminate open defecation (OD). It has been applied in many rural areas in countries across the developing world. However, experience in urban settings has been limited. Practical Action and Umande Trust have implemented a project Realising Rights to Total Sanitation in two low income settlements in the city of Nakuru, Kenya, adapting the CLTS methodology to meet the challenges of the urban context.
This has involved devising a triggering exercise with landlords as well as tenants and using theatre to attract and sustain interest during community triggering. Working in an urban area has required considerable attention to designing, through a participatory process, low cost toilets that meet urban public health and building regulations.
Beyond One-Size-Fits-All: Lessons Learned from Eight Water Utility Public-Private Partnerships in the Philippines, May 2015. Water and Sanitation Program.
Key Findings
- There is no “magic bullet” approachto water utility PPPs in the Philippines. Different arrangements can lead to affordable, reliable, and clean water services, provided there is sufficient market size and willingness to pay.
- PPPs can thrive in diverse geographies,as long as service is focused on meeting the demand for which consumers are willing to pay.
- Pro-poor approaches are not yet universal, though successful approaches have been implemented in Manila,Laguna, and Boracay.
The Urban Disadvantage: State of the World’s Mothers, 2015. Save the Children.
We know what works to save poor urban children. Save the Children profiles six cities that have made good progress in saving poor children’s lives despite significant population growth. The cities are: Addis Ababa (Ethiopia),Cairo (Egypt), Manila (Philippines), Kampala(Uganda), Guatemala City (Guatemala) and Phnom Penh (Cambodia). These cities have achieved success through a variety of strategies to extend access to high impact services, strengthen health systems, lower costs, increase health awareness and make care more accessible to the poorest urban residents.
The city profiles provide a diverse set of examples, but the most consistently employed success strategies included:
- Better care for mothers and babies before,during and after childbirth;
- Increased use ofmodern contraception to prevent or postponepregnancy; and
- Effective strategies to providefree or subsidized quality health services for thepoor
International Conference on Urban Health – May 24-27, 2015, Bangladesh
The overall theme for ICUH 2015 is Urban Health for A Sustainable Future: The Post 2015 Development Agenda.
Key Themes:
- Urban Health Service Provisions
- Social Determinants of Urban Health
- Environmental Determinants of Urban Health
- Multi-sectoral System Strengthening
USAID Sanitation Webinar, April 28, 2015
In this webinar, USAID’s Jesse Shapiro discusses and responds to participant questions about the impacts of sanitation; critical challenges to improving sanitation; the sanitation ladder and service chain; and programmatic interventions to improve sanitation.
Redefining shared sanitation. WHO Bulletin, April 2015.
Authors: Thilde Rheinländer, Flemming Konradsen, Bernard Keraita, Patrick Apoya & Margaret Gyapong
Current definitions do not account for the diversity of shared sanitation: all shared toilet facilities are by default classified as unimproved by JMP because of the tendency for shared toilets to be unmanaged and unhygienic. However, we argue that shared sanitation should not be automatically assumed to be unimproved. We also argue that it is necessary to have a new look at how we define shared sanitation and use specific sub-categories including household shared (sharing between a limited number of households who know each other), public toilets (intended for a transient population, but most often the main sanitation facility for poor neighbourhoods) and institutional toilets (workplaces, markets etc.).
This sub-classification will identify those depending on household shared sanitation, which we consider to be only a small step away from achieving access to private and improved sanitation. This sub-category of shared sanitation is, therefore, worth discussing in greater detail. Experiences from Ghana and other sub-Saharan African countries illustrate how household shared sanitation may well fit with culturally acceptable sanitation choices and not necessarily be unhygienic. Indeed, household shared sanitation may be the only realistic option that brings people the important first step up the sanitation ladder from open defecation to a basic level of sanitation.
The Relationship between Inadequate Sanitation Facilities and the Economic Well-Being of Women in India. Journal of Economics and Development Studies, March 2015.
Authors: Mark Gius & Ramesh Subramanian
The present study attempts to ascertain the relationship between inadequate sanitation facilities and two key measures of the economic well-being of women in India: literacy rates and labor force participation rates. A two-stage regression model and correlation analysis are employed. All data is district-level for the year 2011. Results from a simple correlation analysis suggest that there is a positive correlation between latrine availability and female literacy rate but a negative correlation between latrines and the female labor force participation rate.
Results from a two stage analysis, however, indicates that latrine availability is positively related to both female labor force participation and female literacy rates. These results suggest that the availability of latrines positively impacts the economic well-being of women. This is one of the first studies that examines the relationships between latrine availability and female labor force participation and literacy rates in India, and this is one of the few studies on this topic to use district-level data. Hence, these results are significant and suggest that the government of India should invest more in proper sanitation facilities for all of its citizens. These types of investments would greatly improve the economic lives of India’s women.
Urban Sanitation Research Programme: Consolidated findings, 2015. WEDC.
Authors: Louise Medland, Andrew Cotton and Rebecca Scott
This report aims to present the synthesised findings of the SPLASH Urban Sanitation research Programme. This comprised five projects which conducted research in eight urban centres of seven countries of sub-Saharan Africa between 2011 and 2014. The research aimed to improve understanding and thus delivery of sanitation service provision in urban areas which include informal settlements.
Knowledge gaps highlighted through the research
- Transport and Treatment: Very little is known about the transport and treatment stages of the urban sanitation service chain and these gaps in knowledge make effective city wide planning challenging.
- Private sector capacities: More work should be conducted to understand the capacities of thetanker operators and their staff. Given that the private sector is likely to fill the gaps in serviceprovision that cannot be covered by public operators, it is useful to understand what capacities tanker owners and operators have to take on larger responsibilities for service provision and what is stopping them from doing it now.
- Treatment of faecal sludge for end-use options: There is relatively little information about the treatment of faecal sludge for end-use options that can be scaled up. Potential industrial users need to see more evidence of the technology used to produce solid fuel from faecal sludge working at scale. Treatment technologies and decision support tools need to be developed foreach faecal sludge end product (e.g. solid fuel, biogas, protein).
- Market conditions for treated faecal sludge end products: The market conditions for end products are also largely unknown. The starting point is a better understanding of the market potential for each end product, for example: what factors, such as price, quality or quantity, do the products have to compete on? What other similar products/sources do they compete against? What are the circumstances under which preference and use for each end product can increase?
- Financing of both the capital infrastructure and recurrent operation and maintenance costs: Financing for faecal sludge management (FSM) remains a challenge for city wide planning. The research findings from FaME in particular provide a starting point for developing afunding plan for faecal sludge management (FSM), including capital and operational expenditure and income but much more information on the reliable financial flows within the sanitation service chain is needed.
Sharing reflections on inclusive sanitation. Environment & Urbanization, April 2015.
Authors: Barbara Evans, Patrick Chikoti, et al.
This paper draws on sanitation innovations in Blantyre (Malawi), Chinhoyi (Zimbabwe), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and Kitwe (Zambia) driven by slum(1)/shack dweller federations to consider what an inclusive approach to sanitation would involve. This includes what is possible for low-income households when there is little or no external support, no piped water supply and no city sewers to connect to.
The paper discusses low-income households’ choices in situations where households can only afford US$ 3–4 per month for sanitation (for instance between communal, shared and household provision). It also considers the routes to both spatial and social inclusion (including the role of loan finance in the four cities) and its political underpinnings. In each of the four cities, the community engagement in sanitation intended from the outset to get the engagement and support of local authorities for city-wide sanitation provision.
Slum Sanitation and the Social Determinants of Women’s Health in Nairobi, Kenya. Journal of Environmental and Public Health, April 2015.
Authors: Jason Corburn and Chantal Hildebrand
Inadequate urban sanitation disproportionately impacts the social determinants of women’s health in informal settlements or slums. The impacts on women’s health include infectious and chronic illnesses, violence, food contamination and malnutrition, economic and educational attainment, and indignity. We used household survey data to report on self-rated health and sociodemographic, housing, and infrastructure conditions in the Mathare informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya. We combined quantitative survey and mapping data with qualitative focus group information to better understand the relationships between environmental sanitation and the social determinants of women and girls’ health in the Mathare slum.
We find that an average of eighty-five households in Mathare share one toilet, only 15% of households have access to a private toilet, and the average distance to a public toilet is over 52 meters. Eighty-three percent of households without a private toilet report poor health. Mathare women report violence (68%), respiratory illness/cough (46%), diabetes (33%), and diarrhea (30%) as the most frequent physical burdens. Inadequate, unsafe, and unhygienic sanitation results in multiple and overlapping health, economic, and social impacts that disproportionately impact women and girls living in urban informal settlements.
