Sanitation

The report is a product arising from the work of the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance which was initiated prior to the International Year of Sanitation in 2008 in an attempt to inject sustainable development ideas into the sanitation sector. It functions as a vision document for those policymakers, researchers and practitioners that are striving towards fundamental reform and improvements within the sanitation sector in both rural and urban populations in all countries of the world. It reviews the global progress being made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target on sanitation. A literature review is presented on sanitation provision including human health impacts and the estimated costs and benefits of achieving the MDG target. The report also provides a critique in that the UN has not yet introduced the concept of sustainability into the MDG programme in general and in particular into the sanitation sector which is highly dysfunctional and suffering from limited political leadership at both the local and global levels. It introduces the various sustainable sanitation options available and what approaches can be taken to improve sanitation systems – not just toilets which are only a small part of the overall system of food, nutrients and water cycles. The study estimates the numbers of urban and rural households, including slum populations that are being targeted in all world regions. It also evaluates the historic trends in morbidity and mortality linked to diarrhoea arising from lack of functioning sanitation services comparing these to the UN data on sanitation coverage. The report estimates the potential fertiliser replacement capacity that reuse of human excreta can have for all world regions. Finally it provides a vision for future development within the sector where more sustainable options like source separation and reuse are promoted giving positive environmental or “green” impacts but also catalysing greater involvement and understanding on the part of individuals in society.

Focusing on how to provide clean water for all - one of the key Millennium Development Goals, this book integrates technical and social perspectives. A broad, international range of case studies are provided, from developed, middle income and developing countries, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

A comprehensive overview of the human rights to water and sanitation, exploring theoretical, conceptual, and practical aspects.

The Romans developed sophisticated methods for managing hygiene, including aqueducts for moving water from one place to another, sewers for removing used water from baths and runoff from walkways and roads, and public and private latrines. Through the archeological record, graffiti, sanitation-related paintings, and literature, Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow explores this little-known world of bathrooms and sewers, offering unique insights into Roman sanitation, engineering, urban planning and development, hygiene, and public health. Focusing on the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Ostia, and Rome, Koloski-Ostrow's work challenges common perceptions of Romans' social customs, beliefs about health, tolerance for filth in their cities, and attitudes toward privacy. In charting the complex history of sanitary customs from the late republic to the early empire, Koloski-Ostrow reveals the origins of waste removal technologies and their implications for urban health, past and present.

This book is based on a public-health approach to the provision of water and sanitation in emergencies: an approach that is information-based and people-based. It emphasizes the need for a coordinated and phased response, which adapts to meet constantly changing needs.

Sustainable Sanitation for All describes the landscape of sustainability of CLTS as it is now, and reflects on key aspects, challenges, innovations and insights around sustainability. It aims to clarify a future research agenda and gaps in current knowledge, and make recommendations on policy and practice.

This paper argues that there are many challenges to designing and implementing water and sanitation interventions that actually deliver economic benefits to the households in developing countries. Perhaps most critical to successful water and sanitation investments is to discover and implement forms of service and payment mechanisms that will render the improvements worthwhile for those who must pay for them. In this paper, we argue that, in many cases, the conventional network technologies of water supply and sanitation will fail this test, and that poor households need alternative, non-network technologies. However, it will not necessarily be the case that specific non-network improved water supply and/or sanitation technologies will always be seen as worthwhile by those who must pay for them. We argue that there is no easy panacea to resolve this situation. For any intervention, the outcome is likely to be context-dependent. An intervention that works well in one locality may fail miserably in another. For any given technology, the outcome will depend on economic and social conditions, including how it is implemented, by whom, and often on the extent to which complementary behavioral, institutional and organizational changes also occur. For this reason, we warn against excessive generalization: one cannot, in our view, say that one intervention yields a rate of return of x% while another yields a return of y%, because the economic returns are likely to vary with local circumstances. More important is to identify the circumstances under which an intervention is more or less likely to succeed. Also for this reason, when we analyze a few selected water and sanitation interventions, we employ a probabilistic rather than a deterministic analysis to emphasize that real world outcomes are likely to vary substantially.

This open access book deals with global sanitation, where SDG 6.2 sets a target of enabling access to sanitation services for all, but has not yet been achieved in low- and middle-income countries. The transition from the United Nations MDGs to the SDGs requires more consideration based on the socio-cultural aspects of global sanitation. In other words, equitable sanitation for those in vulnerable situations could be based on socio-cultural contexts. Sanitation is a system that comprises not only a latrine but also the works for the treatment and disposal of human waste. Sanitation systems do not function by themselves but have significance only through social management. The process of decision-making also largely depends on socio-cultural conditions, and the importance of sanitation needs to be socially acknowledged. The health benefits of sanitation improvement--among the significant contributions of sanitation--also need to be considered in the socio-cultural milieu. Further, the social-culture itself is affected, and potentially even created, by sanitation. In this context, more progress on the improvement of sanitation requires a more holistic approach across disciplines. In this book, we present the concept of the Sanitation Triangle, which considers the interconnections of health, materials, and socio-culture in sanitation, as a holistic approach, and the case studies based on the Sanitation Triangle by diverse disciplines such as Cultural Anthropology, Development Studies, Health Sciences, Engineering, and Science Communication. By the deep theoretical examinations and inter-dialogues between the different disciplines, this book explores the potentialities of inter-disciplinary studies on global sanitation.