Analysis of Research on the Effects of Improved Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene on the Health of People Living with HIV and AIDS and Programmatic Implications

This paper reviews the existing scientific and programmatic evidence, raises WASH issues in the HIV and AIDS context that need further study to build the evidence base, assesses current WASH guidance through a review of national HIV/AIDS guidelines from five African countries, and identifies programmatic implications that home-based care programs and the WASH sectors must consider

Water, Sanitation, Hygiene, and Nutrition in Bangladesh: Can Building Toilets Affect Children's Growth?

This report provides a systematic review of the evidence to date, both published and grey literature, on the relationship between water and sanitation and nutrition. It also examines the potential impact of improved water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) on undernutrition. This is the first report that undertakes a thorough review and discussion of WASH and nutrition in Bangladesh

What Works at Scale? Distilling the Critical Success Factors for Scaling Up Rural Sanitation

This paper is based on the Knowledge Sharing Forum of the same name. It examines the conditions for success in sanitation programs and strategies that lead to robust implementation in various countries

The wealth and gender distribution of rural services in Ethiopia: A public expenditure benefit incidence analysis

agricultural extension, benefit incidence analysis, Development strategies, Food Security Program, water facilities,

Agri-environmental attitudes of Chinese farmers – The impact of social and cognitive determinants

Chinas’ successfully increased food production during the last 30 years has caused significant negative external impacts and subsequent escalating environmental costs (Ash and Edmonds, 1998). This dilemma has recently become a popular issue and the government attaches great importance towards a more sustainable agricultural production (UNDP, 2006). The challenge is to enhance well-grounded approaches that accomplish of effective agricultural trainings, encouraging farmers to adopt optimized practices. According to recent decision-making theories, a successful implementation is also closely related to the target group’s social and cognitive preferences. In order to get more information about farmers’ inherent decision-making factors an explorative quantitative survey of 394 farmers was conducted in Shandong Province. Next to descriptive economic and agronomic analyses, a structural equation model gave evidence that beside farmers’ economic reasons, values and guānxi-relationships indeed show an influence on the extracted agri-environmental attitude factors as well as on manifest behaviour variables. Concluding results reveal the farmers varying preferences and give explanations out of the social and cognitive paths to explain why they behave different or have other focussed attitudes. Finally, recommendations for more effective training methods are given that consider the farmers’ individual motivations.China, agri-environmental attitudes, guānxi, SEM, values, Land Economics/Use,

Alaska Public Safety Statewide Survey: Component Two of Alaska Public Safety Project

Results of a statewide public opinion survey indicate that, contrary to the commonly portrayed perspective, anxiety about crime in Alaska is not particularly high. Moreover, many residents feel that crime levels in their communities have stayed the same or are actually decreasing. Over 600 Alaska residents in five regions throughout the state (Anchorage, Fairbanks, Southeast, Valdez/Kenai/Mat-Su, and rural Alaska) were surveyed by telephone for this study.Alaska Department of Public SafetyAcknowledgements / Introduction / Demographic Profiles of Survey Respondents / Quality of Life / Community Problems / Perceived Magnitude of Common Public Safety Problems / Priorities for Police Response to Problems / Alaskan's Willingness to Become Involved in Police Efforts / Crime Trends, Sense of Safety, and Worry About Violent Crime / Drugs and Alcohol: Relationship to Crime, Magnitude of Problems, and Risks / Drugs and Alcohol: Personal Knowledge of Users of Alcohol and Drugs and Sellers of Drugs / Combatting Illegal Drug Use and Abuse / Criminal Victimization, Reporting, and Satisfaction with Police / Various Opinion Statements / Conclusion / Appendix A. Methodology / Appendix B. Distribution of Interviews / Appendix C. Questionnair

Health and Environmental Benefits of Reduced Pesticide Use in Uganda: An Experimental Economics Analysis

Two experimental procedures were employed to value both health and environmental benefits from reducing pesticide use in Uganda. The first experiment, an incentive compatible auction involved subjects with incomplete information placing bids to avoid consuming potentially contaminated groundnuts/water in a framed field experimental procedure. Three experimental treatments (information, proxy good, and group treatments) were used. Subjects were endowed with a monetary amount (starting capital) equivalent to half the country’s per capita daily income (in small denominations). Two hundred and fifty seven respondents were involved in a total of 35 experimental sessions in Kampala and Iganga districts. The Kampala sample consisted of urban (professional) residents while the Iganga sample consisted of rural (groundnut farmer) residents. Analyses with Tobit models indicated that subjects are willing to pay significant amounts to avoid ill health outcomes, although these values vary by region, by treatment and by socio-economic characteristics. Gender differences were important in explaining bid behavior, with male respondents in both study areas bidding higher to avoid ill health outcomes than females. Consistent with a priori expectation, rural population’s average willingness to pay to avoid ill health outcomes was lower (by 11.4 percent) than the urban population’s willingness to pay perhaps reflecting the poverty level/low incomes in the rural areas and how it translates into reduced regard for health and environmental improvements. Salaried respondents in Kampala were willing to pay more than those on hourly wages. Tests of hypotheses suggested: (i) providing brief information to subjects just prior to the valuation exercise does not influence bid behavior, (ii) subjects are indifferent to the source of contamination: willingness to pay to avoid health outcomes from potentially contaminated water versus groundnuts are not significantly different, and (iii) the classical tendency to free-ride in public goods provision was observed in both urban and rural areas, and this phenomenon was more pronounced in the urban than the rural area. The second experimental procedure, choice experiments, involved 132 urban respondents making repeated choices from a set of scenarios described by attributes of water quality, an environmental good. Water quality was represented by profiles of water safety levels at varying costs. Analysis using a conditional (fixed effects) logit model showed that urban subjects highly discount unsafe drinking water, and were willing to pay less for safe agricultural water, a result not unexpected considering that the urban population is not directly involved in agricultural activities and thus may not value agricultural water quality as much as drinking water quality. It was also found that subjects’ utility increased with the cost of a water sample (inconsistent with a downward sloping demand curve), suggesting perhaps that they perceived higher cost water to be associated with higher quality water. Advertisements for bottled water in Uganda would have consumers believe that higher cost bottled water is higher quality.Experimental auctions, Choice experiments, Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy, Health Economics and Policy,

Institutions for Climate Adaptation: An Inventory of Institutions in the Netherlands that are Relevant for Climate Change

One of the goals of project IC12, a research project of the Climate changes Spatial Planning programme, is to assess if the formal institutions operating in the Netherlands are improving or hampering adaptive capacity. In order to answer the research question, the most important documents referring to those institutions need to be evaluated. This document presents an initial inventory of these adaptation institutions – i.e. policy plans, laws and directives, reports and other documents that seemed relevant to the question at hand

Reliability of water supplies in low and middle-income countries: A structured review of definitions and assessment criteria

The unreliability of water supplies in developing countries is a widely recognized concern. However, unreliability means different things in the variety of literature on water supplies, and no unified definition or assessment criteria exist. We review definitions of water supply reliability used in existing literature, as well as the various ways in which it is assessed. Thirty-three papers were selected for review that reported on reliability of domestic water supply and if they were based on empirical research in developing countries. Explicit definitions of reliability are given in four out of the 33 papers reviewed. These definitions vary, but features common in them are the functionality of the water supply system itself, and the extent to which it meets the needs of water users. Assessment criteria also vary greatly, with the most common criterion in urban settings being the duration / continuity of supply in hours per day, while in rural settings, the proportion of functional water systems is commonly used. The heterogeneity in the definitions and assessment criteria found in the review is perhaps indicative of a multi-attribute nature of the concept of reliability and any unifying definition and assessment criteria might do well to take this into account