Sanitation: What's the Real Problem?

The vast number of people without sanitation raises the question why this is so. It cannot be a lack of adequate sanitation technologies as these exist for all situations from dispersed rural communities to high?density low?income urban areas. Nor cannot it be money as development banks will readily fund a well?prepared sanitation proposal. The real sanitation problem must surely lie with those developing?country governments who have shown little commitment in practice to sanitation despite international sanitation advocacy since 1980. Their lack of commitment is clearly shown in the number of ‘open defecators’ in the world today. There are fortunately some countries that have done well: Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, for example, but they are a clear minority

Evaluating the institutional sustainability of an urban water utility: A conceptual framework and research directions

This article was published in the journal, Utilities Policy [© Elsevier]. The definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jup.2013.08.001Institutional sustainability (IS) is critical to translating infrastructure investments into actual service delivery. This paper examines IS for urban water utilities, and how its progress could be tracked. Common conceptualisations of IS in extant literature were found inadequate from an evaluation stand point. We conceptualize IS as a capacity rather than a financial issue, and, consistent with a process-based approach, we propose a new evaluation tool e the water utility maturity (WUM) model e which is flexible and considers different levels of IS. The WUM model, which requires further validation/verification, was piloted in two water utilities in South Asia with positive feedback

Applications of emerging technologies in the drinking water sector

This chapter explores the application of emerging technologies for waterborne pathogen detection from a market perspective. The water market, particularly in terms of monitoring, is heavily driven by regulation and regulatory compliance. Adoption of new technologies for the detection of pathogens can be challenging within this framework. This chapter will first describe the application of water safety plans (WSPs)and the water safety frameworks (WSF) in various countries, to set the background in which water monitoring is performed across the globe. There will be a particular focus on the situation in the UK as an in-depth case study. The chapter will also identify those pathogens which are currently of most concern to the market, providing a perspective from a public health point of view as well as the market view of existing technologies. Finally, the chapter will conclude by discussing future trends and the challenges of bringing new technologies to market in the water monitoring sector