Community-driven sanitation improvement in deprived urban neighbourhoods: meeting the challenges of local collective action, co-production, affordability and a trans-sectoral approach.

There is an international consensus that urban sanitary conditions are in great need of improvement, but sharp disagreement over how this improvement should be pursued. Both market-driven and state-led efforts to improve sanitation in deprived communities tend to be severely compromised, as there is a lack of effective market demand (due to collective action problems) and severe barriers to the centralized provision of low-cost sanitation facilities. In principle, community-driven initiatives have a number of advantages. But community-driven sanitary improvement also faces serious challenges, including: 1) The collective action challenge of getting local residents to coordinate and combine their demands for sanitary improvement; 2) The co-production challenge of getting the state to accept community-driven approaches to sanitary improvement, and where necessary to co-invest and take responsibility for the final waste disposal; 3) The affordability challenge of finding improvements that are affordable and acceptable to both the state and the community – and to other funders if relevant; 4) The trans-sectoral challenge of ensuring that other poverty-related problems, such as insecure tenure, do not undermine efforts to improve sanitation. Each of these challenges is analysed in some detail in the pages that follow. The report then goes on to examine two community-driven approaches to urban sanitation improvement that have been expanding for more than two decades, one in Pakistan and the other in India. It is argued that a large part of their success lies in the manner in which they have met and overcome the aforementioned challenges. Indeed, both overcame the co-production challenge to the point where sanitary improvement became the basis for attempts to radically improve community–government relations – relations unfortunately also very dependent on other political dynamics. They also systematically tackled other, less institutionally-rooted challenges, such as the lack of local technical skills in building and maintaining improved sanitary facilities

Overview of the Global Sanitation Problem

human development, water, sanitation

Determinants of diarrheal disease in Jakarta

In this report, the authors develop and estimate a model of household defensive behavior and illness. Using cross-section data from a household survey in Jakarta, they observe defensive behavior (washing hands after using the toilet) consistent with expectations: defensive effort intensifies with exposure to contamination, and with income and education. Variables associated with the cost of defensive behavior - such as interruptions in the water supply - reduce defensive behavior. The data suggest that wealthier households are no less vulnerable to illness. The water sources that supply the wealthy (the water company and private wells) are disrupted more often, interfering with their defensive behavior. There is also evidence, although weak, to support findings by van der Slice and Briscoe (1993): that pathogens within a household are less harmful to household members than are pathogens originating from other households. Given the opportunity and knowledge, individuals try to modify the effect of contamination on the incidence of diarrhea. But diarrhea's inccidence is also affected by decisions and problems outside the realm of the household, including the performance of the water company.Water Conservation,Water and Industry,Health Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Sanitation and Sewerage,Town Water Supply and Sanitation,Water and Industry,Water Supply and Sanitation Governance and Institutions,Water Conservation,Health Economics&Finance

Market Systems Development in the Cities of Rapidly Urbanising Countries

Donors are increasingly prioritising programmes that support economic transformation in the rapidly growing cities of the developing world, including programmes using market systems approaches, such as the Kuza Project in Kenya. While the core principles of market systems development are applicable to urban and rural contexts, with a few notable exceptions, practical experience of urban programme design in market systems development, has been limited. The aim of this paper is to offer guidelines for those in the market systems community interested in working in urban settings, by exploring the key features that makes cities unique and the implications these features have for programmes using a market systems approach. Section 2 examines two key aspects that make urban systems unique (agglomeration and the urban land nexus). In section 3 we draw out insights on the working of cities as complex systems. In section 4, we discuss challenges and opportunities for market systems interventions in cities, focusing on the urban informal economy and informal settlements, whose market operations are particularly critical to poor groups. Finally, section 5 presents rules of thumb to guide practitioners and donors when using market systems approaches in urban contexts

Informal Land Investments and Wealth Accumulation in the Context of Regularization: Case studies from Dar es Salaam and Mwanza

The Urban Land Nexus and Inclusive Urbanization in Dar es Salaam, Khartoum and MwanzaBetween half and three-quarters of new housing development in African cities has been taking place on land acquired through informal channels. This paper offers insights from a study of self-builders’ investments in informal land and housing in Dar es Salaam and Mwanza, two of the largest and fastest-growing cities in Tanzania. The findings demonstrate that self-builders’ investments in informal land and self-built housing are inextricably linked with household wealth accumulation processes and long-term security. In light of the research findings, the paper offers reflections on the potential impacts of ongoing land formalization processes. The paper argues that the informal housing system has far more advantages than appreciated by proponents of formalization, that the vision of bringing “dead capital” to life is misleading, and that the anticipated emergence of active formal markets for land and housing may not serve the needs or interests of low- and middle-income households.The research for this paper is part of a project funded by the East Africa Research Hub (EARH) of the UK Department for International Development (DFID), titled “The Urban Land Nexus and Inclusive Urbanization in Dar es Salaam, Khartoum and Mwanza”, led by the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex

Local environmentalism in peri-urban Ghaziabad: emergent ecological democracy?

This paper explores the potential of a range of peri-urban environmentalisms to come together in support of sustainable urbanisation. The present-day ‘urban,’ along with the dominant planning visions of urbanisation, lack in inclusivity, deliberative democracy, grassroots innovations, and bottom-up processes of knowledge generation. To sustainably transform this scenario, there is a need for the participation of various sections of citizens, who should be seen not just as subjects of planning, but as creators of a planning framework that emerges from both contestations and innovations in everyday living. Our earlier research on a peri-urban village situated between Delhi city and Ghaziabad town suggested that there is little support for continuation of agriculture in such areas, despite its strategic importance for sustainable urban development. Agriculture could contribute to the greening of urban spaces while enhancing the livelihoods of the poor, recycling urban waste and producing perishable food items for the urban populations. However, we found that present-day government schemes, as they unfold–often under the banner of sustainability–tend to exacerbate peri-urban inequalities. Having observed local citizen environmental action in Ghaziabad, we wanted to understand the potential role it could play in dealing with the environmental crises facing the district and region. During the course of our research we came across a distinctive peri-urban civil society activism, which cannot be viewed in binaries and reflects a pluralist spectrum that allows for alliance building. This environmentalism in Ghaziabad is distinct from the ‘environmentalism of the poor’ practiced by rural and forest dwelling groups; from the dominant elite urban ‘green development’ practices and discourses of ‘bourgeois environmentalism’; and from the urban politics of the poor. It reflects the possibility of creating bridges across sectional interests–rural and urban, red and green ideological streams– and across classes

Local Environmentalism in Peri-Urban Spaces in India: Emergent Ecological Democracy?

This paper explores the potential of a range of peri-urban environmentalisms to come together in support of sustainable urbanisation. The present-day ‘urban,’ along with the dominant planning visions of urbanisation, lack in inclusivity, deliberative democracy, grassroots innovations, and bottom-up processes of knowledge generation. To sustainably transform this scenario, there is a need for the participation of various sections of citizens, who should be seen not just as subjects of planning, but as creators of a planning framework that emerges from both contestations and innovations in everyday living. Our earlier research on a peri-urban village situated between Delhi city and Ghaziabad town suggested that there is little support for continuation of agriculture in such areas, despite its strategic importance for sustainable urban development. Agriculture could contribute to the greening of urban spaces while enhancing the livelihoods of the poor, recycling urban waste and producing perishable food items for the urban populations. However, we found that present-day government schemes, as they unfold–often under the banner of sustainability–tend to exacerbate peri-urban inequalities. Having observed local citizen environmental action in Ghaziabad, we wanted to understand the potential role it could play in dealing with the environmental crises facing the district and region. During the course of our research we came across a distinctive peri-urban civil society activism, which cannot be viewed in binaries and reflects a pluralist spectrum that allows for alliance building. This environmentalism in Ghaziabad is distinct from the ‘environmentalism of the poor’ practiced by rural and forest dwelling groups; from the dominant elite urban ‘green development’ practices and discourses of ‘bourgeois environmentalism’; and from the urban politics of the poor. It reflects the possibility of creating bridges across sectional interests–rural and urban, red and green ideological streams– and across classes.ESRCEcosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) Programm

How small water enterprises can contribute to the Millennium Development Goals: evidence from Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Khartoum and Accra

For centuries, Small Water Enterprises (SWEs) have supplied a large share of the water market in the urban centres of most low-income countries. Such SWEs have proved themselves economically viable, and often operate in competitive conditions. They extend water services to informal settlements that have little prospect of being supplied with piped water from the local utility. Unfortunately, they attract comparatively little investment, and even less support from governments. The incremental but critically important improvements they can provide tend to be overlooked by governments and international agencies. In international statistics any household that gets its water from vendors is defined as lacking access to improved water supplies. This book is one of the outputs from a project designed to identify and test out ways of improving the water services delivered to the urban poor through SWEs. As such, it will prove an invaluable resource for water utility managers and policymakers. The book includes accounts of fieldwork undertaken in a number of African cities: Dar es Salaam (Tanzania); Nairobi (Kenya); Khartoum (Sudan) and Accra (Ghana). Even in these cities, where dependence on SWEs is high, the services provided by these SWEs have been poorly documented until now

Estimating population and urban areas at risk of coastal hazards, 1990–2015: how data choices matter

The accurate estimation of population living in the low-elevation coastal zone (LECZ) – and at heightened risk from sea level rise – is critically important for policymakers and risk managers worldwide. This characterization of potential exposure depends on robust representations not only of coastal elevation and spatial population data but also of settlements along the urban–rural continuum. The empirical basis for LECZ estimation has improved considerably in the 13 years since it was first estimated that 10 % of the world's population – and an even greater share of the urban population – lived in the LECZ (McGranahan et al., 2007a). Those estimates were constrained in several ways, not only most notably by a single 10 m LECZ but also by a dichotomous urban–rural proxy and population from a single source. This paper updates those initial estimates with newer, improved inputs and provides a range of estimates, along with sensitivity analyses that reveal the importance of understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the underlying data. We estimate that between 750 million and nearly 1.1 billion persons globally, in 2015, live in the ≤ 10 m LECZ, with the variation depending on the elevation and population data sources used. The variations are considerably greater at more disaggregated levels, when finer elevation bands (e.g., the ≤ 5 m LECZ) or differing delineations between urban, quasi-urban and rural populations are considered. Despite these variations, there is general agreement that the LECZ is disproportionately home to urban dwellers and that the urban population in the LECZ has grown more than urban areas outside the LECZ since 1990. We describe the main results across these new elevation, population and urban-proxy data sources in order to guide future research and improvements to characterizing risk in low-elevation coastal zones (https://doi.org/10.7927/d1x1-d702, CIESIN and CIDR, 2021)

<i>BCL9L</i> dysfunction impairs caspase-2 expression permitting aneuploidy tolerance in colorectal cancer

Chromosomal instability (CIN) contributes to cancer evolution, intratumor heterogeneity, and drug resistance. CIN is driven by chromosome segregation errors and a tolerance phenotype that permits the propagation of aneuploid genomes. Through genomic analysis of colorectal cancers and cell lines, we find frequent loss of heterozygosity and mutations in BCL9L in aneuploid tumors. BCL9L deficiency promoted tolerance of chromosome missegregation events, propagation of aneuploidy, and genetic heterogeneity in xenograft models likely through modulation of Wnt signaling. We find that BCL9L dysfunction contributes to aneuploidy tolerance in both TP53-WT and mutant cells by reducing basal caspase-2 levels and preventing cleavage of MDM2 and BID. Efforts to exploit aneuploidy tolerance mechanisms and the BCL9L/caspase-2/BID axis may limit cancer diversity and evolution