Background
At the beginning of this new millennium, the earth has arrived at a historical point of inflexion. For the first time in history the world is becoming predominantly urban with more people living in cities than in rural areas. Many municipalities are hardly able to keep pace with the speed of the urban growth and face great difficulties to provide sustainable infrastructure to their citizens.
This is particularly true for mega-cities in developing countries that are most affected by these rampant urbanisation trends. The character of urban growth is often informal (unplanned) and takes place predominantly in peri-urban areas and the city fringes, resulting in a high number of unserved people, who are exposed to severe health and environmental risks.
Today’s conventional urban infrastructure planning approaches are top-down, expert-based approaches which are most often disposal or discharge oriented. To combat the worldwide sanitation crisis, it is necessary that more participatory and sustainable approaches reach the cities.
These approaches must move beyond sectoral barriers and address ‘integrated coverage’ of sustainable sanitation including basic services such as water supply, excreta and wastewater management as well as rainwater and solid waste management.
Objectives
The overall aim of this working group will be to develop strategies on how cities can adopt an appropriate planning, implementation, and management process that leads towards more sustainable sanitation solutions.
Activities
- Factsheet "Planning for sustainable sanitation"
- Thematic paper “Sustainable sanitation for cities”
- Book “Sustainable sanitation in cities: a framework for action” which also includes a collection of cases and good practice examples for sustainable sanitation in cities.
- SuSanA working group 6 meeting ''World Toilet Summit Taj Land's End, Mumbai 20.11.2018''
Campbell, A. V. (2020)
Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM) Rapid Assessment: Leh, India
LEDeG and BORDA have been working in partnership since 1987. Initially cooperation was focused on renewable energy projects which provided electricity to 67 villages through micro-hydro technology. The cooperation was later expanded to include a range of income generation activities such as food processing, handicrafts and food production. In recent […]
Campbell, A. V. (2020)
Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM) Rapid Assessment: Godawari, Nepal
ENPHO and BORDA have been working in partnership since 2004 to improve living conditions and to protect natural resources and climatic conditions in inadequately served urban and peri-urban settlements in South Asia. Concentrated in the field of urban sanitation, key achievements include technical support and scaling up of Decentralized Wastewater […]
Strande, L., Ronteltap, M., Brdjanovic, D. (Eds.) (2014)
Faecal Sludge Management (FSM) book
Systems Approach for Implementation and Operation (in English, French and Spanish)
Over a billion people in urban and peri-urban areas of Africa, Asia, and Latin America are served by onsite sanitation technologies. Until now, the management of faecal sludge resulting from these onsite technologies has been grossly neglected. Financial resources are often lacking, and onsite sanitation systems tend to be regarded […]
TERI University (2017)
State of Urban Water and Sanitation in India
The report aims to be a comprehensive collection and analysis of past and current policies and programmes and provides insights into the reasons for several gaps that become apparent when the sector is viewed holistically. The extensive review of international, national, and state-level reports draws upon a rich collection of […]
Ministry of Urban Development (Government of India) (2014)
National Urban Sanitation Policy
This publication summarizes the background, vision and sanitation policy issues in India that are adressed with the National Urban Sanitation Policy by the Ministry of Urban Development. It also provides draft frameworks, e.g. for City Sanitation Plans or developing state sanitation strategies.
Stockholm International Water Institute (2016)
City-wide sanitation: The role of planning
Policy brief
In 2016 the World Water Week (WWW) brought together leading experts from around the world to discuss and share the latest experiences on planning urban sanitation in two sessions convened by WaterAid, UNDP-SIWI Water Governance Facility, GIZ, SuSanA, and the World Bank. This policy brief synthesises the key lessons and […]
Working Group Leads
Christoph Luethi
Eawag/Sandec • Switzerland
Prit Salian
i-San Associates • Uganda
Abishek Sankara Narayan
Eawag • Switzerland
