ACCESSanitation – Accelerating City to City Exchange for Sustainable Sanitation

ACCESSanitation is a three-year project (December 2009 – November 2012) implemented by ICLEI with funding from the European Union. It aims to to promote and initiate local sustainable sanitation solutions in a total of ten cities – five in the Philippines and five in India – thus improving health conditions, fostering the local economy and increasing food security. As well as benefiting the participating local authorities, the project will also increase awareness on the importance of sustainable sanitation for poverty alleviation among local stakeholders in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Project partners are: ICLEI European Secretariat, ICLEI Africa Secretariat, ICLEI Southeast Asia Secretariat, ICLEI South Asia Secretariat, Ecosan Services Foundation (Pune) and Xavier University, Cagayan de Oro City.

The principle stages of the project are:

• Creation of an inventory on relevant national policies and strategies in target countries
• Identification of 10 cities in target countries to participate in the project
• National training courses with selected municipalities in target countries
• Three phases of local application including initial rapid assessment of the sanitation situation in participating cities, priority setting, development of action plan and implementation of solutions
• Regional knowledge exchange and follow-up workshops
• Final conference
• Publication and dissemination of project case studies

Second Partner Meeting, Cape Town, 11-13 May 2010

During this meeting, the ICLEI South Asian and South East Asian partners presented and inventory of sanitation programmes being undertaken in their regions.

The technical partners Ecosan Services Foundation from India and Xavier Institute from Philippines presented the training programme on sustainable sanitation to be held in the project cities.

On 14 and 15 May 2010, the project held the first Advisory Board meeting with representation from the Bremen Overseas Research and Development Association (BORDA), International Water Management Institute (IWMI), University of KwaZulu-Natal, UN-HABITAT, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) and Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI).

ICLEI South Asia launched a call for Expressions of Interest for cities in the Indian subcontinent to participate in the ACCESSanitation programme. The call closed on 15 April 2010.

ACCESSanitation contact at ICLEI European Secretariat: Barbara Anton, barbara.anton@iclei.org

More information: ICLEI South Asia – ACCESSanitation