29 April 2014 – SuSanA/SEI webinar on “Adding missing links in sanitation value chains” with BMGF grantees

The Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) with assistance of a team led by Stockholm Environment Institute is inviting you to the 7th webinar with Gates Foundation sanitation grantees.

• Topic of the webinar is “Adding missing links in sanitation value chains”
• Date/Time: Tuesday 29 April 2014, 16:30 – 17:15 (CET – Central European Time; use this time converter to find your local time)
• Agenda: 16:00 Set-up of connections (you can start entering the virtual meeting room) – 16:30 recording starts – three presentations; each presentation is about 5 minutes long and is followed by around 10 minutes of questions – 17:15 end of webinar.
• The virtual meeting room can accommodate up to 100 participants. Attendance at this webinar is open to all.
• Once recorded, the webinar will be put online on the SuSanA Youtube channel in this Playlist together with previous webinars.

Three grantees of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will present their research results:

1 – Is a power auger “Excrevator” a suitable tool to empty pit latrines in South Africa and septic tanks in India? By Francis de los Reyes (North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA)
Previous discussion about this research on the forum

 

2 – A compact water recycling and energy harvesting system for off-grid public toilets in low-income urban areas: The NEWgenerator^TM anaerobic membrane bioreactor ready for field testing in India. By Daniel Yeh (University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA)
Previous discussion about this research on the forum.

3 – Community-scale facility to process faeces and faecal sludge into safe biochar by pyrolysis – field testing this year with Sanergy in Nairobi. By Brian von Herzen and Laura Talsma (Climate Foundation, California, USA)
Previous discussion about this research on the forum.

Global Review of Sanitation System Trends and Interactions with Menstrual Management Practices

Global Review of Sanitation System Trends and Interactions with Menstrual Management Practices, 2012.

• Full text, pdf (5.4MB)

Kjellén, M., C. Pensulo, P. Nordqvist and M. Fogde. Stockholm Environment Institute.

This review of sanitation system trends and interactions with menstrual management practices has been conducted as part of the broader project on Menstrual Management and Sanitation Systems. 

It starts with a review of trends in the development of urban sanitation systems and then explores the interaction between menstrual management and sanitation systems, mainly relating to the issue of disposal of used menstrual blood absorption materials. Finally, it proposes a framework of interactions by positioning a range of issues of particular relevance for menstrual management into the different parts of the sanitation system.

Sanitation and Hygiene Policy – Stated Beliefs and Actual Practice: Burera District, Rwanda

Sanitation and Hygiene Policy – Stated Beliefs and Actual Practice: A Case Study in the Burera District, Rwanda, 2012.

• Link to full text, (pdf)

Nelson Ekane, Madeleine Fogde, Marianne Kjellén and Stacey Noel. Stockholm Environment Institute.

In Rwanda, sanitation and hygiene are high on the government’s development agenda, and it prescribes a range of guidelines and standards for toilet technologies appropriate for different regions. This working paper presents these prescribed guidelines and standards, specifically those pertaining specifically to urine diversion dry toilets (UDDTs), as well as those on the use of treated human excreta as fertilizer, and on pit latrines (“drop and store”). It then describes how these guidelines and standards are enforced at the community level – specifically in the Rugarama sector, Burera District – and presents the prevailing sanitation and hygiene norms and practices, moving on to discuss how and why the prescribed guidelines and standards match or do not match prevailing practices. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Rwanda is carrying out a water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in the dostrict of Burera and three other districts in the country.

This study shows that health, hygiene, convenience, and safety aspects of sanitation in the study area remain unsatisfactory, and are not aligned with national guidelines and standards. Most of the toilets in these communities are neither properly constructed nor properly used. Reasons for the contradictions between prevailing practice and national guidelines and standards include the following: people do not place a high priority on toilets; financial constraints limit household investment in toilets; there is a lack of proper understanding of prescribed sanitation and hygiene guidelines and standards; and there are challenges in carrying out sanitary inspections. For the productive sanitation system in particular, poor understanding of how the system works was identified as the main cause of the mismatch between standards and practice. This study posits that a common understanding of prescribed guidelines and standards at all levels of society is vital to ensure health and safety, improved livelihoods, and to maintain minimum hygiene and sanitation standards.

SEI and SuSanA to lead new sanitation learning & sharing platform for Gates Foundation

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has chosen the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) to lead a new sanitation learning and sharing platform.

The Gates Foundation’s Sanitation Science and Technology Programme has over 80 projects. SEI and SuSanA have been tasked to share the results from these projects in an open public forum engaging a broad range of experts and the general public.

Over the next 15 months SEI will work with the Programme Grantees of the Foundation in order to broaden understanding and discussion about their work. The grantees will be encouraged to work through the SuSanA that has about 200 institutional members and some 2000 discussants on its Discussion Forum (www.forum.susana.org).

In August 2012, the Foundation gave a grant to the Water and Sanitation for   Africa (WSA) to set up the Africa Sanitation Think Tank (ASTT).

Related web sites:

• Gates Foundation - Water, Sanitation & Hygiene
• SEI – Managing Environmental Systems
• SuSanA
• IRC – Sanitation

Source: SEI, 09 Nov 2012

SEI leads innovative sanitation project in India

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) has granted 3.9 million Swedish crowns (US$ 587,000) for a three-year project on sustainable sanitation in flooded areas in India. The research project is lead by Stockholm Environment Institute in collaboration with the WASH Institute, India, and focuses on sustainable sanitation solutions in areas experiencing recurrent flooding. The state of Bihar is the most flood-prone state in India with more than 16 percent of the total flood-affected area and with more than 22 percent of India’s flood-affected population.

The current sanitation coverage in Bihar is less than 25 % but actual use is much lower.

Flooding and the sanitation-related issues that come with it strongly affect the most vulnerable individuals, children under five, the disabled, elderly and child-bearing women, through diarrheal diseases.

SEI announced the project at the Global Forum on Sanitation and Hygiene which took place from 9-14 October 2011 in Mumbai, India.

For more on the project go to the SEI web site.

Source: WSSCC Global Forum on Sanitation and Hygiene

Seminar – Helping entrepreneurs provide sustainable sanitation services

Small private providers, from retailers to masons, from public toilet operators to latrine emptying businesses, are of vital importance to medium- and lower-income communities, according to BPD Water & Sanitation [1]. The sanitation sector needs to capitalise on the growing interest in social entrepreneurship and the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ especially in urban areas.

There are numerous resilient private sanitation providers but the majority get limited support or oversight from public bodies, NGOs and others. Changing this requires requires relatively little effort, contends BPD, and would reap many economic, health and environmental benefits.

At the World Water Week in Stockholm, BPD, the Stockholm Environment Institute and WASTE are organising a seminar on “Helping Entrepreneurs Provide Sustainable Sanitation Services” (24 August 2011, 14.00 – 17.00, Room T6). The seminar explores the different markets and incentives for sanitation entrepreneurs from Bolivia, Ghana and Malawi. In discussion with entrepreneurs and organisations/ specialists that support them, this interactive session will engage participants in debate around two key topics: finance and business support. The session will finish with an interactive ‘sanitation marketplace’.

Climate Change Deepening World Water Crisis

United Nations, 21 March, (IPS): When U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last January, his primary focus was not on the impending global economic recession but on the world’s growing water crisis.

“A shortage of water resources could spell increased conflicts in the future,” he told the annual gathering of business tycoons, academics and leaders from governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations.

“Population growth will make the problem worse. So will climate change. As the global economy grows, so will its thirst. Many more conflicts lie just over the horizon,” he warned.

Anders Berntell, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute, says the lack of safe drinking water for over 1.0 billion people worldwide, and the lack of safe sanitation for over 2.5 billion, “is an acute and devastating humanitarian crisis.”

“But this is a crisis of management, not a water crisis per se, because it is caused by a chronic lack of funding and inadequate understanding of the need for sanitation and good hygiene at the local level,” Berntell told IPS.

He said: “This can and must be fixed through improved governance and management, and increased funding, and sustained efforts to achieve the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),” which include the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger and adequate water and sanitation.

A U.N. study released on the eve of World Water Day Mar. 22 says the lack of safe drinking water is not confined to the world’s poorer nations; it also threatens over 100 million Europeans.

Read More – Asian Tribune