Achieving sustainable sanitation chains through better informed and more systematic improvements: lessons from multi-city research in Sub-Saharan Africa
This paper presents the synthesised findings of the SPLASH Urban Sanitation research programme through the framework of the sanitation service chain. Urban sanitation service chains are complex and fragmented, involving a multiplicity of service providers and typically resulting in unsustainable or inadequate services. The aggregate data set covers a wide range of research methods including; household surveys, a randomised control trial, a willingness to pay survey prototype testing of technologies, focus group discussions and deliberative forums. Thorough the research, it has been possible to identify situations where incremental improvements are being made with varying degrees of success. Most importantly, it has identified weaknesses to the sanitation service chains where progress is either slow or extremely limited. It is through these weaknesses that key questions affecting the long term sustainability of sanitation service chains need to be answered.
Funding
This work is a synthesis output of the SPLASH Urban Sanitation
Research Programme which comprises the empirical outputs
of 5 international consortia, without whom the
programme would not have been a success. The programme
was jointly funded by: ADA (Austria), MAEE (France), SIDA
(Sweden), SDC (Switzerland), DFID (UK), BMGF (Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation).
History
School
Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Research Unit
Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC)
Published in
Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol.
Citation
MEDLAND, L.S., SCOTT, R.E. and COTTON, A.P., 2016. Achieving sustainable sanitation chains through better informed and more systematic improvements: lessons from multi-city research in Sub-Saharan Africa. Environmental Science: Water Research Technology, 2 (3), pp. 492-501.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publication date
2016
Notes
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Environmental Science: Water Research Technology and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C5EW00255A.