Sanitation for the Urban Poor - IRC symposium 2008
The IRC symposium ‘Sanitation for the Urban Poor: Partnerships and Governance’ (19 – 21 November 2008, Delft, the Netherlands) brought together a wide range of experts and practitioners to provide a platform to share good practices and explore new ways forward. Ensuring sustainable sanitation services to the urban poor poses many challenges for which answers have not yet been found.
Sanitation Services for the Urban Poor: Partnerships and Governance
This book is based on papers and discussions presented during the IRC Symposium 2008, Sanitation for the Urban Poor: Partnerships and Governance, held in Delft, The Netherlands, at the closing of the International Year of Sanitation in 2008. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in understanding the problems of urban sanitation; learning about examples of best practice and building comprehension of the requirements for positively transforming the situation in future.
Read more or download TP54_SanitationServicesUrbanPoor.pdf (4.7 MB)
Programme and papers
Programme, presentations and papers -abstracts as well as full papers- presented at the IRC symposium ‘Sanitation for the Urban Poor: Partnerships and Governance’, 19 – 21 November 2008, Delft, the Netherlands.
Sanitation master class
On Tuesday 18 November 2008, BPD Water and Sanitation and IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre held a one-day master class for mid- and high-level practitioners seeking to unravel the complexity of urban sanitation and effective partnerships, providing a robust set of tools with which to plan and negotiate partnerships on the ground.
Sanitation services for the urban poor: Symposium background paper
This paper addresses sanitation for the urban poor from a service delivery perspective. This entails a shift from simply seeing interventions as capital projects towards a systems approach that considers all elements required to provide sustainable and appropriate sanitation services to the poor at scale. The paper argues that urban sanitation services should consider:
- The entire sanitation chain: confinement (the toilet seat and safe storage under the seat), removal and transportation of faecal sludge, subsequent treatment and disposal or re-use.
- The service delivery process: planning, construction, operation and maintenance, and subsequent renewal of service delivery elements.
- Both hardware and software elements, particularly hygienic behaviour.
The paper is written by Joep Verhagen and Peter Ryan (IRC).
Verhagen_and_Ryan_IRC_Background-paper_Sanitation_Services_for_the_Urban_Poor[1].doc (732.0 kB)
Essays on urban sanitation
For the IRC symposium on Sanitation for the Urban Poor (19-21 Nov 2008, Delft, The Netherlands), IRC has invited five authors to write an essay that provides an overview of the concurrent thinking around five selected topics: improving local governance; partnerships for sanitation; dynamics of urban settlements; financing sanitation for the urban poor; and effective urban sanitation technologies for the poor. The authors have been asked to provoke discussion, and therefore to formulate strong but well argued conclusions.
The authors are selected on the basis of their proven track record in each of the particular fields.
The Atieno Family - the whole story
Artists Joseph Nzomo and Salim Busuru from Kenya created the family and the comic strip which tells the story of their lives in the slums. In the weeks leading to the IRC symposium (19-21 Nov) we have regularly added pages to the strip book. Now you can read the whole story. Enjoy!
comic-to-publish-on-website-fullversion.doc (1,004.0 kB)
Six drivers of successful urban sanitation for the poor
Rosemary Rop, WSP Africa Nairobi in her key note speech to the symposium identified six drivers of successful urban sanitation for the poor.
Sanitation lagging behind water in development efforts, says the Netherlands
Sanitation is by far the biggest challenge facing the global water and sanitation sector in the coming period, Peter de Vries, a senior official from the Netherlands Directorate General for International Cooperation told the IRC Symposium Sanitation for the Urban Poor: Partnerships and Governance.
Service approach needed to ensure sanitation is grounded in reality
A project approach will never succeed in solving the urban sanitation crisis because it will not succeed in sustaining services in the long term or extend them to all who need them. That was the central theme of the main background paper to the symposium, introduced by IRC’s Joep Verhagen.
