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 partnerships master class
The master class had three objectives:
- To help practitioners and policymakers better understand the circumstances in which partnerships for on-site sanitation delivery can be effective (and highlight when they are not) and provide principles for those planning or participating in such partnerships.
- Get practitioners from different sectors (civil society, government, private sector) to talk through real-life case studies involving sanitation delivery, unpacking the incentives and disincentives for collaboration and the impact that partnership has had on the ground.
- To help practitioners cut through much of the complexity of sanitation partnerships, giving them a robust set of tools with which to plan and negotiate partnerships on the ground.
More details on the master class are in the full document.
Sanitation Masterclass Background.pdf (54.6 kB)
Messages from the sanitation master class
A short presentation which brings together the main issues discussed in the master class. It focuses on sanitation in poor communities and explores some of the challenges of sanitation that influence partnerships and their applicability.
_Input into symposium (PPTminimizer).ppt (427.5 kB)
Learning alliances for urban sanitation
A power point presentation on learning alliances by IRC's Joep Verhagen. Learning alliances are platforms for learning for change. Some characteristics of the learning alliance are:
- A series of facilitated multi-stakeholder platforms at different levels
- The focus is on joint action and research to develop appropriate solutions
- Practitioners and research set priorities jointly and work in close collaboration.
Learning_alliances_JV.ppt (347.5 kB)
Sanitation partnerships: Beyond storage
This paper discusses the need for on-site sanitation to work as a system and debates the potential for partnerships. Much of the discussion is forward-looking.
Some concrete conclusions are:
- Too little attention is paid to the fact that on-site facilities are typically only one link in a broader chain of waste removal and treatment.
- For the public goods of sanitation to become a reality, public subsidies will be often be needed. These subsidies need to reinforce rather than undermine the private and provider’s goods.
- Manual latrine emptying needs to become a recognised part of broader solutions and the health risks must be mitigated.
- Solid waste offers interesting parallels for on-site sanitation but disaggregated demand remains a key challenge.
- Sludge transfer and disposal are key bottlenecks to delivering a viable sanitation system.
- Partnerships may offer one way of reconciling the links needed, but sanitation offers challenges distinct from either water or solid waste.
BPD doc_114 Beyond Storage.pdf (849.9 kB)
Sanitation partnerships: Landlord or tenant?
The importance of rental relationships to poor community sanitation in 3 African countries is discussed in this paper. The challenges of forming effective sanitation partnerships are amplified in a context of insecure tenure and transient residents, and where relationships between landlords and tenants range between ‘limited’ and ‘fraught’. For public authorities, the problems posed by low-income tenancy arrangements often seem intractable; the relationship between landlord and tenant is private, but the consequences of inadequate sanitation frequently impact very publicly.
Sanitation partnerships: The relevance of tenancy to sanitation in poor communities
In contrast to rural settings many of the urban poor are tenants. The prevalence of renting in low-income areas challenges demand-responsive approaches. The long-term perspectives of tenants and landlords can be quite different to those of owners – the incentives of landlords and their tenants to invest in improved infrastructure are generally much weaker. Tenants or absentee landlords may also be less enthusiastic about engaging in community-led initiatives. This document reports on a roundtable discussion on this issue.
BPD doc_116 Tenancy roundtable.pdf (547.4 kB)
Creating space for innovation: Understanding enablers for multi-sector partnerships in the water and sanitation sector
The numbers are well-known - too many people still lack access to basic water and sanitation services in the developing world. Factors that prohibit access are numerous. Prohibitive connection charges and tariffs, high technology standards, and uncoordinated and non-inclusive decision-making all complicate the provision of sustainable water and sanitation services in poor communities. Multi-sector partnerships between public, private, civil society and donor organisations designed around specific projects or aimed at more systemic change provide an increasingly important tool to overcome these failures.
BPD Enablers_Final.pdf (1.1 MB)
Creating space for innovation: what skills are needed for multi-sectoral partnerships?
While the term ‘partnership’ suggests a certain simplicity and harmony, experience shows that multi-sectoral partnerships (MSPs) are challenging to create and harder to maintain. Specific skills are needed to work in partnerships and the demands of MSPs require constant support from inception onwards. Such skills include the ability to anticipate the kinds of enablers and disablers that will impact on a partnership. The findings of a study are summarized in this document.
BPD Enablers_prac.pdf (352.3 kB)
Flexibility by design: Lessons from multi-sector partnerships in water and sanitation projects
This publication synthesises the findings from a series of reports aimed at documenting the lessons from the different partnership approaches of eight focus projects. Tri-sector partnership approaches are fairly new and as such, the longer-term impacts have yet to be determined.
BPD flexibility.pdf (293.2 kB)
Sanitation partnerships: Harnessing their potential for urban on-site sanitation
Partnership approaches can serve a useful purpose in on-site sanitation. However, collaboration is not easy. The scarcity of existing partnerships for sanitation implies that they are even more difficult to build and to maintain than in other sectors. The diversity that characterises sanitation calls for particular attention to process, careful consideration of context, and strong analysis of the framework within which they can operate.
