Source Water and Sanitation News

Cuba: INRH to repair water network over 10-15 years

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:49:08 GMT

Although more than 95% of Cubans have access to potable water, approximately 15,000l of water is lost each month due to leaks in the pipelines, Cuban daily Granma reported.

Mexico, Mexico City: water authority head proposes new water tax

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:40:40 GMT

The director of Mexican national water authority Conagua, José Luis Luege Tamargo, has called for a new tax on water to cover the cost of wastewater treatment and reforestation, Conagua said in a release.

Haiti: international aid efforts moving slowly but surely

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:16:16 GMT

Sanitation conditions in Haiti are gradually improving thanks to the efforts of aid workers following the earthquake that destroyed the capital Port-au-Prince on 12 January 2010.

WASHCost India 2010 calendar with cartoons

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:23:49 GMT

WASH Fashions – Latest Trends is the January 2010 “costoon” of WASHCost India calendar with cartoons. Its central theme is the COST of providing sustainable and equitable WASH services in rural and peri-urban areas.

International symposia highlight sustainable WASH services

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:42:56 GMT

After decades of investment in water, sanitation and hygiene, levels of sustainability are still unacceptably low in the WASH sector. In part this is due to a focus on building water systems and sanitation infrastructure rather than on delivering services. Two symposia this year will discuss how to change this and strengthen the shift towards sustainable WASH service delivery.

Contest: Tell us a story – for pride and a prize

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:37:41 GMT

Source Bulletin is looking for stories about communities and interventions that helped (or failed!) to improve the sanitation and hygiene situation. Such stories provide valuable lessons from WASH experiences and practices.

Ethiopia: the success of the ArborLoo latrine

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:29:47 GMT

The Government of Ethiopia does not endorse subsidies for sanitation and households must therefore purchase slabs and pay other building costs. Many private artisans have been trained to make slabs, but materials are often hard to come by. Project partner organisations still have to assist in getting materials, and often have to cover the cost of slabs for the poorest families. Slowly, however, the ArborLoo is becoming a part of Ethiopian rural culture by providing a payback for efforts made.

Vietnam: a toilet mason’s business career

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:22:44 GMT

Thuy Thanh Ky is a mason in Quang Nam Province, Vietnam. He is 43 years old and has a completed secondary school education. He has a wife and four children. Mr. Ky, from Binh Trieu Commune, Thang Binh District, was a poor farmer until he took up part-time masonry in 1996 to make some extra money. His business went well and after two years he became a full-time mason.

Water-related lessons for Haiti: listening and livelihoods hold the key

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:12:34 GMT

Listen to people about the future of their livelihoods – that could be the best advice for the teams in Haiti responding to the earthquake disaster. By late January the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that there were 370,000 people living in more than 300 makeshift settlements under improvised shelter with no access to water supplies.

New guide collects and explains hygiene and sanitation software approaches

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:53:46 GMT

WSSCC has published a guide to describe the various hygiene and sanitation 'software' approaches that have been deployed over the last 40 years by NGOs, development agencies, national and local governments in all types of settings - urban, informal-urban and rural. The guide, "Introduction to Hygiene and Sanitation Software: a Selection of Approaches," describes these approaches and explains why the human ‘software’ element is so important.

Studio WASH: a voice for the voiceless

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:44:50 GMT

The year 2009 heard plenty of vital water, sanitation and hygiene messages – in various languages, contexts and regions. With support from WSSCC, the National WASH Coalitions in Bangladesh, Colombia, Ethiopia, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and the Philippines were (and some still are) devoted to running WASH Radio Campaigns in their countries.

WASH United harnesses the power of football

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:37:09 GMT

The buzz from the African Cup of Nations has hardly died away and June 2010 is fast approaching, the start of the first football World Cup on African soil. Just at the right time, comes WASH United, an innovative initiative that promotes WASH through sport.

Ghana: WASH House improves sector focus and unity

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:23:50 GMT

An organisation to coordinate activities in the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector inaugurated its new office in Accra. WASH House is host to eight non-governmental organisations working in the water, sanitation and hygiene sector and will serve as a knowledge resource centre. The organisations are TREND Group, Tripartite Partnership Project, WASHCost, Safi-Sana Ghana Limited, Triple-S Project, SWITCH Project, RCN Secretariat, IRC and its West Africa Regional Programme (WARP).

Right to water and sanitation: going beyond the MDG targets

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:56:16 GMT

The human right to water and sanitation goes beyond the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets and aims for universal coverage, focusing on the most neglected people. UN Independent Expert Catarina de Albuquerque says that the right is not only about sustainable access, but covers affordability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality of sufficient water for basic personal and domestic use. While 20 litres of safe drinking water is considered the basic minimum for survival, 50-100 litres is needed to ensure full realisation of the right.

Kampala Symposium 13-15 April 2010: Providing Sustainable Water Services at Scale

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:39:15 GMT

The Thematic Group on Scaling up Rural Water Services in collaboration with the Ministry of Water and Environment of the Government of Uganda, is organising an international symposium on providing sustainable rural water services at scale, in Kampala from 13-15 April 2010.

IRC Symposium 2010: Pumps, Pipes and Promises

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:12:37 GMT

Costs, financing and accountability for sustainable and decentralised water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services are the three themes of the IRC 2010 Symposium, “Pumps, Pipes and Promises”, 15 - 18 November 2010, The Hague, The Netherlands.

The key questions are:

How much does it cost to provide WASH services?

How does one finance WASH services to cover these costs?

How is accountability assured in the provision of these WASH services?

How much does it cost to provide decentralised WASH services?

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:48:56 GMT

Everyone likes new equipment. However, it is the quality of the service received that counts, rather than the infrastructure. People who use water and sanitation often find that the investment in their services brings only short-term relief. One reason that investments fail is that they do not take into account the actual costs of sustaining a particular quality of service. The result is a ‘graveyard of investments’.

International Symposium on Rural Water Services

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:34:50 GMT

The Thematic Group on Scaling up Rural Water Services in collaboration with the Ministry of Water and Environment of the Government of Uganda, is organising an international symposium focusing on providing sustainable rural water services at scale.

World Water Day

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:07:17 GMT

UN-Water is dedicating World Water Day 2010 to the theme of water quality, reflecting its importance alongside quantity of the resource in water management.

IWA World Water Congress and Exhibition

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:37:27 GMT

"Water and wastewater in developing countries" is one of the eight key topics of this biennial conference of the International Water Association.

Singapore International Water Week

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:26:49 GMT

Theme: Sustainable Cities - Clean and Affordable Water

Tanzania: water and sewerage authority ranks high in corruption “list of shame”

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:02:50 GMT

The Tanzanian water and sewerage authority ranks fifth in the corruption ‘List of Shame” published by the regional NGO Concern for Development Initiatives in Africa (ForDIA).

Crowdsourcing: innovative web site offers cash for water solutions

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 11:17:00 GMT

An open innovation marketplace uses “crowdsourcing” to solve water and sanitation challenges in exchange for the opportunity to earn cash awards.

Grants: call for proposals for microenterprise projects in water and sanitation

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:37:20 GMT

The Fondation Ensemble has launched a call for proposals for projects that seek to create microenterprises in the areas of water supply and sanitation or infrastructure maintenance.

Nanotechnology: low-cost rural water purifier launched in India

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:31:32 GMT

India’s Tata Chemicals has launched a low-cost water purification device, which combines ingredients such as rice husk ash with nanotechnology.

Africa: ministers agree key steps forward from Johannesburg

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:34:17 GMT

African Ministers of Water will in the first quarter of 2010 meet with their colleague Ministers of Finance to review achievements of the 2nd Africa Water Week and to mobilise resources for the second and third phase of implementation of the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Initiative (RWSSI).

Climate change: civil society does not neglect water in Copenhagen

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 10:54:27 GMT

Unlike the official UN climate meeting, the parallel civil society Klimaforum09 did not neglect the issue of water in Copenhagen.

Southern Africa: knowledge network for sustainable sanitation launched

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 09:40:49 GMT

The Ecological Sanitation Research group (EcoSanRes) at Stockholm Environment Institute has launched the Southern Africa knowledge node on sustainable sanitation (SAKNSS).

Sanitation promotion: World’s Longest Toilet Queue

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:30:12 GMT

The World’s Longest Toilet Queue is a mass mobilisation event and Guinness World Record attempt bringing together thousands of campaigners on World Water Day. The campaigners are demanding that governments act to solve the global sanitation and water crisis, one month before the first High-Level Meeting on Sanitation and Water.

Water crisis: private sector solutions for closing the resource gap

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:55:05 GMT

The growing “water gap”, in which global water demand will be 40 per cent more than supply by 2030, can be closed by a combination of demand-side and supply-side measures, says a new report from the 2030 Water Resources Group. Such a balanced approach is four times cheaper than supply-side only measures like desalination.