Abstract
Continuous access to water and sanitation (W+S) in towns is crucial for the survival of the individual but also for society. When infrastructure provides easy access, other basic needs will gain importance for individuals but for society the sustainability of W+S services must remain top priority because of health and other important benefits. These indisputable facts did not convince decision makers to stop the deterioration of access in Africa and also in the world. Since four decades’ global goals for access to W + S have been continuously missed, and following the irrefutable data, the same is trough for the MDGs water target. Despite this, the unrealistic goals have now been carried forward with the SDGs. The reasons for this are a knowledge gap and a one-sided and biased discourse in urban W+S development for low-income countries which leads to inadequate development concepts and attention of decision makers. There is an urgency to act and to make more prominently known to the world that an increasing number of people are suffering and unnecessarily dying because they have to consume contaminated water, chase daily to fill their water canisters, look for a place to defecate and constantly fight infections in an environment polluted with human waste.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
UNESCO (2006: 6) Water-A Shared Responsibility, Paris.
- 2.
- 3.
Cullet (2009: 8).
- 4.
Aderinwale and Ajayi in Hemson et al. (2008: 67).
- 5.
Vuorinen et al. (2007: 49).
- 6.
Second Consolidated Draft of Sessional Paper on National Water Policy, (2017: 8). However, generally national policy papers covering all sectors do not provide such an importance to water and sanitation development (see Sect. 3.3)
- 7.
E.g. the US government global water strategy (2017:7) states: ‘Finally, improving access to basic services such as water and sanitation can be an important aspect of efforts to strengthen government stability and accountability’.
- 8.
Expert interviews included in the dissertation submitted to the University of Vienna, International development, Werchota (2017).
- 9.
Sanitation facilities not linked to a sewer system.
- 10.
Also known as Bilharziose.
- 11.
Esrey et al. (1991: 609, 611).
- 12.
Exner (2015).
- 13.
According to a presentation at the MATA/GIZ (Mitarbeitertagung), Germany in 2015, Martin Exner, University of Bonn, underlined that before 1892, the ‘Under Five’ mortality rate in Germany was 4% with a sharp increase in 1892 (rising over 6%), the year of the cholera epidemic in Hamburg. After Koch’s proposal to install water filtration, there was a sharp and immediate decrease of ‘Under Five’ mortality rate to 2% in 1893.
- 14.
Spears et al. (2013: 3).
- 15.
The poor often spend in absolute terms more for water than the middle and high-income classes, which hampers the escape out of poverty by using such savings for education, productivity improvements, and etc. According to GIZ’s baseline survey 2009 on low-income underserved urban centres in Tanzania, Pauschert et al. (2012: 20) ‘On average households in LIAs, which receive water from an ISP pay 13-times the price than they would if they received water from a house connection [of the utility]; and still pay 3-times the price than they would, if they received their water from a [utility] kiosk’.
- 16.
Devoto et al. (2012, pp. 68–69).
- 17.
E.g. also the US government global water strategy (2017:7) states: ‘Moreover, access to sanitation for women and girls is particularly crucial to…reducing gender-based violence.’
- 18.
- 19.
- 20.
The WHO/Unicef Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water and Sanitation was put in place to monitor the progress towards the relevant MDGs on global level (global monitoring), http://www.wssinfo.org/about-the-jmp/mission-objectives/ (last visited 06.2016). As well as http://www.unwater.org/publication_categories/whounicef-joint-monitoring-programme-for-water-supply-sanitation-hygiene-jmp/ (last visited 10.2017)
- 21.
Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation, 2014 update, WHO and Unicef, JMP website: http://www.wssinfo.org/ (last visited 07.2016).
- 22.
This holds true especially in highly populated areas where a controlled system of evacuation of effluent and human waste is missing. See also Sect. 2.5, e.g. the Uganda example.
- 23.
JMP (2014: 6).
- 24.
Booysen et al. (2007: 1125–1127).
- 25.
Gaffga et al. (2007: 705).
- 26.
- 27.
Stadt ohne Wasser – Südafrika, Spiegel Nr.5 (2018: 82 and 83)
- 28.
This is relevant Africa wide and presently especially apparent in Cape Town, South Africa as Anthony Turton from the university of Bloemfontein explains, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNt9EayG3-g, (last visited 01.2018)
- 29.
As an example: Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, which experienced a water shortage in 2016 despite the significant investments carried out since the end of the 90s with the construction of the Ziga Dam and the extensive transmission pipelines. Equally, for Lusaka, Zambia where the long transmission pipes from the Kafue River to the town incurs substantial O + M costs.
- 30.
Progress on Drinking water and sanitation, 2014 update, WHO and Unicef, JMP website: http://www.wssinfo.org/ (last visited 07.2016).
- 31.
Langford and Winkler (2013: 6).
- 32.
1981–1990, http://www.un.org/en/sections/observances/international-decades/ (last visited 06.2016).
- 33.
With a reduction in the ambitions, moving away from the goal of access for all.
- 34.
Joint news release Unicef/WHO on the 06.03.2012, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2012/drinking_water_20120306/en/, (last visited 01.2016).
- 35.
According to WHO ‘748 million people lack access to improved drinking-water and it is estimated that 1.8 billion people use a source of drinking-water that is faecally contaminated’ [and therefore, not safe – own remark], JMP report (2014: 42), http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/hygiene/en/ (last visited 01.2016). This represented 25% of the world population in 2015. Furthermore, according to the JMP report (2017: 3, 110), ‘Three out of four people (5.4 billion) used improved sources free from contamination’ in 2015 which leaves 1.9 billion people to consume contaminated water (7.3 billion world population minus 5.4 billion). Therefore the water MDG was missed, with access of 74% instead of 88% (JMP 2015: 4) https://washdata.org/, http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=world+population&d=PopDiv&f=variableID:12;crID:900 (last visited 06.2017). In addition, it is to note that the number of people without access to safe water is increasing. In other words: 43% of the world population in 1990 and 57% in 2015 had access to piped water. This progress was mainly achieved in medium and low-income countries because the industrialised world had already achieved universal access before 1990. If the proportion without sustainable access to safe drinking water should have been halved, then the percentage of the underserved people should have been at 28.5% and not at 43% in 1995. Thus, the MDG water target was missed by 14.5%, which represents over one billion people worldwide. It is not certain that progress to other improved sources than piped water in the rural areas has offset the one billion people who have not achieved access to piped water as intended.
- 36.
‘An improved drinking-water source is defined as one that, by nature of its construction or through active intervention, is protected from outside contamination, in particular from contamination with faecal matter.’ http://www.wssinfo.org/definitions-methods/ (last visited 04.2015). Technically ‘improved’ construction is supposed to prevent access of surface water, but not ground water which is often contaminated in the urban setting.
- 37.
SDG 6, https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld (last visited 04.2016). Expressing a critical view on achievements is Chakava et al. 2014 as well as Langford and Winkler 2013.
- 38.
The Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) of the UN indicates that access to piped water has decreased from 1990 to 2012 in Sub-Saharan Africa in Progress on Drinking water and sanitation, 2014 update, WHO and Unicef, JMP website: www.wssinfo.org (last visited 04.2016).
- 39.
Onsite sanitation means a toilet / shower etc. which are not connected to a (centralised) sewer system and therefore, need in the urban setting a decentralised chain for sanitation in order to avoid pollution.
- 40.
See also Sect. 4.2.
- 41.
E.g. the French cooperation (own experience in Burkina Faso in the 1990s).
- 42.
A reform can be described as a planned reorganization with the aim to improve existing systems according to the Duden, http://www.duden.de/suchen/dudenonline/reform (last visited 01.2016). However, reforms also mean that sector development takes a new direction, which is given by the introduction of a new set of principles, Cullet (2009: 3), see also to Sect. 5.1. For the present work, reforms mean that significant changes or improvements of a given system are undertaken in order for it to be able to address challenges adequately (i.e., moving towards policy goals). This includes a new dynamic where stakeholders are not necessarily side-lined but receive different roles than in the past, where knowledge is enlarged (e.g. international and national knowledge is considered side-by-side), the framework is adjusted, new mechanisms are introduced, etc.
- 43.
Schiffler (2015: 1) states that worldwide only an estimated 6% of people served ‘…are billed by a major privately-owned utility that provides all water and sewer services…’
- 44.
E.g. Bertrand and Geli (1995).
- 45.
E.g. Pollem 2008: The regulators in Ghana, the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), created in 1997 as a multi- sectoral regulator, and in Mozambique, Coselho de Regulacao de Aquas (CRA), created as single sector regulator in 1998, can be regarded as the commencement of regulation for water and sanitation service provision in Africa. Thereafter, a number of countries followed suit such as Zambia in 2000, Tanzania in 2002, Kenya in 2004, just to name a few.
- 46.
UN, World Urbanization Prospect, 2014 revision.
- 47.
It could even be higher than 40% when considering that the regulator in Kenya obliges utilities to include in their service areas all settlements which have urban characteristics (a certain population density). It follows that 45% of the population in Kenya lives in the service areas of the utilities (2017).
- 48.
Kessides (2005: x).
- 49.
According to the ‘Schéma Directeur d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme (SDAU) de la Ville de Bobo-Dioulasso, Horizon 2030, Ministère de l’Habitat et de l’Urbanisme’ (2012: 29). The population of Ouagadougou was 59,126 in 1960 and was 2.053 million in 2011 according to http://www.indexmundi.com/burkina_faso/demographics_profile.html (last visited 01.2016).
- 50.
Refer to Kenya where the regulator defines the services areas of the utilities according to the population density and does not follow administrative boarders or the census figures. The result is that more than halve of the population in the country live in the utility areas (Impact Report 2016 from WASREB) although the census is reporting that around 2/3 of the population lives in rural areas.
- 51.
UNDP 2016.
- 52.
http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/region/SSA (last visited 01.2016).
- 53.
Werchota (2013: 7).
- 54.
Payen (2015: 1, 2).
- 55.
See Sect. 5.8.
- 56.
With the exception of some NGOs involved in water and sanitation development.
- 57.
BMZ (Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development) global initiative 2017, www.bmz.de
References
Aderinwale A, Ajayi O (2008) The link between poverty and water supply: the Nigerian example. In: Hemson et al (eds) Poverty and water – exploration of the reciprocal relationship CROP (Comparative Research Programme on Poverty). Zen Books, London
Bertrand J, Geli H (1995) From insolvency to excellence – a tale of transformation, office National de l’Eau et Assainissement, 1995, National Office for Water and Sanitation, Burkina Faso, ID Bleue, Mars 2015, AgroParisTech-ONEA
Booysen F, van der Berg S, Burger R, von Maltitz M, Du Rand G (2007) Using an asset index to assess trends in povery in seven sub-Saharan African countries. World Dev 36(6):1113–1130. Elsevier 2008
Chakava Y, Franceys R, Parker A (2014) Private boreholes for Nairobi’s urban poor: the stop-gap or the solution’. Habitat Int 43:108–116
Coombes, Y., Hutton, G., Hickling, S., Sara, L. and Kiama, A. (2012) Economic impacts of poor sanitation in Africa (Uganda and Zambia), WSP – Water and Sanitation Program, World Bank Group
Cullet P (2009) Water law, poverty, and development – water sector reforms in India. Oxford University Press, Oxford
DeFrancis, M., (ed) (2011) Economic impacts of inadequate sanitation in India – Flagship Report, WSP – Water and Sanitation Program, World Bank Group
Devoto F, Duflo E, Dupas P, Pariente W, Pons V (2012) Happiness on tap: piped water adoption in urban Morocco. Am Econ J Econ Pol 4(4):68–99. 2012, MIT Open Access Articles, American Economic Association
Esrey SA, Potash JB, Roberts L, Shiff C (1991) Effects of improved water supply and sanitation on the ascariasis, diarrhoea, dracunculiasis, hookworms infection, schistosomiasis, and trachoma. Bull World Health Org 69(5):609–621
Exner M (2015) Regelungen zur Sicherstellung der Trinkwasserqualität in Deutschland. Lauterbach Germany, presentation at MATA/GIZ (Mitarbeiter Tagung der GIZ), July 2015
Gaffga NH, Tauxe RV, Mintz ED (2007) Cholera: a new homeland in Africa? AM J Med Hyg 77(4):705–713
JMP-Joint Monitoring Programme on MDG (2014) Progress on drinking water and sanitation, WHO and UNICEF, Available: http://www.wssinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/resources/JMP_report_2014_webEng.pdf (last visited 04.2014)
JMP Annual Report WHO and UNICEF (2015) https://d26p6gt0m19hor.cloudfront.net/whywater/JMP-2015-Annual-Report.pdf
JMP (2017) Progress on drinking water, sanitation and hygiene. https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2017/launch-version-report-jmp-water-sanitation-hygiene.pdf
Kessides CH (2005) The Urban Transition in Sub-Saharan Africa: Implications for Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction, African Region, Working Paper Series No. 97, Urban Development Unit, Transport and Urban Development Department, The World Bank
Langford M, Winkler IT (2013) Quantifying water and sanitation in developing cooperation: Power or perspective? Working Paper Series, Harvard School of Public Health, Available: http://fxb.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2013/09/Langford-and-Winkler_Final-Working-Paper-92413.pdf
Pauschert D, Gronemeier K, Jebens D (2012) Informal service providers in Tanzania, Eschborn, GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH), 2012, Available: http://www.giz.de/fachexpertise/downloads/giz2012-en-informal-service-provider-tanzania.pdf (last visited 06.2015)
Payen G (2015) Unsatisfactory access to drinking water and sanitation trends derived from JMP estimates for 2015 Source: “Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water: 2015 Update and MDG Assessment” UNICEF-WHO JMP report launched on 30 June 2015. http://www.wssinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/resources/JMPUpdate-report-2015_English.pdf
Pollem O (2008) Regulierungsbehörden für den Wassersektor in Low-Income Countries – Eine vergleichende Untersuchung der Regulierungsbehörden in Ghana, Sambia, Mosambik und Mali‘, Dissertation, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Fakultät II, 2008
Reade N, Ndirangu N (2009) Interim evaluation 2008, Water Sector Reform Program, Centre for Evaluation (CEval) for Eschborn, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH (Publisher)
Schiffler M (2015) Water, politics and money a reality check on privatisation. Springer International Publishing Switzerland, Springer Cham Heidelberg/New York/Dordrecht/London
Spears D, Ghosh A, Cumming O (2013) Open defecation and childhood stunting in India: an ecological analysis of new data from 112 districts. PLoS One 8 (9), September, e73784 (pp 1–9)
UNDP (2016) Human development report 2016, Human development for everyone. http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/2016_human_development_report.pdf
UNESCO (2006: 6) Water-A shared responsibility, Paris
US Government Global Water Strategy (2017) https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1865/Global_Water_Strategy_2017_final_508v2.pdf
Vuorinen HS, Juuti PS, Katko TS (2007) History of water and health from ancient civilisations to modern time. Water Sci Tech Water Supp 7(1):49–57
Werchota R (2013) The growing urban crises in Africa, Eschborn, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), Germany
Werchota R (2017) ‘The crucial factors for a development of the urban water and sanitation sector towards sustainable access for all in Sub-Saharan Africa’ Band 1 und 2, University of Vienna, Austria
WSTF – Water Services Trust Fund (2010) Survey on the impact of formalised water kiosks on living conditions in Athi River and Ongata Rongai, Water Services Trust Fund, Kenya
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Werchota, R. (2020). Introduction to Urban W+S in the Developing World. In: Empty Buckets and Overflowing Pits. Springer Water. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31383-8_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31383-8_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-31382-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-31383-8
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)