This volume is the result of years of commitment with world-wide sanitation challenges from various research networks linking the editors and authors of this volume to many other sanitation scholars and professionals. Major contributions to this volume are derived from the work done in the PROVIDE project (working on sustainable urban infrastructures in cities of the Lake Victoria Basin, East Africa), the DESAR project (research and pilot projects in Decentralized Sanitation and Reuse, the Netherlands), and among others within NETSSAF (large scale implementation of sanitation in Africa), and EcoSan networks. The major milestone for this book to emerge was however the IWA Sanitation Challenge Conference of May 2008 in Wageningen, the Netherlands where all the authors of this book presented their papers. The conference was organized by a consortium of sanitation specialists at Wageningen University’s Environmental Policy Group (the editors) and the s- department of Environmental Technology, LeAF (Lettinga Associates Foundation) and Wetsus (Center of Excellence for Sustainable Water Technology in the Netherlands). It was a unique event as it enabled a truly multi-disciplinary approach in discussing Sanitation Challenges in North and South with social and political scientists, natural scientists, environmental engineers and practitioners in one s- entific conference. This volume presents a selection of the social scientific insights and research results presented at the Sanitation Challenge Conference: the concepts, decisi- making support tools and the perspectives from farmers and consumers towards sanitation innovation.
If the goal is to half the number of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015, we may not only need new technologies but rather innovative sanitation concepts, new tools for decision-making and an understanding of diverse stakeholder perspectives along the sanitation chain. Social Perspectives on the Sanitation Challenge presents a timely collection of papers from the perspectives of Science and Technology Studies, Environmental Sociology and Urban Studies. Together they comprise a valuable resource for political scientists, environmental engineers and urban planners whose work is aimed at meeting the ambitious Millennium Development Goal on sanitation.
The book’s main message is that we need to go beyond traditional dichotomies between either ‘small, appropriate’ or ‘modern, advanced’ sanitation solutions in solving the global sanitation challenge and to develop sanitation with a mix of scales, strategies, technologies, payment systems and decision-making structures that better fit the physical and societal systems for which they are designed.
In the developing world the challenge is to provide sanitation services to the poor and the very poor, without compromising on sustainability. In this realm, the book presents new configurations that employ the best practices of sanitation technology and management for rural and urban contexts.
In developed countries the challenge is to initiate a transition from strongly centralized, water-based infrastructure regimes towards more sustainable sanitation regimes. This has raised questions on sanitation concept development, demonstration, institutional learning and governance building to which this book provides some innovative social scientific answers.
Social Perspectives on the Sanitation Challenge is unique in its presentation of research findings from urban planners, sociologists,economists, political scientists and environmental engineers. Its empirical scope, stretching from Western Europe to Sub-Saharan Africa, is deliberately wide to stress the global character of the sanitation challenge that we all face.
