Water for people.pdf - WHO Thailand Digital Repository

C I T I E S : C O M P E T I N G N E E D S I N A N U R B A N E N V I R O N M E N T / 1 8 1■ it recognizes the rights of the inhabitants of the area beingupgraded to have basic infrastructure and services, even thoughthey may have occupied or developed the land illegally.While many upgrading programmes have had limitations, e.g.inadequacies in the improvements to water and sanitation and thefailure to ensure adequate provision for maintenance, a newgeneration of upgrading programmes has sought to address these(see for instance, Stein, 2001; Fiori et al., 2000). Perhaps more tothe point, there is a recognition of the need to shift from supportfor upgrading projects to developing the institutional capacity ofcity and municipal authorities This would allow them to workcontinuously with the inhabitants of low-income settlements to helpupgrade the quality and extent of infrastructure and serviceprovision. Community-supported upgrading programmes provideperhaps the most important means to meet the MillenniumDevelopment Goals.Self-built low-income housingMany nations have developed innovative ways of increasing thepossibilities for low-income households to buy or build their ownnew homes, which in turn provide for better water, sanitation anddrainage. Support for low-income groups’ savings schemes and fortheir acquisition of land with infrastructure on which they canconstruct their own homes is an important part of improvingprovision for water and sanitation. This is demonstrated by the largenumber of low-income households that have acquired better-qualityhousing through community-managed schemes in India (within theNational Slum Dwellers Federation and Mahila Milan) (Patel andMitlin, 2001), South Africa (within the Homeless People’sFederation), (Baumann et al., 2001) and Thailand (with the supportof the former Urban Community Development Office, now theCommunity Organizations Development Institute), (UCDO, 2000).This is an approach that has to be ‘demand-driven’ for lowincomehouseholds; many government schemes to provide lowincomehouseholds with ‘sites and services’ on which they can buildhave been ‘supply-driven’ with the result that new sites were in thewrong location or were too expensive for low-income households.Demand-Side Water Management andthe Urban PoorDemand-side water management can be defined as theimplementation of policies or measures that serve to control orinfluence the consumption or waste of water. The benefits fromdemand-side management include:■ reduced water consumption;■ a more cost-effective means of meeting demand, wholly or inpart, compared with investment in new resources;Box 7.7: Urban sanitation micro-enterprises:the UN-Habitat Vacutug development projectIn recent years, the problems associated with the disposal ofhuman waste have escalated with the growth of unplannedsettlements in low- and middle-income countries. In thesesettlements, there are often more than 100 persons to eachpit latrine. Although the latrines are now generallyconstructed of modern materials, the problem of renewingthem when they become full has proved a difficult challenge.Often the settlements have no road access for disposaltankers to use so a novel solution is needed. UN-Habitat hasbeen developing the prototype technology that can emptylatrines. This technology, ‘Vacutug’, is being constructed inassociation with a private-sector engineering company and aKenyan water NGO. The micro-enterprise earned overUS$10,000 over a two-year period and employed four people.UN-Habitat has now launched the second phase of theproject to expand operations and assess the technology in anumber of different conditions in different countries. TheVacutug is seen as a simple but very effective solution andis currently supported by the governments of the UnitedKingdom, Ireland and Denmark. The programme is shortly tobe extended to many other cities on a partnership basis andpresents an ideal opportunity to greatly improve healthaspects related to excreta disposal while at the same timegenerating much-needed income for the urban poor.Source: Prepared for the World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) by G.P. Alabaster,UN-Habitat (for more details, contact graham.alabaster@unhabitat.org).