Slum Improvement Requires More Focus on Water and Sanitation - 4th World Water Forum

The 4th World Water Forum (WUF4) is a gathering of urban specialist, ministers, mayors, parliamentarians, civil society, private sectors and other interest groups. The Forum, which held in Nanjing, China 3 - 6 November, 2008, was attended by 7,900 participants.

Ahead of the forum a colleague from WaterAid published a short report calling on city authorities, governments and donors to pay more attention to water and sanitation as an imperative to slum improvement. They point out a few surprising pieces of information , such as the fact that aid funding for water and sanitation has been declining since the 1990s relative to other sectors, and that the poorest countries and regions are not getting the bulk of aid funding for water and sanitation!

Here is the full Turning Slums Around report. Below are links to two articles about it:

BBC report

EDIE Network

Nigerian Environmental Newspaper No Longer Online?

I was excited to receive an email about The Sanitarian, an environmetal newspaper based in Nigeria. However, the excitement turned to disappointment when I tried to access the newspaper's website (supposed to be located at www.thesanitarianonline.com but as of August 10, 2009 the website does not exist). A few UNEP reports cite some articles from the now defunct website.

In the email I receive, they urge those in Nigeria to subscribe for weekly delivery. I found this contact information online, if you are looking for a way to subscribe. Let me know in the comments if you've read any issues or if they come back online or if you have any other information about this paper!

Welcome to The Sanitarian Online
Contact Information
Telephone
01-8180370
FAX
01-8180370
Postal address
19 Igbobi College Road, Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria

Here's more about the paper:
"The Sanitarian was conceived out of the urge to reach the public with soft
translations of the hard truths in our environment, creating an
environment consciousness strong enough to cause positive changes with
professional ethics and passion.

The Sanitarian beams search lights on those developments that endanger the
environment and threaten our individual and collective existence within
nature.

We report and applaud the good, draw attention to the ugly and take a firm
position on issues that affect our environment, when we have to.
We publish the environment every week (for now), with the intention of
going daily soon.

Our contents are 80% environment, 5% mild politics and business, 5%
health, 5% agriculture and 5% sports and entertainment.The Sanitarian is environment friendly, has no sacred cows, is character reformative, and reorientation based."

A technological fix for water scarcity?

I came across an interesting video on Yahoo today about windmills that produce water mimicking rain creation. Marc Parent, the inventor, has created a windmill that produces clean water from humidity in the air. He got the idea from salvaging water from air conditioners and feeding it into a tank.

Wind turbines suck in air, and the electricity generated cools the air turning steam into water. He says it is a solution for very remote areas, and arid areas. There is already some interest from the Middle East. Each turbine can produce about 800 liters of water per day, but it is costly, as each system costs between 9 to 25,000 Euros.

A video featuring the process can be found here.

Do you think this kind of technology has a useful place in solving the water crisis facing many countries?

"Good Enough" service delivery?

I just came across a wonderful video on YouTube (posted below) by Professor Michael Wesch from KSU about Web 2.0 and the need to re-think our conception of the Internet and its governance given that it is rapidly evolving into something new, a global repository of human knowledge being dynamically manifested by billions of people every day. (Something like that!) Really, watch the video (it's got great music, too) to get the feel for what he is saying.



In any case, he mentioned something in his description about Web 2.0 and the "eternal beta". Intrigued, I googled the phrase and came across an interesting post on another blog, The Good Enough Movement and the Eternal Beta. Published over 3 years ago, the article talks about a new form of web deployment that has changed the IT world, where software is essentially release in beta form (like Flickr) because it is "good enough" for end users. There's an extended discussion there beyond the scope of this blog, but interesting if you are into web architecture and all that.

The interesting thing for me was that it related to work I've read and cited by Professor Merilee Grindle of Harvard around the concept of Good Enough Governance. There's a great PowerPoint by Professor Grindle available on the web that summarizes the concept.

Similar to the eternal beta, Grindle questions this authoritative notion of developing country government having to get governance exactly right, and by extension enforcing that in foreign policy, aid and so forth. Perfect governance (does that exist??) is criticized as an overly-ambitious and distracting agenda that gets in the way of figuring out how to make things work for people all over the world. The old good governance paradigm gives 3rd World governments a list of things they must get right without, as the PowerPoint lists, regard to prioritization, sequencing, and feasibility.

When it comes to delivering water, sanitation, energy and other basic services that billions around the world still lack, we need to build on what exists, do more of what works, and prioritize based on people's needs and demands (here is where democracy comes into play)... In essence, we should be pushing an "eternal beta" model of governance that is constantly being refined and improved by the input of its users (the populace) rather than authoritative, hierarchical models of what should be, far removed from the every day reality of people on the ground.

What I'm saying is potable water and adequate sanitation can be and is being delivered in myriad ways and we should support those efforts on the ground.

Iran - Solidarity and Witnessing

Thinking about what's going on in Iran right now is also giving me flashbacks to my fieldwork in Nigeria in the fall of 2007. Flawed elections earlier that year didn't erupt in widespread violence like the same subversion of democracy would in December in Kenya , but the structural violence of disenfranchisement and stolen elections is every bit as violent to the body, spirit and aspirations of a people. Still, acts of physical violence by a government against its own people ends their legitimacy, much more so when they kill children.


While there has been a lot of politicking in the US about what President Obama should or should not say, but he never fails to deliver words that stir the soul and he did on June 20, when he put the ruling regime in Iran on notice that the world is bearing witness.

Freedom is at the heart of good governance.

Tutorial on Women and Water

I was recently sent this very useful pdf document on women and water that many will find useful: Why Gender Matters: A Tutorial for Water Managers.

The tutorial covers four major areas - water supply, sanitation, agriculture, and environment--providing data on why a focus on gender is important, and touches on integrated water resources management as well as the economic and social benefits from a gendered approach to water supply and management.

Safe Water as the Global Glass Ceiling

article about women and water on Huffington Post.

Here is the intro:

"There is a photograph that travelers inevitably take when they go to a developing country -- a picture of a woman carrying a large container of water on her head. The woman's posture is ramrod straight, the envy of runway models everywhere, and her face rarely betrays the amount of effort and strength this task involves. Most times this photo is taken because it is a stunning and moving image of a woman's strength and beauty.

Alluring as this image may be, what it truly portrays is the economic, physical and health burden that women and girls must endure everyday of their lives to provide water for their families - this is the forgotten glass ceiling."

For the full article, go here.