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18/08/2016

WWWeek 2016: Talking city-wide sanitation services, gendered WASH needs and smart enforcement

WWWeek 2016: Talking city-wide sanitation services, gendered WASH needs and smart enforcement

With rapid urbanization and unplanned growth, addressing urban sanitation and hygiene is key towards achieving universal access by 2030. From 28 August to 2 September, SNV will be at World Water Week 2016 in Stockholm to discuss sustainable sanitation and hygiene as a cornerstone of sustainable development. During the various sessions, seminars and events, SNV will talk about the delivery of sustainable city-wide sanitation services, the needs of women and girls regarding access to WASH services and menstrual hygiene management, and enforcement and compliance in local government contexts.

Organized by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), World Water Week is the annual focal point for the globe’s water issues. This year's theme is Water for Sustainable Growth. Experts, practitioners, decision-makers, business innovators and young professionals from a range of sectors and countries come to Stockholm to network, exchange ideas, foster new thinking and develop solutions to the most pressing water-related challenges of today. Below please find an overview of the sessions in which SNV staff are involved as co-hosts, moderators, pannellists and/or presenters. We look forward to seeing you there!

SNV @ World Water Week 2016

  • Sunday 28 August: City-wide sanitation services: recent thinking and experiences (09.00 to 10.30 in FH 202)
    Urban sanitation is a key challenge in the pathway towards the Sustainable Development Goal’s ambition of Universal Access by 2030, due to both the rapid informal urbanisation processes and the lack of clarity on how to deliver sustainable sanitation services city-wide, with inclusion of the poor. Across the WASH sector, there is increased engagement in urban sanitation, with new actors entering the arena. Stakeholders are keen to increase dialogue and coordination to ensure that lessons are shared and learnt widely, addressing some gaps that are currently affecting outcomes and harmonisation at the implementation level. An initial presentation will set the scene of the urban sanitation sector, followed by a marketplace where different organisations will present city sanitation experiences. SNV's Rajeev Munankami - Senior Advisor & Programme Manager WASH, will share experiences from our 'Pro-poor market-based solutions for faecal sludge management' programme in Khulna, Bangladesh - funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

  • Tuesday 30 August: Gendered WASH needs: programming for the home, school, and workplace (11.00 to 12.30 in Aulan)
    The proposed Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets for water and sanitation (Goal 6) position the “special needs of women and girls” (Target 6.2) as an area of specific attention by the international community. This workshop will be moderated by SNV's Antoinette Kome - Global Sector Coordinator WASH, and focus on unpacking what the “special” needs of women and girls are in educational, domestic, and work place settings. We will focus on two themes: 1) psychosocial distress and vulnerabilities associated with constrained access to WASH services and (2) menstrual hygiene management (MHM). After brief presentations on the current state of knowledge regarding WASH needs of women and girls in these settings, we will break into a series of smaller groups for further dialogue focused on programmatic solutions to these challenges, sharing lessons learned, and mainstreaming the needs of women and girls into ongoing and new WASH programs. One of the breakout sessions, co-facilitated by Plan, addresses the WASH/MHM needs for the adolescent girl. SNV's Sharon Roose - Senior Advocacy Officer WASH, will share insights and lessons learned from our MHM approach and related Girls in Control pilot programme.

  • Wednesday 31 August: Smart Enforcement: the Key to Sustainable Urban Sanitation (16.00 to 17.30 in Pelarsalen)
    With rapid urbanization and unplanned growth, urban waste water management is rapidly becoming one of the biggest challenges for cities in the developing world today. Millions of people live in unhealthy environments, water bodies are polluted, and drinking water sources under threat. Investment in sewerage is beyond the reach of most cities, and for years to come they will rely on on-site sanitation facilities. The long term success or failure of these depends on the capacity of local governments to enforce minimum standards, including building codes, regulations around landlord responsibilities, discharge norms, and health & safety standards. The event will be both informative and engaging: we will use an interactive brainstorming approach to challenge participants to think about enforcement and compliance, and how to make these smart in under-staffed local government contexts. It will include examples from the field and models from other sectors, on regulatory risk differentiation, strategic regulatory investment choices and an emerging tool for smart compliance strategies in urban sanitation. SNV's Rajeev Munankami - Senior Advisor & Programme Manager WASH, will address compliance of national building codes for sanitation facilities, in particular in Khulna, Bangladesh. We also collaborated with the Institute for Sustainable Futures on smart enforcement, which will be discussed during Senior Research Consultant - Melita Grant's session 'Smart Enforcement in Urban Sanitation'.

  • Thursday 1: Understanding sustainable sanitation as the cornerstone of sustainable development (11.00 to 12.30 in Musiksalen)
    While the sanitation crisis has often been overlooked, sanitation services are essential for promoting health and wellbeing and for protecting increasingly threatened ecosystems from degradation. In addition, sanitation presents opportunities for resource recovery that contribute to jobs, human prosperity and growth as part of the Green Economy. Despite a renewed focus on sustainable development with the adoption of the global SDG agenda, many sanitation interventions focus only on achieving access and use of a sanitation facility without consideration of broader sustainability issues. This session will bring together experts from a range of disciplines to discuss how sanitation can better contribute to achieving cross-cutting aims. In particular, contributions to targets within the SDG agenda beyond the dedicated water goal will be highlighted. SNV's Rajeev Munankami - Senior Advisor & Programme Manager WASH, will be sharing our biogas experiences in promoting re-use for clean energy generation in 'From Waste to Clean Energy'.

D-group discussions

Dgroups is the starting point for groups and communities to contribute constructively to dialogue and decision-making for international development and social justice. Currently, Dgroups engages over 200.000 people in ALL countries and territories of the world. From Wednesday 17 August till Tuesday 23 August, we will host a special Dgroup discussion on smart enforcement. Is it our next challenge or just an illusion?  Everybody acknowledges the importance, but there are many challenges around enforcement - from the willingness and interest of governments, to practical barriers which make compliance difficult and the general awareness about the need for safe sanitation practices.

Some suggest to overcome these through participatory processes between stakeholders and government, to develop workable standards together and gradually bring people into compliance, or suggest self-regulation. Others, however, consider this may take too long and will not fly without clear consequences. They point out that enforcement is impossible without up-to-date information about compliance, and that this is difficult and costly. We do see examples in the world of how situations of rampant incompliance are turned around, such as Phnom Penh Water Supply is such an example. But is that down to extra-ordinary leadership, an exception to the rule?

Join us for a discussion on whether it is timely to try and address enforcement and compliance issues in urban sanitation, and if so - how.

Should you want more information on SNV's work in WASH or wish to meet with our staff in Stockholm, please do not hesitate to contact us via wash@snv.org. Keep up to date with the latest by following @SNV_WASH!