The Sanitation Crisis

From the domestic dwelling through to the collection and disposal of waste exist sanitation services - these make up the sanitation systems in a specific locality and different actors are involved in their provision, or lack of. For   O'Keefe et al (2015, 423) , sanitation services necessitate the 'payment of money for the provision of a technology or waste related service'. Market driven sanitation is an approach that is increasingly being pushed because of the recognition that people are already paying for these services and this can create 'mutual benefit for users and providers of the system' (O'Keefe et al, 2015: 428) as a more reliable source of funds to draw on.  Urban areas in many sub-Saharan African cities, typically run by multiple actors, are left with a 'complex patchwork of provision systems, which do not align to form a coherent and sustainable sanitation system' (O'Keefe et al (2015, 422). These players act on different scales and a...

Human waste has been politicised in a myriad of ways and sanitation is increasingly pertinent to discussions on urban poverty and informal settlements across the global South. For some contextual insight, the paradox of modernity is the shocking reality that pervades a lot of Sub-Saharan Africa, whereby more people have access to a mobile phone than to a safe toilet ( Global Citizen ). It is useful to unpack sanitation on a quotidian level, 'sanitation' being reliant on governments and referring to hardware infrastructure, whilst 'hygiene' is more individualised and dependant on the availability of soap and water, as well as cultural practices that influence cleanliness. Mcfarlane and Silver  refer to sanitation as 'a networked problem' (2017, 125) whereby aspects such as cultural politics, resource distribution, every day habits and political capacity are all inextricably linked. One potent example of the politicised nature of urban sanitation is the 'po...

I deem it necessary to deviate from my posts about the effects and and possible solutions of poor sanitation, and interject with a post about why  this remains prevalent in our modern world. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding about the issue, the reasons behind it must also be foregrounded in my discussions. As I cannot explore all of the wide-ranging catalysts, I will focus on one in this blog - economic water scarcity. Not to be conflated with physical water scarcity, this type of scarcity is ' caused by a lack of investment in water or a lack of human capacity to satisfy the demand for water, even in places where water is abundant' according to the FAO .  In short, it means that the water is there but cannot be accessed, used, or distributed. According to Seckler et al (1999, 37) several countries need to 'embark on massive water development programmes to actually utilise their resources'.  Below, figure 1 displays a map of this economic water scarcity...