Placing sustainability at the centre of water, sanitation and hygiene: Knowledge co-production for sectoral transformation

Carrard, Naomi; Willetts, Juliet; Mitchell, Cynthia

doi:10.1016/j.crsust.2022.100154

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Recent panels with high-level donors continue to share the same stories of WASH intervention failures, such as the typical tale of equipment installation by an international NGO with unsustainable maintenance structures (Dietvorst, 2020). These failures demonstrate the flaws of an approach which focuses only on immediate access to water-and its quality-rather than system sustainability through equitable partnership and co-production of knowledge (Carrard, Willetts, & Mitchell, 2022). Fortunately, a growing dialogue around WASH failures recognizes how the lack of community engagement, limited diversity among senior WASH insiders, and inadequate measurement-among other aspects-can undermine WASH interventions (Barrington et al, 2021(Barrington et al, , 2022.…”

Section: Transformation Through Decolonizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring transformative WASH: A new paradigm for evaluating water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions

2023

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Progress toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6, clean water and sanitation for all, is behind schedule and faces substantial financial challenges. Rigorous water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) interventions have underperformed, casting doubt on their efficacy and potentially undermining confidence in WASH funding and investments. But these interventions have leaned on a narrow set of WASH indicators—linear growth and diarrhea—that reflect a 20th‐century prioritization of microbiological water quality as the most important measurement of WASH intervention success. Even when water is microbiologically safe, hundreds of millions of people face harassment, assault, injury, poisoning, anxiety, exhaustion, depression, social exclusion, discrimination, subjugation, hunger, debt, or work, school, or family care absenteeism when retrieving or consuming household water. Measures of WASH intervention success should incorporate these impacts to reinforce the WASH value proposition. We present a way forward for implementing a monitoring and evaluation paradigm shift that can help achieve transformative WASH.This article is categorized under: Engineering Water > Water, Health, and Sanitation Human Water > Value of Water Human Water > Methods

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Section: Transformation Through Decolonizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring transformative WASH: A new paradigm for evaluating water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions

2023

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“…The Wash sector is, in several regions of the world, one of the sectors still marked by knowledge, solutions, innovations and decision support tools deficits for relevant and efficient climate resilience policies [1,2]. These deficits mainly concern climate change impacts on wash sector, wash sector vulnerability to climate change factors, wash sector resilience to climate change solutions and wash sector resilience to climate change schemes [3,7]. Reducing knowledge gaps for Wash sector climate resilience has several objectives, including the resilience of this sector to climate change and its multiple contributions to social and economic development [8,12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water, sanitation and hygiene sector resilience to climate change: the Badolo WashResilience Scientific Framework

Badolo

2024

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The water, sanitation and hygiene (Wash) sector is, in several regions of the world, one of the sectors still marked by knowledge, solutions, innovations and decision support tools deficits for relevant and efficient climate resilience policies. These deficits mainly concern climate change impacts on wash sector, wash sector vulnerability to climate change factors, wash sector resilience to climate change solutions and wash sector resilience to climate change schemes.In this article, we propose the Badolo WashResilience scientific framework, a tool for climate changeintegration into wash sector development policies. Its main element is the climate risk integration functionthat implements a sequential integration of climate risks into Wash sector policies. Each integration sequence achieves a specific resilience objective. Specific corpuses of climate change impacts, climate change vulnerability factors and climate change resilience solutions are the independent variables of this function. Its main dependent variables are climate change residuals impacts, climate change residual vulnerability factors and resilience configurations.For the Wash sector, the Badolo WashResilience scientific framework is an innovative tool for a significant improvement of climate risk integration processes and practices. It is a tool to identify and achieve required resilience progress, based on contextual capacities and specificities

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“…What is needed to tackle these needs, are global partnerships of experts from professional communities working together to ensure co-creation and ownership of knowledge (Carrard et al, 2022), which requires rigorous quality control measures and transparency. Successful research projects fulfill criteria in five dimensions: management, procedures, human factors, project related factors, and circumstances (Alias et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Successful research projects fulfill criteria in five dimensions: management, procedures, human factors, project related factors, and circumstances (Alias et al, 2014). To achieve this, research projects in the development and cooperation sector need to address open-access to knowledge (Carrard et al, 2022). In addition, when the SARS-CoV-2 virus was declared a global pandemic (further referred to as the COVID-19 pandemic in this paper), it greatly exacerbated every dimension of development research, increasing the need for innovative and agile project management (Sharma et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantities and qualities of fecal sludge: Experiences from field implementation with a Volaser in 7 countries during a pandemic

et al. 2023

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Reasonable estimates for quantities and qualities (Q&Q) of fecal sludge that accumulate in onsite sanitation containments are fundamental for the design of appropriate management and treatment solutions, from community to city-scale. There are increasing attempts to improve Q&Q estimates, but current approaches are still at a conceptual level, and are not yet standardized with confirmed statistical relationships. To reach this level, we will need consistent approaches for planning, measuring, and global collaborations. Hence, the objectives of this study were: (1) to assess and compare Q&Q of fecal sludge from seven cities and communities, and explore statistical relationships that could be used to increase accuracy of Q&Q estimations; (2) to test and launch the Volaser device for measuring in situ volumes of fecal sludge; and (3) to capture lessons learned from field implementation with collaborators in seven countries during a global pandemic when no international travel was possible. The study took place in Ghana, India, Lebanon, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Zambia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Q&Qs were measured in 204 containments with a Volaser, laboratory analysis, and questionnaire. Results indicate that there are differences in Total Solids (TS) and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) in fecal sludge based on containment type, toilet type, source, and whether there is a water connection on the premises. Based on the results of this study, together with previously published open-source data, an empirical relationship for Volatile Solids (VS) and TS of 0.49 (R2 = 0.88) was established using 1,206 data points. For COD/TS, no significant relationship was observed. Developing such empirical relationships will be useful for planning and modeling approaches. An external evaluation was conducted to evaluate overall project management, Volaser technology transfer, and effects of collaborating during the COVID-19 pandemic. Success factors for collaborating with new and existing partners without face-to-face meetings included laboratory capacity and experience with analytical methods, study objectives that were relevant for the partner and locality, and a strong quality assurance plan to ensure comparability of results. The lessons learned can be taken forward as ways to reduce carbon footprint, and contribute to resilient, inclusive development research projects.

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Placing sustainability at the centre of water, sanitation and hygiene: Knowledge co-production for sectoral transformation

Cited by 7 publications

References 41 publications

Measuring transformative WASH: A new paradigm for evaluating water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions

Measuring transformative WASH: A new paradigm for evaluating water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions

Water, sanitation and hygiene sector resilience to climate change: the Badolo WashResilience Scientific Framework

Quantities and qualities of fecal sludge: Experiences from field implementation with a Volaser in 7 countries during a pandemic

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