Pakistan sanitation album on Picassa

This album by Tariq Jahangir has 230 photographs covering solid waste, public toilets (including school toilets and mosque toilets), wastewater, drains, sewerage, wastewater treatment plants, and hospital waste.

Mosque, washing hands, arms, face, feet before prayers Hygiene sanitation for muslims five times a day. Photo: Tariq Jahangir

Learning Alliance Briefing Notes

A series of Briefing Notes on Learning Alliances have been prepared for the SWITCH project. They focus on essential areas in developing research partnerships in Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM).

There are now 13 learning alliance briefing notes available here. The latest ones are on rapid water assessment, social inclusion, scenario building and strategy development. Forthcoming briefing notes will be on governance and institutional mapping.

SWITCH is an action research programme, implemented and co-funded by the European Union and a cross-disciplinary team of 33 partners from 15 countries around the world.

Public and Private Participation in the Water and Wastewater Sector

Public and Private Participation in the Water and Wastewater Sector
Developing Sustainable Legal Mechanisms
Author(s): Cledan Mandri-Perrott
Publication Date: 01 Mar 2009 • ISBN: 9781843391180
Pages: 148 • Hardback

Price: £ 60.00 / US$ 120.00 / € 90.00
IWA members price: £ 45.00 / US$ 90.00 / € 67.50

The purpose of this book is to provide practical guidance on how to achieve compliance with EU law principles of Competition and the Water Framework Directive. It is a comprehensive assessment of the tools required to engage the private sector as a partner in helping accession countries meet one of the most important criteria for accession: the Water Framework Directive. By providing a critical examination of two real case studies, the reader is given a tool of possible strategies that can be used to achieve EU compliance.

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Hindi Water Portal

The Hindi Water Portal will be launched on November 18th, 2008, at Constitution Club in New Delhi, India.

The portal is the Hindi version of the India Water Portal, which addresses equity and sustainability issues in the water sector, and is maintained by Arghyam, a non-profit trust that works in the area of water.

Web site: hindi.indiawaterportal.org

Law, Social Justice and Global Development (LGD) – special issue on water

This special issue of the LGD on ‘Water-justice and the Law in the ” Global South“‘ is a contribution to the expanding scope of debates on access to water and water-justice for the poor in the ‘Global South’. The widening parameters of the debate are prompted by social movements for water-justice on the one hand and the intractable nature of problems entailed in water justice on the other.

[...] Contributors to the issue look for answers at various levels, empirical and theoretical, at meta, macro, meso and micro levels, and present the readers with a range of perspectives and insights on problems of access to water in the ‘ Global South’.

[...] Patrick Bond traces contemporary problems of access to water for the poor in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the wake of privatisation to the meta historical processes of capital accumulation where regular boom-bust cycles create the dynamics of dispossession and expropriation.

[...] Susan Spronk, taking the Cochabamba ‘water wars’ as her point of departure analyses the Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs), an important legal vehicle for foreign direct investments, and shows how BITs operate as a conditioning mechanism limiting the options of the states to enforce socio-economic goals of access to water for the poor.

[...] Bronwen Morgan explores direct and indirect roles of civil society in regulation drawing on the experiences of six countries (four from the ‘Global South’ [Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and South Africa] and two from the ‘Global North’ [France and New Zealand]) in the wake of privatisation of water delivery. Morgan’s focus is on the gaps between ‘regulatory spaces’ and ‘citizen spaces’

[...] Derman and Hellum assess the role of the state in their study of local communities in rural Zimbabwe. They examine top-down interventions where state-law and constitution becomes the conduit through which international law percolates to local communities. Their focus is on the extent to which local normative frameworks, including customary law, is mediated by the state and the ways in which these mediations influence the way international law is ‘materialised’ at local levels of village, communities and women.

Radha D’Souza explores the tensions in the theoretical critique of human rights and the resilience of demands for human right to water within social movements. Also included are his reviews of two books on water: Interstate Disputes Over Krishna Waters: Law, Science and Imperialism and Conflict and Collective Action: The Sardar Sarovar Project in India.

Inga Winkler presents an analysis of trends in judicial determination of the right to water in South Africa, Argentina and India.

The above quotes are taken from the editorial by Dr. Radha D’Souza.

View the full issue, free-of-charge, here.

Water Governance Project website launched

This is the web site of the action research project titled ‘A Programme On Developing Practicable Scientific Approaches On Water Governance And Livelihoods And On Contributing To Policy Dialogue On Basin Issues’. The project is being implemented by Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development, New Delhi and is funded by Sir Dorabji Tata Trust. It studies issues of water governance at the river basin level.

You can find information about the project through papers, reports as well as updates as the project progresses. The quarterly newsletter WaterMOVES is available for download. There are sections on Useful Links and Acts, Policies Documents.

URL: www.watergovernanceindia.org

Greywater reuse in rural schools

Devotta, S. … [et al.] (2007). Greywater reuse in rural schools : wise water management : guidance manual. Nagpur, India, National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) and Bhophal, India, UNICEF. iii, 60 p. : 13 fig,. photogr., 20 tab. 38 ref. Download here [PDF file, 750 KB]

At the present time one third of the world’s population lives in water scarce areas. By the year 2050 it is estimated that the proportion of people living in moderate water stress conditions will increase to two thirds and a half of the population will be living under severe water stress conditions. The wisewater management is a new concept to provide water supply and sanitation services in arid and semi arid rural areas that was developed following WHO recommendations for the safe reuse of water. It was conceived in Madhya Pradesh (MP), a central state of India that has a high rural population with limited access to water and sanitation. The greywater reuse system which is part of wisewater management collect, treat and reuse bathroom water (shower and non toilet/black water) for recycling and flushing of toilets. The purpose of Manual is to establish acceptable means for greywater reuse as a guide for local government and residential schools, setting minimum standards for design, installation and maintenance and preparation and execution of water safety plans for minimizing health risks associated with greywater reuse. The Manual demonstrates methodology proposed by WHO to derive the health based targets and water safety plan for safe (re)use of greywater. Greywater reuse systems can be designed and implemented in the institutions anywhere in the world using the Manual.

Contacts for further details

Dr. Pawan Labhasetwar, Scientist, NEERI, Nehru Marg, Nagpur – 440 020, India
Email: pk_labhasetwar@neeri.res.in

Dr Sam Godfrey, WES Specialist, UNICEF, Maputo, Mozambique, Email: sgodfrey@unicef.org

Integrated fluorosis mitigation : guidance manual

Devotta, S. … [et al.]. Integrated fluorosis mitigation : guidance manual. Nagpur, India, National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI). 102 p. : 9 tab., 22 fig. 68 ref. Download here [very large PDF file, 58 MB]

Fluorosis is endemic in many parts of the world particularly in mid-latitude regions and an endemic public health problem in at least 25 countries around the world. The study on global burden of disease due to fluoride in drinking water indicates that 466 million and 20 million people suffer from dental and skeletal flurosis respectively. India is the second worst flurosis affected country in the world with 18 million and 8 million cases of dental and skeletal fluorosis with DALY of 17 per 1000 persons. The Guidance Manual adopts an Integrated Fluorosis Mitigation (IFM) approach commencing with Quantitative Chemical Risk Assessment (QCRA) as recommended by WHO to establish health based targets for fluoride in drinking water. QCRA is followed by specific strategy for fluorosis mitigation which includes water management solutions, domestic level defluoridation and nutrition supplementation. Wide array of adsorbents based on matrices such as modified alumina, modified zeolites, clay and clay pots, Plaster of Paris and polymers have been developed and field tested for defluoridation of drinking water. This approach can be adopted for supply of safe drinking water in fluoride affected areas in the world.

Contacts for further details

Dr. Pawan Labhasetwar, Scientist, NEERI, Nehru Marg, Nagpur – 440 020, India, Email: pk_labhasetwar@neeri.res.in

Dr Sam Godfrey, WES Specialist, Maputo, Mozambique, Email:sgodfrey@unicef.org