Posts

Cop-27 and Concluding Remarks

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Hi for the final time! My last post will focus on discussions on water and sanitation at Cop-27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Unfortunately, last year’s Cop-26 in Glasgow has been argued as underwhelming with too little action (Meredith, 2021). As a result, the priorities for Cop-27 included discussing WASH across Africa, emphasising education as well as integrating women into participatory processes (WaterAid, 2022). A notable outcome of Cop-27 is the collaboration between the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the new initiative AWARe (Action on Water Adaptation or Resilience). This focuses on promoting cooperative processes between WASH and climate action in order to achieve SDG6 such as sustainable wastewater management and strengthening sanitation education, policy and strategy (KnowESG, 2022; WMO, 2022). Furthermore, women in WASH were framed as the drivers of climate solutions. Women have been recognised as key to WASH responsibilities whilst bearing the negative impl...
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Gendered sanitation

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Hello everyone! Today I will be exploring gendered water and sanitation as well as highlighting an exemplar case study from Egypt, North Africa. Femme WASH Traditionally, WASH has been gendered as females have an integral role in engaging with water and sanitation responsibilities, arguably more than men (MacArthur et al. 2020).   These domestic responsibilities include fetching water, cooking, cleaning, caring. However, the implications of these gendered experiences highlight female struggle. The poor WASH conditions make women susceptible to worsened health including back injuries, stunted development of young girls and nutrient deficiencies (Pommells et al. 2018). Furthermore, poor WASH is linked to sexual, psychological, physical and sociocultural violence (Sommer et al. 2014). Unfortunately, these implications occur through inadequate, far away facilities which increases the risk of sexual violence, fights when queuing, domestic violence from husbands and menstruation ...
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Always Clean and Green

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Welcome to today’s post in celebration of World Toilet Day 2022! This post will be delving into Sanergy as a sustainable urban sanitation model across informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa. Since 2001, World Toilet Day has been celebrated on 19 th November as an annual public awareness campaign. Many international actors have used the toilet as a symbol of global sanitation issues to harness support and pushing for ‘the world to ‘give a shit’ about sanitation’ (Thieme and Koszmovszky, 2020: 30). Most importantly, the climate crisis brings huge threats for sanitation systems which poses risk both to public health and the environment. Therefore, it is important to develop sustainable sanitation systems which make productive use of human waste to boost agriculture and improve public health (Zhongming et al. 2020). Here, the ecological toilets provided by Sanergy not only help improve sanitation and the environment but it’s a business opportunity (Thieme, 2018). ‘Tur...
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Yours Truly Disposal

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Welcome back to today’s post on Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) schemes focusing on Kenya, East Africa. Admittedly, in my last post I criticised top-down authority as being ill-equipped to tend to the needs of local communities. Equally, it is also important to acknowledge the failure of local people to accelerate the success of SDG6. It has been argued that local citizens are sometimes unwilling to invest in household sanitation improvements due to insecure land tenure, unable to afford the costs as well as built toilets being seen as culturally inappropriate ( Munamati et al. 2016 ; Mara et al. 2010 ) . Therefore, it is important to explore a community led project that has encouraged local people to actively improve their WASH conditions.  ‘Tales of sh*t’ 💩 The key for any sanitation project is changing citizen’s mindset to be willing to improve their quality of life and sanitation conditions. The Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) scheme was first introduced in K...
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'Poolitics'

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Hello again! Today's piece will be delving into toilets as a sanitation infrastructure provided by top-down authorities.  Following  on from the last post, I guess the dishonesty discussed comes from the top-down level, well that's an assumption but just as faecal contaminated water is an issue, so are the sanitation systems of human waste. Human excrement is an increasingly politicised process whereby sanitation is at the discretion of government control involving inadequate funding, corruption, unreliable data collection and monitoring  (Ekane, 2018).  In particular, toilets as a sanitation infrastructure represents these 'poolitics' which carry several social biases and reinforces inequities of colonialism.   'Poolitical protests'  The  ‘poo protests’ in Cape Town, South Africa in 2011 highlights the politicised nature of sanitation  (McFarlene and Silver, 2016).  These protests were concentrated in the Makhaza neighbourhood of t...
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Sh*t happens

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Welcome back! In this post I aim to provide perspective on the issues relating to faecal contamination and management.   Before we begin, it’s important to understand the reasons for faecal contaminated water across Africa. The basic yet controversial answer would be to blame citizens and development status. However, a more complex answer would question the dishonesty of ‘improved water sources and inadequate provisioning of proper management for faecal waste from the top-down level. Of course, we will be delving into the complex answer.  ‘Improved water sources’ First things first, we have to narrow down a definition of improved water sources. The  WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (2017 ) report defined drinking water as ‘by the nature of their design and construction, have the potential to deliver safe water’ with three conditions: (1) accessible on premises, (2) water should be available when needed and (3) be free from contamination. I’ll admit, even ...
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Water and Sanitation 101

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Hi everyone. Welcome to my first post on water and sanitation in Africa. Of course, I am no expert on these matters but join me on my blogging journey ðŸ˜€ Why the theme? Now, I’ll admit that I chose the theme of water and sanitation before I even experienced one lecture. That being said, I was immediately drawn to this specific thematic area due to my personal experience of different water and sanitation conditions to that of the UK. Although, not specific to Africa, India presents its own challenges within this area which made me want to explore the theme further. Growing up, my childhood holidays would be spent across different Indian states; Karnataka, Andra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra to name a few. Staying in villages meant that water would be fetched from a shallow groundwater well with a bucket and rope as well as boiling water in the kettle for drinking, cooking and bathing. Experiencing the vastly different water supply systems, makes me appreciate access to safe, tre...
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