No

Name of Initiative & Agency, Region

The Objectives

The Partners/Institutions involved

Peoples’ Participation

Technology used

Sustainability and Potential Effect on Policy

1

Latin American Region.

Improve water provisions for human settlements in six Districts of Lima (Peru) through public basins, to provide water for 7800 people.

3)The Local Government provided logistical support.

The Community provided labor and materials. It discussed the design, and suggested modifications. It supervised work conducted by others, and took responsibility for operation and maintenance. Women took the leadership in many cases

Public basins to provide water. Installation of public stand pipes.

Minimal dependencies on outside support makes it sustainable. Neighboring settlements have shown an interest and have presented similar projects to local authorities. Can therefore lead to policy changes.

2

Habitat, Water Cycle and the Environment: the example of Parque Hawai in Eusibio (Brazil) CEARAH. Latin American Region

To stimulate community development through joint work between local authority and people living in the peripheral zone of Fortaleza (Brazil). Town development for 150 families.

3)A post project housing organization called the Cuidad Nueva was set up to look after operation and maintenance.

The community played a role from providing labor and materials, to selecting the technology. Operation and maintenance is also handled by the community.

Public basins and public stand pipes. The "Condominial Sewerage System" was used.

While the sustainability is to some extent dependent on a continued positive role by the Government, the degree of Government involvement makes it more likely to affect policy. Already, a 15 member integration council has been set up including members from Municipalities, Community organizations, and Universities, which will have a policy impact.

3

Team Learning Projects: Sanitation for the informal city in Altos De Menga, Cali, (Columbia) UNIVALLE /CINARA, and EMCALI 1994-97. Latin American Region

To improve the sanitation conditions through joint work between local organizations and the community in Altos De Mengua, Cali, (Columbia). This non -conventional sewerage system covered 143 families.

2)The Cali City Council Companies (EMCALI) 3) The local authorities who were involved in the whole process.

The community participated from every stage from providing a technology pre-design, to providing labor and material, and supervising the work carried out by other agencies. Women played an active role, and the community did the project evaluation.

The RAS sewerage system a (simplified sewerage network) to discharge into the urban sewerage system.

The people had doubts about the continued support of the facilitating agencies -EMCALI and CINARA. However, the community has the skills to keep the system running on its own. The innovation used from the Brazilian Sewerage system shows that if the space is given to the community, basic principles can have much wider applicability in terms of impact on public policy.

No

Name of Initiative & Agency, Region

The Objectives

The Partners/Institutions involved

Peoples’ Participation

Technology used

Sustainability and Potential Effect on Policy

4

South Asian Region.

To facilitate public action including pressurizing the State to provide community toilets, water supply and electricity connections. Also to solve the garbage disposal problem in a Mumbai resettlement slum.

6) The State Agency, Maharashtra Housing Development Authority (MHADA)

There was a high degree of community participation with community pressure forcing the local and State Government authorities to construct community toilets and provide electricity connections. Women and youth showed a high degree of involvement at every stage from planning to maintenance. A fictionalized community managed to stay together to keep the system going. Women monitored the construction work also.

Community toilets. Vermicomposting for garbage disposal.

The high degree of community involvement, and lack of dependence on continued outside support makes this project quite sustainable. Its potential impact on public policy comes from lessons that can be learnt from community mobilization to demand from the State and local authorities. The educational tools used in this project can be used elsewhere to give the controls to the community.

5

South Asian Region.

To curb the high incidence of infections and parasitic diseases, and to reduce infant mortality, a comprehensive sanitation plan was developed for rural Bangladesh.

4) Coordinators, supervisors, and field extension workers- many of whom were women.

There was great collaboration between different groups. Massive social mobilization took place including community participation, institutional participation, joint alliances with cultural and religious groups and NGO orientations. School meetings, rallies, meetings with the State Law enforcement authorities, documentary shows on the use of the latrines and related sanitary measures made community participation extremely broad based.

Inexpensive pit latrines, with cover. Educational program to have people wash their hands after defecation, and utilization of tubewell water instead of open sources for domestic purposes.

The benefits that the users have seen in the use of the latrines, and the individual nature of their maintenance makes the project extremely sustainable. The integral involvement of the Government in the whole project, and the scale of its implementation makes it a project that has already impacted on a policy level. Its success makes its potential implementation in other parts of the world possible.

No

Name of Initiative & Agency, Region.

The Objectives

The Partners/Institutions involved

Peoples’ Participation

Technology used

Sustainability and Potential Effect on Policy

6

Environmental Improvement through Solid Waste and Public Health Management- A Study of Post Plague Initiatives of the Surat Municipal Corporation. Surat (India) Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi. South Asian Region.

In 1995 after pneumonic plague broke out in Surat City, the Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) launched a waste management initiative. The project goal was to improve sanitation, health status and quality of the living environment.

5) Industrial and Business Communities.

The initiative in this case came from the SMC, and a motivated senior bureaucrat, but the project could not have been successful without the participation of the people of Surat. Their role however was to cooperate rather than plan and initiate.

Garbage disposal by strict monitoring, regulation, and streamlining of garbage collection and disposal. Also, removal of carcasses, anti rodent operations and spraying of DDT on pools of stagnant water was done in a systematic manner .

The sustainability of the effort in Surat seems to be its weakest link. Because it was a top-down approach dependent on the initiative and drive of the commissioner, it is possible that the effort will flag off with someone less motivated at the helm. On the other hand the lessons for policy makers are many, and it can be seen as a kind of effort which can be initiated by local bodies the world over to involve all sections of society to substantially improve the quality of basic municipal services.

7

Depleting groundwater levels and increasing fluoride concentration in Villages of Mehsana District, Gujerat, (India): Cost to Economy and Health. Water Resources Research Foundation. (WRRF). South Asian Region.

Deflouridation of drinking water, recharging of ground water to dilute high content of fluoride in subsurface water reserves.

3)The Village local self Government body- the Panchayat.

The project has not yet got into the implementation stage. People are only expected to make a monetary contribution, and it is not clear where even that would come from. The degree of peoples participation therefore is low.

Long term hydrological scheme solution. Recharging of shallow aquifers in the area. Increasing the storage capacity of the village tank by deepening it by three meters.

This is a project that seems both sustainable and replicable in theory, but is likely to quite different in practice. Resource constraints are one major hindering factor. Another is the low degree of peoples participation. If however, the pilot project does get implemented, it could hold lessons on how to deal with large populations affected by flurosis, and therefore impact at a policy level.

8

Sub-Saharan Region.

To see if communities are capable and willing to provide waste management services when local authorities are unable to. To assess the success of composting projects in meeting the communities needs.

4) Foundation for Sustainable Development (FSDA) .

The whole project is almost entirely a peoples initiative to solve their own environmental and developmental problems. The local body views their settlements as illegal. It extends no services. This is a women’s initiative to clean and earn by composting.

The technology used is waste collection, sorting into organic and inorganic waste, removing of foreign objects from the organic waste, storing the waste for composting, and finally sieving and packaging it for sale.

The project is sustainable because it has emerged as an environmental and income generating project and service under fairly hostile conditions. It depends on little outside support, and has integrated into the market. If some technical support is given it can improve waste management through the use of recycling techniques. This can influence waste management policy in many low resource areas.

No

Name of Initiative & Agency, Region.

The Objectives

The Partners/Institutions involved

Peoples’ Participation

Technology used

Sustainability and Potential Effect on Policy

9

Sub-Saharan Region.

To develop an alternative sanitation system and assess its impact on the lives of residents, particularly women in informal townships in South Africa.

and their leaders, who were all male.

The Government of South Africa took the initiative to address what was a real need of the people of informal settlements. However, the primary users- women were not consulted at any stage, and therefore the peoples participation in the form of consulting male leaders is of little use.

The Aqua Privy Sanitation System which is designed to use less water than the conventional system. It is a dry flush type of toilet where water has to be brought from an outside source for flushing. Cleaning of the sludge has to take place every six months.

The Aqua Privy System is neither sustainable, nor can it have a positive impact on influencing policy for needs of the kind present in informal settlements in South Africa. Women find the system most inconvenient for a number of reasons. The burden of bringing water for themselves, children, and guests falls on them. The toilets were designed without consulting them so they are too small for pregnant women and provide little privacy. Added to that is the extra burden on women, of cleaning the smelly sludge every six months, which is why it seems most likely that the system will collapse.

10

Sub-Saharan Region.

Develop and test a model for sustainable management of solid waste from the Musseques (informal settlements) that are not served by environmental sanitation programs.

5)Canadian and Swiss funding Agencies.

The project has demonstrated that the active participation of the community and local leaders can bring about significant improvements. The people have addressed what seemed to be an insurmountable problem and innovatively dealt with solid waste removal with the most minimal of resources. They have also done it in a useful and economically productive manner.

The technology used was mostly evolved by the people themselves with some support from the Development Workshop. They found a way to sift out almost half the solid waste by removing the sand, and then used the sand and findings for road repairing. They even found a way to deal with explosive material in the dumps through training of local people in diffusion techniques.

The project is both sustainable and replicable. It can be propagated as an example and studied so that it changes notions of waste management held by policy makers. It has the potential to affect policy if lessons from the experience are studied and acted upon. It has for instance successfully challenged the notion that waste clearance can only be done by trucks clearing the waste to distant dumps. A little more support in terms of management and recycling of organic waste could make the effort even more effective.