International Journal of Technology Management & Sustainable Development - Volume 5, Issue 3, 2006

Target 10 of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG-7) expresses the global commitment to halve the proportion of population without access to water and sanitation by 2015. Preliminary assessments of prospects for achievement of this goal show that much progress has been made to date with regard to improving access to safe water. The proportion of population with improved access to water is estimated to have increased from 77 per cent in 1990 to 83 per cent in 2002. However, there is considerable regional disparity since much of this increase is in south and south-east Asia, with hardly any improvement of the situation in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. On the other hand, forecasts with regard to sanitation suggest that at the present rate, the set target might not be met by 2015. This paper examines some of the major challenges that would be encountered in the course of implementing Target 10 and sets in context issues that are of significance for research and policy aimed at addressing strategies for enhancing access to water and sanitation for the poor.

The concept of cooperative environmental governance has been proposed as a means of increasing citizens' participation in environmental policy and technological choice in order to make policy processes more deliberative and socially inclusive. This paper critically analyzes the concept in relation to cases of waste management and waste-to-energy investment in the Philippines and India, and especially the choice between the technologies of incineration, pyrolysis and biomethanation. The paper argues that, despite much progress towards local inclusion, there is still too much optimism about the ability for local people to influence technological choice, and powerful actors can shape the identities and roles played by local people. Consequently, cooperative environmental governance needs to incorporate a greater political understanding of how and by whom technological debates are framed, using insights from discursive politics.

This paper discusses two services, namely sanitation and solid waste, which have become intractable to manage in Ghanaian cities (Accra, Kumasi and Tema). The paper provides insights into the various technologies adopted to provide the service and analyzes the institutional arrangements for their dissemination. Public sector delivery by the waste management department was found wanting, and new institutional arrangements involving public, private and community partnerships have been introduced. Based on a users' satisfaction survey, the paper explains why the quality of a service may differ across the types of institutional arrangement adopted to deliver it. It also shows that more insight can be gained from users' assessment of efficiency, reliability, adequacy, cleanliness etc. of a service than from the technical criteria used by public officers. The paper uses the survey results to draw conclusions on what needs to be done in switching from one institutional arrangement to another.

Brazil, like many other developing countries, suffers from widespread pollution of the aquatic environment caused by the uncontrolled discharge of untreated urban wastewater. Some states have made greater progress towards the implementation of pollution mitigation strategies than others. However, a study undertaken in the states of So Paulo and Minas Gerais indicates that installation of treatment plants is not sufficient to meet effluent quality objectives. A range of different wastewater treatment processes were investigated and, although conclusive results were difficult to define due to the large differences in the frequency of sampling, the results showed a highly variable performance, in which many processes were not operating satisfactorily according to expected design performance or environmental standards set by the regulatory authority. In light of these findings, the paper discusses an innovative programme called PRODES, introduced by the National Water Agency (ANA), which aims to encourage public and private companies to implement new treatment plants and to improve the performance of existing wastewater treatment systems based upon a system of financial incentives according to the monitored reduction in pollutant loads. The paper concludes that this approach has considerable potential as part of a pollution mitigation strategy, but success is dependent on the development of a standardized framework for routine performance evaluation and monitoring to improve operational performance and regulatory procedures.

Informal sector scavengers or waste pickers have been unrecognized stakeholders on the fringes of the urban waste landscape since the nineteenth century. Although solid waste systems of both rich and poor countries continue to change radically in the process of (ecological) modernization, the living conditions and position of waste pickers have changed little, and then usually for the worse. Development approaches focusing on pickers' welfare, capacities and rights consistently fail to help. A systems approach that instead focuses on the opportunities provided by the modernization process provides a stronger framework for legitimizing the role of pickers and strengthening their livelihoods.

Privatization of water utilities is widely practiced in the belief that market forces may help achieve conservation as per the Dublin Principles (Fourth Principle). Kenya has adopted the privatization strategy with the commercialization, inter alia, of its water utilities. This paper looks at the legal, political, social, economic, commercial and environmental implications of this policy move in Kenya. It concludes that although commercialization of water utilities may generally lead to sustainability of services through economic pricing and the application of efficiency-sensitive private sector business practices, there is still no firm evidence to show privatization as an appropriate strategy for sustainable development, particularly when seen on social, political and environmental grounds.