Urban sanitation: are the poor being heard?

The international commitment to provide basic services for all has yet to be achieved for a high percentage of the urban poor. Residents of densely crowded settlements endure the indignity, shame and sickness that lack of sanitation produces. Improved sanitation will provide real benefits to the lives and livelihoods of the poor. Yet, despite the health benefits, sanitation investments are not high on the household expenditure priorities of the urban poor and those most affected, especially women and children, are least able to express their demands and ensure access to sustained and safe sanitation.

What are the links between poverty, gender and sanitation? What are the key problems in sanitation delivery and how can they be overcome? Southampton University, UK, is carrying out research in Kolkata, India and Dhaka, Bangladesh with local people and the agencies involved in sanitation delivery. The research aims to establish clear working principles as the basis for more effective sanitation interventions for poor urban communities.

Recent research in India found that the benefits of improvements to infrastructure in urban slums often failed to reach those most in need. Historically, attempts to identify the sanitation needs of urban poor communities have been limited by the range of available solutions, determined by project agendas, which do not take into account the diversity and resulting inequity in urban poor neighbourhoods. Equally, research of Slum Improvement Projects in South Asia, showed that access to resources and services was biased towards those best placed to participate in and control project-established groups.

As sanitation policies evolve, the approach to gender remains the same - 'involving women in pre-determined project activities'. Little thought is paid to how:

• unequal social relations affect household decisions about investment in infrastructure
• cross-cutting social, political and economic hierarchies affect the established exclusion of the more disadvantaged from formal and informal governance structures, both within and beyond urban poor households
• planning reinforces and is shaped by gender relations.

There is increasing agreement that achieving sustainable improvements in sanitation and hygiene for the urban poor requires strong political will and changed attitudes to poverty and gender in the responsible institutions. Considering the relationships between sanitation, gender and livelihood strategies will help the investigation of how gender roles and sanitation provision impact on household economies. Focusing on these links would make it easier to identify the real problems of the most powerless among the poor and hopefully better inform the move away from mechanistic forms of community participation. But how can this be achieved?

The study aims to understand:

• what forms 'appropriate' sanitation for different urban poor communities, groups, households and individuals; what personal and financial impacts a lack of services creates and how sanitation can become an expressed and achievable demand amongst those who are currently unserved
• the capacities and limitations of poor urban communities to invest in and access sanitation facilities suited to their homes and livelihood needs
• existing local governance structures and processes and how these influence decisions related to sanitation infrastructure
• the factors that influence access to or exclusion from decision-making processes for diverse communities of the urban poor.

A significant proportion of the urban poor, and especially women amongst them, is unable to take part in municipal planning and action. With this in mind, the research agenda will ensure that:

• assessments are participatory, representative and include voices of the poorest and marginalised
• research samples are separated by gender and other locally relevant factors causing inequity
• assessments include perspectives from different institutional levels, as sustained access to sanitation needs action and resources from several levels
• limitations in sanitation delivery are compared with projects where what was planned and implemented related to the needs and contexts of the users.

Deepa Joshi and Ben Fawcett
Institute of Irrigation and Development Studies
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Southampton
Southampton SO17 1BJ
UK

T +44 (0)23 8059 2793
dj1@soton.ac.uk
bnf@soton.ac.uk

See also

Project Inception Report and forthcoming articles at
www.soton.ac.uk/~civilenv/postgraduate/eng4dev/research-IIDS.htm

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