Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) are fundamental to health and are regarded as a fundamental human right for survival, dignity, productivity, reproductive health and happiness. In low socio-economic communities and settings, especially those who are residing in informal urban settlements, where appropriate WASH interventions are not in place, the risks of mortality and morbidity from especially infectious disease are high. A participatory action research (PAR) study was conducted to address the poor WASH conditions in the Havana informal urban settlement in Windhoek, Namibia. The study comprises of four phases.

There are 2.6 billion people who have no access to "improved sanitation" all over the world, of which 814 million people live in India. As a result of this, people resort to open defecation and this causes serious damage to the people‟s health and also pollutes the surrounding environment. This thesis explores the sanitation situation in a village called Mohaddipur in the Bind Block of Nalanda district in the state of Bihar, India. This SIDA financed project will provide this village with a public toilet complex which will be constructed with the help of the community members and strive towards putting an end to open defecation which is practised by these community members of the study area. Through the sanitation facilities being provided it was also important to close the nutrient cycle loop between agriculture and sanitation and make this toilet complex sustainable in all aspects of sustainability: social, economic, environmental and cultural. The provision of Ecological Sanitation (ecosan) facilities through the implementation of CompostEra toilet units and technology, in the toilet complex, in both the „hardware‟ and the „software‟ aspects is studied in this thesis. Women and adolescent girls were sensitised through education on Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) to empower these women in this village of Mohaddipur to not only improve their health but to also get an opportunity to get an education and gain a livelihood. Participatory Action Research (PAR) method has been used in this study to empower the community of this village in order to increase the social, educational, gender and economic strength of the individuals. The results and subsequent discussion show the need to include communities in designing a sanitation facility and how capacity building is a very important step in this process. The findings suggest that the benefits of ecosan seem to be significant enough to outweigh the negative cultural sentiments regarding the use of human excrements.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This research investigates the engagements between community activists and urban authorities in the provision of sustainable sanitation services in the informal settlements of Khayelitsha Cape Town. Since 2008, there have been contestations on the exclusion of informal settlements in the planning and delivery of sanitation services by the City of Cape Town. The planning and decision-making of sanitation services in the informal settlement is complex due to numerous stakeholders involved and thus not clear on how sustainable sanitation can be achieved. The challenge has been on understanding the level where decision-making in the provision of sanitation services is more effective for sustainable sanitation.

Sanitation continues to represent one of the most significant problems threatening the world population. In this scenario, India still encounters several difficulties in guaranteeing generalized access to adequate sanitation and, for this reason, in 2014, Clean India Mission was launched. In order to provide an assessment of the campaign, semi-qualitative interviews were carried out with two different target groups – Gram Panchayat representatives and household heads – in the rural area surrounding the Gram Panchayat of Badkulla I and II. The analysis of the data collected reported that the Gram Panchayat representatives had a central and active role in the promotion, realization and monitoring of the guidelines of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan program. However, the SBA implementation did not wholly follow the campaign guidelines, and it did not appear totally in line with what suggested by the community-led approach. Moreover, the different initiatives included in the campaign presented some problematics, such as difficulties in accessing the campaign incentives, low-quality construction of the latrines, uneven spread of the communication activities and low sustainability of the campaign results. At the same time, the community members seemed more aware of the importance of better sanitation standards but generally unsatisfied with the campaign performance. The assessment of the campaign highlighted the significant influence that context and actors involved played in the campaign realization and how the missing focus on critical aspects, such as prioritizing the numbers of toilets over their quality, profoundly affected the campaign results and sustainability over time. A future sanitation campaign should be focusing on addressing the shortcomings of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan by also taking into consideration the potential challenges represented by financial constraints, continuous change in households’ structure, local social norms and climatic conditions.

Magister Legum - LLM / In South Africa, notwithstanding 25 years into democracy, the constitutional commitment to socio-economic transformation of post-apartheid South Africa remains unfulfilled and unrealized by the vast majority of its people. The quality of education and access to adequate sanitation in South Africa are issues not exempt from the injustices of apartheid and its consequences of entrenched inequalities and differentiated access to socio-economic rights and privileges. Rural schools or townships have been characterized by unreliable access to water and unsafe pit latrines, or children practising open defecation. And tragically, there have been a series of loss of life due to children drowning in open pit toilets on school property.

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Poor sanitation and open defecation is a major concern in many parts of the world. Ecological sanitation is a possible alternative to the global issue by using dry toilet systems that allow for recycling the waste for other uses. The purpose of this thesis is to determine the cultural perception and design implications toward ecological sanitation in developing countries. By surveying the local population in the proposed environments and implementing a corresponding system, the sanitation system has a much higher chance of sustainability and success. In Northern Uganda, the population was surveyed through a questionnaire and a Visual Preference Survey to determine current conditions, immediate needs, cultural preferences, and attitudes toward the design of sanitation types with the main focus on privacy, placement, type and gender-specific facilities. Results demonstrated that the majority of the population was interested in learning more to improve sanitation and reuse waste for agricultural productivity.

The challenge of achieving global sanitation targets is that it requires application of both technology that is appropriate and a supporting organizational structure. The interactions between the two begin during the planning/decision-making process and continue throughout the system lifetime. During the last decade, strategic planning frameworks have emerged in the water and sanitation sector that reflect a shift from traditional, top-down planning to a more participatory, bottom-up approach. Despite this shift and in light of the continuing challenge of achieving widespread sanitation in the world, it is necessary to question if a knowledge gap exists between the global sanitation frameworks and local stakeholder priorities. This licentiate thesis presents the first phase of a research project whose objective is to study the global models and compare them with existing local planning and decision-making conditions. It focuses on establishing the global context with regard to strategic planning tools and perspectives on sustainable sanitation. In general, there is close agreement on methodology and processes recommended by international planning frameworks; however the use of the term “sustainable sanitation” is highly variable. In general, the findings of this thesis show that improving sanitation conditions requires tools based on participation, social marketing, and process approaches for planning, capacity development, and feedback. Continuation of this research will investigate the local context regarding current planning practices and perspectives on sustainable sanitation in order to assess potential differences between the global and local context and make recommendations for improving adaptation of planning strategies for bringing sanitation to scale. / QC 20101118

Thesis (M.Dev. (Planning and Management)) -- University of Limpopo, 2022 / The purpose of this study was to explore the role of SMTs in providing and sustaining schools’ sanitation infrastructure. Qualitative research approach was conducted to determine if the SMT members fully understand the role that they can play in sustaining sanitation facilities in their schools. Primary data was collected using semi structured questionnaires using qualitative research method. Twenty SMT members from five sampled schools from Man’ombe Circuit in Mopani East Education District were used as respondents. The study highlighted that provision of sanitation infrastructure which is not accompanied by effective management of those infrastructure cannot be sustained. Management was selected as a theoretical framework to clearly state the duties of SMT members as managers in the school community they are based in. Areas of potential effective role performance and areas of potential role conflict in school sanitation infrastructure were highlighted. The findings revealed that SMTs do not fully understand their role when it comes to school sanitation.

Access to adequate sanitation and renewable clean energy can improve the living standards in developing communities in informal settlements. This can also generate effects such as reduced unemployment and better health, which in turn can contribute to less violence and less segregation. This work was conducted as a pre-study within a bigger project which includes the development of a new sanitation system intended to provide renewable energy, proper toilets and create job opportunities in Jackson, an informal settlement in Gauteng, South Africa. The objectives of this study were to identify the strengths, (S), weaknesses, (W), opportunities, (O) and threats, (T) that an implementation of a new sanitation system could face from a sustainability point of view. Investigations were made to define currently used energy sources, sanitation facilities, and the socio-economic situation. To be able to reach the objectives of the research question, data were collected through a workshop with a focus group and distributions of questionnaires in the study area were made. Through the sustainability SWOT-analysis, the main advantages and disadvantages which the continuance of the project can face were identified. The results indicate that the biggest threats and weaknesses are strongly connected to the people’s acceptability of a new sanitation system, while the opportunities and strengths are linked to the possibilities to increase the present low living standards in Jackson.