At the end of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) period in 2015, 2.3 billion people, 31% of the global population, still did not have access to even basic sanitation services. Of these people, 892 million still practice open defecation, and 856 million people use unimproved facilities such as pit latrines without a slab or platform or hanging latrines or bucket latrines (JMP 2017). Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 6.2 now aims to achieve adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and sets the ambitious target of eradicating open defecation by 2030. While the number of people open defecating was reduced from 1229 million to 892 million between 2000 and 2015, that pace must accelerate to be achieved (JMP, 2017). In Panama, it is estimated that countrywide sanitation coverage is 71%, and rural coverage 54% (WHO/UNICEF, 2013). Even so, in indigenous areas like the Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé, only 25% of the population has adequate access to basic sanitation (ANAM, 2006). This research builds upon the research presented in (Hurtado, 2005, Kaiser, 2006, Mehl, 2008, and Wilbur, 2014). These theses researched double vault urine diverting (DVUD) latrines, or composting latrines, in indigenous communities in the province of Bocas del Toro and the Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé in Panama. Hurtado, Kaiser, and Mehl researched the design, construction, and pathogen destruction capabilities of composting latrines. Wilbur studied how human attitudes and perceptions serve as incentives or barriers to composting latrine use. In this research surveys, interviews, and observations were recorded in 6 indigenous Ngäbe communities in Bocas del Toro and the Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé. The study quantifies usage of ventilated improved pit (VIP) and basic pit latrines in these communities, assesses positive and negative perceptions of composting latrines, and determines perceptions of feces and the reuse of composted human excrement. The results reveal that of n=103 latrines 88.3% were completed and in use, but only 35.2% were properly covered. To promote proper usage of latrines, continued education and trainings need to be carried out in these communities. Respondents were also favorable to the use of composting latrines, with 61.2% of respondents saying they would be interested in building a composting latrine for their households. The main perceived benefit of composting latrines is the compost, and the most identified barrier to use was lack of prior experience. Other main barriers included user disgust and the amount of work it takes to own and operate the latrine. There were more identified incentives (12) than barriers (11) to composting latrine adoption. Respondents also reported they would react more favorably to their neighbor implementing the technology and using compost than their neighbor would react should the respondent do the same thing. These results indicate the importance of pilot projects in communities, allowing people to see the benefits of the technology and how it works before implementing a larger scale project. These projects would also reduce the stigma associated with being a first adopter. Statistical analysis revealed that the demographics of community, sanitation classification, gender, and primary occupation were significantly linked to survey statements used to measure perceptions on composting latrine use and the use of composted human excrement as a fertilizer. Age, gender, and household size were not found to have a statistically significant link to user perceptions on the same survey statements. Logistic regression analysis was then performed using SPSS statistical analysis software (version 24). The results of this research indicate the importance of setting up follow up trainings as many respondents had forgotten how to properly maintain their latrines. It also suggests the setup of pilot projects for composting latrines, as many respondents were favorable to the technology but did not want to try to own and operate a composting latrine without seeing a successful composting latrine first.

The Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development is expected to result in the launching of a process to devise a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2015. Whilst indicators are perceived to be a good vehicle of monitoring progress, currently there is no universally agreed method of measuring sustainable development. This thesis addresses this issue through assessing whether the capabilities approach can be adopted for a global framework in measuring sustainable development. In order to determine this, both theoretical and practical implications will have to be understood. The former is addressed through reviewing the compatibility between the key concepts of sustainable development and the capabilities approach. The latter is addressed through obtaining empirical evidence on the key drivers in selecting indicators via focus group discussions and a quantitative survey with key individuals involved in the Sustainable Development Indicators (SDIs) project in Malaysia. It was found that a weak conceptual basis can be attributed as the major challenge for establishing global sustainable development indicators. Whilst recognising that a range of mechanisms are required for operationalization, it was concluded that the capabilities approach provides a sound conceptual basis, framed on the basis of justice and equity in expanding and sustaining the capabilities of current and future generations to pursue their needs.

The Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development is expected to result in the launching of a process to devise a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2015. Whilst indicators are perceived to be a good vehicle of monitoring progress, currently there is no universally agreed method of measuring sustainable development. This thesis addresses this issue through assessing whether the capabilities approach can be adopted for a global framework in measuring sustainable development. In order to determine this, both theoretical and practical implications will have to be understood. The former is addressed through reviewing the compatibility between the key concepts of sustainable development and the capabilities approach. The latter is addressed through obtaining empirical evidence on the key drivers in selecting indicators via focus group discussions and a quantitative survey with key individuals involved in the Sustainable Development Indicators (SDIs) project in Malaysia. It was found that a weak conceptual basis can be attributed as the major challenge for establishing global sustainable development indicators. Whilst recognising that a range of mechanisms are required for operationalization, it was concluded that the capabilities approach provides a sound conceptual basis, framed on the basis of justice and equity in expanding and sustaining the capabilities of current and future generations to pursue their needs.

Poor sanitation is a huge problem in third world countries today; every year 1,5 million children die due to diarrheal diseases caused by poor sanitation. International policies such as The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which will be replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September 2015, have been set by the international community as tools to decrease the poverty in the world today, and problems that emerged from it such as poor sanitation. Participatory methods are emphasise to receive the goals as well as new working methods to shift the development paradigm from marked oriented towards sustainable development, which means that also the Earth’s well-being must be included in the SDGs. Ecological sanitation (Eco-san) is a system that reuses the human waste back to grooving activities, and can improve the situation in all three areas of sustainable development, i.e. economical, environmental and social development with it’s reusing approach. Participation in implementation of Eco-san system is important for enabling sustainable projects as well as receive better acceptance for the reuse approach. The research presented in this thesis had the aim to improve the sanitation situation by introducing and implementing Eco-san in a rural area in the Northern part of Tanzania by using an action oriented research approach. The participants together with the researcher developed the project to further see the interpretations of Eco-san and possibilities to implement Eco-san in the area as well as if the action research was a convenient way to introduce such a project. The study was conducted in two cycles were critical theory and diffusion of innovation were used as analysis tools for the introduction and implementation of the toilets. The findings from the first cycle showed that the participants were willing to learn about Eco-san by observing the idea through a demonstration toilet. Therefore the second cycle lead to implementation of Eco-san in a school of the area. These toilets are today in use and managed by the students at the school. Participating approach has therefore been a successful working method were the participants gained the knowledge they needed to develop and improve their situation. This can further be argued as a valuable approach for other development projects and to meet the upcoming SDGs. However, further action and education to other village members outside the school and up scaling possibilities in the community are needed.

abstract: Through critical discourse analysis, this thesis explores the construction of poverty and development within and across the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and the proposed post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals texts. The proposed post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals frame the international development landscape for the next 15 years, therefore it becomes imperative for civil society to understand their dominant economic schemes for poverty alleviation in order to adopt or oppose similar methods of poverty abatement. Deductively, this thesis investigates Keynesianism and neoliberalism, the dominant economic discourses whose deployments within the goals have shaped transnational frameworks for interpreting and mitigating poverty. It assesses the failures of the Millennium Development Goals, as articulated both by its creators and critics, and evaluates the responsiveness of the United Nations in the constitution of the proposed post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals in relation to these critiques through the lens of liberal feminist and World Social Forum discourses. These activist and oppositional social discourses embody competing values, representations, and problem-solution frames that challenge and resist the dominant economic discourses in both sets of goals. Additionally, this thesis uses an inductive approach to critically analyze both sets of goals in order to identify any emergent discursive frameworks grounded in each text that assist in understanding the problems of, and solutions to, poverty. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Communication Studies 2015

With 663 million people still without access to an improved drinking water source, there is no room for complacency in the pursuit of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 6.1: “universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all” by 2030 (WHO, 2017). All of the current efforts related to water supply service delivery will require continued enthusiasm in diligent implementation and thoughtful evaluation. This cannot be over-emphasized in relation to rural inhabitants of low-income countries (LICs), as they represent the largest percentage of those still reliant on unimproved drinking water sources. In that lies the motivation and value of this thesis research- improving water supply service delivery in LICs. Manually operated suction pumps, being relatively robust, low cost, and feasible to manufacture locally, are an important technology in providing access to improved drinking water sources in LICs, especially in the context of Self-supply. It seems widely accepted that the water-lifting limit of suction pumps as reported in practice is approximately seven meters. However, some observations by our research group of manually operated suction pumps lifting water upwards of nine meters brought this “general rule of thumb” limit into question. Therefore, a focused investigation on the capabilities of a manually operated suction pump (a Pitcher Pump) was conducted in an attempt to address these discrepancies, and in so doing, contribute to the understanding of this technology with the intent of providing results with practical relevance to its potential; that is, provide evidence that can inform the use of these pumps for water supply. In this research, a simple model based on commonly used engineering approaches employing empirical equations to describe head loss in a pump system was used to estimate the suction lift limit under presumed system parameters. Fundamentally based on the energy equation applied to incompressible flow in pipes, the empirically derived Darcy-Weisbach equation and Hydraulic Institute Standards acceleration head equation were used to estimate frictional and acceleration head losses. Considering the theoretical maximum suction lift is limited to the height of a column of water that would be supported by atmospheric pressure, reduced only by the vapor pressure of water, subtracting from this the model was used to predict the suction lift limit, also referred to herein as the practical theoretical limit, assuming a low (4 L/min) and high (11 L/min) flow rate for three systems: 1) one using 1.25-inch internal diameter GI pipes, 2) one using 1.25-inch internal diameter PVC pipes, and 3) one using 2-inch internal diameter PVC pipes. In all considered cases, with an elevation equal to sea level, the suction lift limit was estimated to be over nine meters. At a minimum, the suction lift limit was estimated to be approximately 9.4 meters for systems using 1.25-inch internal diameter pipe and 9.8 meters for systems using 2-inch internal diameter pipe, with essentially no discernable effects noticed between pipe material or pipe age. Additionally, laboratory (field) trials using a Simmons Manufacturing Picher Pump and each of the aforementioned pipe specifications were conducted at the University of South Florida (Tampa, FL, USA) to determine the practical pumping limit for these systems. Results from the pumping trials indicated that the practical pumping limit- the greatest height at which a reasonable pumping rate could be consistently sustained with only modest effort, as perceived by the person pumping- for a Pitcher Pump is around nine meters (9 meters when using 1.25-inch internal diameter GI or PVC pipe and 9.4 meters when using 2-inch internal diameter PVC pipe). Therefore, results from this research present two pieces of evidence which suggest that the practical water-lifting limit of manually operated suction pumps is somewhere around nine meters (at sea level), implying that reconsideration of the seven-meter suction lift limit commonly reported in the field might be warranted.

Although development organizations agree that reliable access to energy and energy services-one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals-is likely to have profound and perhaps disproportionate impacts on women, few studies have directly empirically estimated the impact of energy access on women's empowerment. This is a result of both a relative dearth of energy access evaluations in general and a lack of clarity on how to quantify gender impacts of development projects. Here we present an evaluation of the impacts of the Solar Market Garden-a distributed photovoltaic irrigation project-on the level and structure of women's empowerment in Benin, West Africa. We use a quasi-experimental design (matched-pair villages) to estimate changes in empowerment for project beneficiaries after one year of Solar Market Garden production relative to non-beneficiaries in both treatment and comparison villages (n=771). To create an empowerment metric, we constructed a set of general questions based on existing theories of empowerment, and then used latent variable analysis to understand the underlying structure of empowerment locally. We repeated this analysis at follow-up to understand whether the structure of empowerment had changed over time, and then measured changes in both the levels and likelihood of empowerment over time. We show that the Solar Market Garden significantly positively impacted women's empowerment, particularly through the domain of economic independence. In addition to providing rigorous evidence for the impact of a rural renewable energy project on women's empowerment, our work lays out a methodology that can be used in the future to benchmark the gender impacts of energy projects.

Goal 6 of the United Nations Development Program’s new Sustainable Development Goals aims to ensure availability of clean water and sustainable management practices to all by the year 2030. Peace Corps Panama partners with communities in order to help provide sustainable water solutions to communities in need. Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Volunteers spend at least two years living in a community to identify and implement solutions to water problems and train local water committees on how to maintain their improved systems. A common solution for unequal distribution of flow in the distribution network of a gravity flow water system is through the installation of flow reducers before each faucet. These can be sized with the help of NeatWork, a free, downloadable compute software. In Panama, flow reducers (also referred to as orifices) are manufactured to create a perforated plastic diaphragm fitting placed in the distribution pipe or union section upstream of a faucet. They help ensure longevity of the aqueduct by balancing the flows between houses, thus, enabling continuous water flow for all users. An important characteristic of flow reducers is that while they can be installed in new water sys-tems, they can also be installed in existing systems to fix inequalities from inadequate original designs or extensions to the systems. However, little guidance exists for volunteers or commu-nities to ensure the sustainability of these projects. Accordingly, the object of this thesis was to investigate how adding houses to existing aqueducts would affect its serviceability and how to determine a way for communities to size the flow reducers for future houses. The existing gravity flow water system in Santa Cruz, Panamá was surveyed including all the potential houses which were then analyzed using NeatWork. The results demonstrate that while it is better to include all potential locations during the initial survey, if it expands at an average growth rate, additional houses may decrease serviceability, but in a negligible way that will not affect the overall reliability of the distribution system. Utilizing NeatWork, this research showed it is able to determine ideal sizes of flow reducers for additional houses that could be added. Patterns were identified and used to simplify flow reducer sizing so that community members could do it themselves. While most of the time, the ideal flow reducer size for a new house will be the same size as the flow reducer size that is installed in the closest house that is already connected to the aqueduct, sometimes this is not the case. This typically occurs towards the end of branches and in areas where not all flow reducer sizes are present. These areas are clearly identified to the water committee on a map of the distribution system that was provided to various water committee members. With this map and simple instructions, the Santa Cruz water committee can continue correctly adding flow reducers to new houses. Through the research of this thesis, fabricating and installing flow reducers in the Santa Cruz water distribution system, and working alongside community members many lessons were learned about flow reducers and best practices. This knowledge has been converted into a guide about sustainable flow reducer projects. It has been left with current volunteers and the director of training for the WASH sector of Peace Corps Panama so that the volunteers can adapt the developed tools in their own communities.

AbstractCross-sector collaboration is an innovative strategy and practice to be implemented by socially-driven organizations towards reaching sustainable development goals. However, it is challenging to develop successful, effective collaborations that are important to cross-sector dynamics and political contexts, particularly in developing countries, such as Indonesia. Therefore, the paper aims to examine how socially-driven organizations in Indonesia collaborate with other sectors by using certain factors. Besides, this research also investigates the success and failure factors of collaboration among sectors. To meet this goal, this paper examines three essential factors for cross-sector collaborations (power distribution, communication, and shared goals) from three different sectors (socially-driven organizations, governments, and societies).The research was conducted by semi-structured interviews using Zoom for video communication. In addition, the interview was analyzed by content analysis, while Bryson et al. (2015) are used to identify the sectors and factors of collaboration. The results showed that the three collaborative factors that are used in this research significantly affect the development of the organization to collaborate with the external three sectors. Furthermore, quality education becomes the most common goal of all collaboration. In addition, face to face communication, and the use of social media have a huge impact on the communication, promotion of the goals and defining the power to the other collaboration sectors. However, communication breakdown, unclear goals, powerless figures, and bureaucratic procedures become the main challenges of collaboration. Therefore, organizations need to develop alternative ways to tackle these issues.Keywords: cross-sector collaboration, socially-driven organization, Sustainable Development Goals, Semi-structured interview, document analysis, power distribution, shared goals, communication.

Master of Public Health - MPH / Community health workers (CHWs) are integral to improve Primary health care (PHC) coverage, utilising their unique skills within the community to make services accessible and equitable. PHC is the cornerstone of the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill for the provision of Universal Health Care (UHC). The Department of Health (DOH) in the Western Cape, South Africa, has set priorities and requirements for the provision of funding to Non-profit organisations (NPOs) for forming coalitions with the Health Department to deliver various aspects of health care. The post-2015 agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are underscored by a strong sense of intersectoral collaboration to work together to attain sufficient and sustainable progress. Collaboration between CHWs and PHC facilities is important in aligning goals and activities to ensure a comprehensive and sustainable approach to ensuring UHC