“Investing in sanitation and hygiene is not only about saving human lives and dignity; it is the foundation for investing in human development, especially in poor urban and peri-urban areas,” explains the foreword to a very useful new publication on sanitation. “However, one of the main bottlenecks encountered the world over, is the limited knowledge and awareness about more appropriate and sustainable systems and technologies that keep project costs affordable and acceptable.”
Until now, such information has been scattered throughout hundreds of books and journals. The “Compendium of Sanitation Systems and Technologies” is a new guidebook produced by the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) and the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC). It is being launched officially this week at the World Toilet Summit and Expo in Macao.
Bringing together and organizing this information in one document makes it easier for everyone – engineers, planners, development agencies, NGOs and donors –to plan effectively for sanitation solutions. By pulling all the information together in one volume, the Compendium aims to promote a systems approach so that sanitation devices and technologies are considered as parts of an entire system.
Although the book is primarily addressed to engineers and planners dealing with infrastructure delivery, the technology sheets also allow non-experts to understand the main advantages and limitations of different technologies and the appropriateness of different system configurations.
In 2005, Sandec and the WSSCC published Provisional Guidelines for Household-centred Environmental Sanitation (HCES), a new planning approach for implementing the Bellagio Principles on Sustainable Sanitation in Urban Environmental Sanitation. The HCES approach emphasizes the participation of all stakeholders – beginning at the household/neighbourhood – in planning and implementing sanitation systems. “It is our hope that this Compendium will allow all stakeholders to be involved in selecting improved sanitation technologies and to help promote people-centred solutions to real sanitation problems.”
A hard copy of the Compendium can be ordered by writing to info@sandec.ch.
Here is a story I am working on for Hopebuilding wiki:
Many people living in villages on the hillsides in the Philippines do not have easy access to fresh water, and have to make a difficult journey down steep slopes to collect what they require for their basic needs from springs, streams or rivers in the valleys. The Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation Inc (AIDFI) solves this problem by installing ram pumps to provide a good supply of water from the rivers to the hillside villages. The ram pumps use the power of the water flowing in the spring, stream or river to lift a small fraction of the water up to 200 metres vertically, and sometimes pump it over a kilometre to where it is needed. Government bodies, NGOs and development agencies pay for the installations, but local people are trained as technicians to maintain the pumps and the villagers pay for this maintenance themselves.
Ram pump technology has great potential for supplying water without the need for electricity or fossil fuels, but many installations have not been successful. AIDFI has developed an award-winning, durable ram pump design, with cheap and locally-available options for the moving parts which need regular replacement. Over the past 10 years AIDFI has installed 98 pumps in 68 communities in the Philippines, and there are probably another 10,000 sites where the pumps could be used.
The first video is about installing ram pumps in the Philippines; the second is about an installation in Afghanistan. Both are from You Tube.
