It has been common for both scientists and policy makers to view sanitary provision as a dichotomy between a centralised and a decentralised approach. Moreover, sustainability assessment has also been characterized by a dualistic approach, between the techno-centric and the eco-centric. Such views are often simplistic and not in tandem with the existing multiple sanitary options and service providers in East African cities, which defy such classification. This book provides the theoretical and empirical basis for a third way of classifying and assessing the multiple technical and institutional options to sanitary provision. This novel assessment approach called 'modernised mixtures' is used in this book as a tool for conceptualising, assessing and improving sanitary provision in East African cities. The assessment is based on four social and technical dimensions and three sustainability criteria. This inclusive approach in assessing sanitary mixtures, benefits decision making among imperfect options.
Urban sanitation and solid waste sectors are under significant pressure in East Africa due to the lack of competent institutional capacity and the growth of the region’s urban population. This book presents and applies an original analytical approach to assess the existing socio-technical mixtures of waste and sanitation systems and to ensure wider access, increase flexibility and ecological sustainability. It shows how the problem is not the current diversity in waste and sanitation infrastructures and services and variety of types and scales of technology, of formal and informal sector involvement, and of management and ownership modes. The book focuses instead on the lack of an integrative approach to managing and upgrading of the various waste and sanitation configurations and services so as to ensure wider access, flexibility and sustainability for the low income populations who happen to be the main stakeholders. This approach, coined "Modernized Mixtures", serves as a nexus throughout the book. The empirical core addresses the waste and sanitation challenges and debates at each scale - from the micro-level (households) to the macro-level (international support) - and is based on the results of a five-year-long interdisciplinary, empirical research program. It assesses the socio-technical diversity in waste and sanitation and provides viable solutions to sanitation and waste management in East Africa. This book provides students, researchers and professional in environmental technology, sociology, management and urban planning with an integrated analytical perspective on centralized and decentralized waste and sanitation configurations and tools for improvement in the technology, policy and management of sanitation and solid waste sectors.
This book presents the proceedings of the INternational CongRess on Engineering and Sustainability in the XXI cEntury – INCREaSE 2017, which was held in Faro, Portugal, from October 11 to 13, 2017. The book promotes a multidisciplinary approach to sustainable development, exploring a number of transversal challenges. It discusses natural and anthropogenic risks; tourism and sustainability; healthy food; water and society; sustainable mobility; renewable energy; and energy efficiency, offering perspectives from civil, electronics, mechanical and food engineering.
This significant book addresses the most important legal issues that cities face when attempting to adapt to the changing climate. This includes how to become more resilient against the impacts of climate change such as sea level rise, increases in the intensity and frequency of storms, floods, droughts, and extreme temperatures.
This volume provides state-of-the-art information on soil-water interactions in wastewater systems, characterization of wastewater, modes of treatment, safety of wastewater use, water conservation technologies involved in recycling of sewage in fish culture, biogeochemical cycling bacteria and nutrient dynamics, ecosystem resilient driven wastewater reclamation, bioremediation, aquaponics, ecological integrity, culture practices of fish farming, microbial food web phenomena, fish diseases, environmental economics of wastewater, environmental risk assessment, environmental law and regulations. Given its breadth of coverage, the book will be useful to researchers, teachers, students, administrators, planners, farmers and entrepreneurs interested in the profitable use of wastewater in the wastes-into-wealth framework of for the benefit of humanity, and in achieving the targets for sanitation and safe wastewater reuse by 2030, specified in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Concerns are growing about the quality and quantity of fresh water, as severe crises are expected in the near future. Climate change has further worsened the strain on inland water resources, with its major impacts on ecosystems and human life. It is most urgent to protect and conserve inland water resources to maintain vital ecosystem functions. Despite the immense nutrient potentials of wastewater in terms of phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium and increasingly high rates of urbanization-based wastewater generation, wastewater has traditionally been overlooked as a resource. This produces a threefold loss – environmental degradation, monetary losses from fertilizers, and water. As a result, municipal wastewater offers a win-win strategy for water conservation and environmental protection, while also turning waste into wealth in the form of fish biomass and allied cash crops. Wastewater-fed aquaculture refers to a unique, integrated biosystem in which the wastes generated by the first system are used by the next subsystem. In wastewater-fed aquaculture biosystems, the organic wastes are recycled into fish biomass mediated through a complex microbial/autotrophic/heterotrophic food web mechanism.
This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the interactions and feedbacks between urbanization and global environmental change. A key focus is the examination of how urbanization influences global environmental change, and how global environmental change in turn influences urbanization processes. It has four thematic foci: Theme 1 addresses the pathways through which urbanization drives global environmental change. Theme 2 addresses the pathways through which global environmental change affects the urban system. Theme 3 addresses the interactions and responses within the urban system in response to global environmental change. Theme 4 centers on critical emerging research.
This book proposes Regenerative Sanitation as the next era of sanitation management and attempts to provide a foundation for the study of sanitation on the premise that sanitation is a complex and dynamic system that comprises of social-ecological, technological and resource systems. The preconception is that sanitation will deliver maximal benefits to society only when there exists a cyclical integration of the three subsystems to enable appropriate linkages between ‘technological design’ and the ‘delivery platform’ so as to achieve optimal and sustained sani-solutions. It also calls for the rethinking of sanitation to change the narrative towards more progressive trajectories such as resource recovery and reuse rather than just amelioration. It explores the contributions to food security, livelihood support, urban regeneration, rural development and even local economies. A new paradigm, theory and ten principles for ensuring practical and effective sanitation solutions and management is presented. In addition is a unique conceptual framework applicable to both developed and developing countries, and to all stages, processes and cycles of delivering sanitation solutions that could critically evaluate, analyse and provide credible, adequate and appropriate sanitation solutions. All of which culminates in a strategic and practical application platform called ‘Sanitation 4.0’ that advocates for total rejuvenation and comprehensive overhaul with eight key strategic considerations for the implementation. Regenerative Sanitation: A New Paradigm For Sanitation 4.0 is inter and trans- disciplinary and encourages collaboration between engineers, scientists, technologists, social scientists and others to provide effective and practical user-centred solutions. It includes relevant case studies, examples, exercise and future research recommendations. It is written as both a textbook for researchers and students as well as a practitioners’ guide for policymakers and professionals.
This volume is the result of years of commitment with world-wide sanitation challenges from various research networks linking the editors and authors of this volume to many other sanitation scholars and professionals. Major contributions to this volume are derived from the work done in the PROVIDE project (working on sustainable urban infrastructures in cities of the Lake Victoria Basin, East Africa), the DESAR project (research and pilot projects in Decentralized Sanitation and Reuse, the Netherlands), and among others within NETSSAF (large scale implementation of sanitation in Africa), and EcoSan networks. The major milestone for this book to emerge was however the IWA Sanitation Challenge Conference of May 2008 in Wageningen, the Netherlands where all the authors of this book presented their papers. The conference was organized by a consortium of sanitation specialists at Wageningen University’s Environmental Policy Group (the editors) and the s- department of Environmental Technology, LeAF (Lettinga Associates Foundation) and Wetsus (Center of Excellence for Sustainable Water Technology in the Netherlands). It was a unique event as it enabled a truly multi-disciplinary approach in discussing Sanitation Challenges in North and South with social and political scientists, natural scientists, environmental engineers and practitioners in one s- entific conference. This volume presents a selection of the social scientific insights and research results presented at the Sanitation Challenge Conference: the concepts, decisi- making support tools and the perspectives from farmers and consumers towards sanitation innovation.
Household solid waste management is a severe problem in East Africa capital cities. Domestic actors tend to be neglected in their role in solving the problem. This book develops a new conceptual framework for analyzing the role of households in solid waste management in East Africa's capital cities. This conceptual framework is derived from the theory of the Modernized Mixture Approach. By focusing on households in informal settlements in particular, domestic routines for handling wastes are analyzed for their technical and social dimensions. By elaborating upon the technical and social aspects of domestic solid wastes and the role of householders in producing and handling these wastes, this book adds to the scanty body of scientific knowledge of sustainable waste management by householders in East African countries. The knowledge generated with respect to technical and social dimensions can be used in the future by researchers and policy makers in SWM policies both in East Africa and comparable situations elsewhere in the world.
This title includes a number of Open Access chapters. Urban planners around the world are increasingly concerned with creating and maintaining cities that are healthy for both the environment and for individuals. Cities are at the forefront of the trend toward sustainable living, since they are the site of concentrated population, resource use, and
