Monitoring the human rights to water and sanitation: An analysis of policy in Pacific island countries

© IWA Publishing 2016. Government monitoring of water and sanitation services is a critical step in realising the human rights to water and sanitation (HRWS). In this study we investigated the national water and sanitation policies of 13 Pacific island countries (PICs) to understand how they envision monitoring the water and sanitation service delivery dimensions put forth by the HRWS framework. In particular, we analysed the policies for fundamental aspects of good monitoring governance and sought to learn how strongly monitoring of each service delivery dimension was represented in the policies. We found that delineation of roles and responsibilities and defined information flows are generally underdeveloped, and that the policies tend to give precedence to monitoring the service delivery dimensions of availability, quality, and sustainability over accessibility, affordability, acceptability, and equality. Donors have considerable influence on which dimensions receive the most emphasis in the policies. If realisation of the HRWS is to be effectively supported in PICs, PIC governments and supporting donors must continue to refine national policy to clarify aspects of good monitoring governance and to be more inclusive of monitoring a wider range of service delivery dimensions

Water quality management for domestic rainwater harvesting systems in Fiji

© 2015 IWA Publishing. Health risks from drinking rainwater are relatively small in the developing world context, but action is needed to ensure water safety. Water safety plans (WSPs) use an approach to manage water quality that has shown signs of success with public and communal water supplies, but relatively little research has been done to investigate the application of WSPs to self-supply systems. The aim of this paper is to investigate the primary issues surrounding appropriate water quality management of domestic rainwater harvesting (DRWH) systems in Fiji and consider how the principles of WSPs can be applied in this context. A qualitative research design was followed, utilising semi-structured interviews with 34 rural households and six key informants, sanitary inspections of DRWH systems and thematic data analysis. A number of challenges, including limited government resources and the limited knowledge and casual attitudes of rural rainwater consumers, constrain the practicality of adopting conventional WSPs at the household level, but steps for improvement can be taken

A Series of Kinetic Sets Tell A Story

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/83795/1/koshanno_1303314584.pd

Responding to climate change to sustain community-managed water services in Vanuatu

University of Technology Sydney. Institute for Sustainable Futures.The aim of this research was to provide holistic, detailed, and integrated knowledge and guidance on the ways in which community-managed water services are affected by and sustained against climate change disturbances. Climate change poses one of the most significant challenges to the world with potential for far-reaching, detrimental impacts on water access in rural areas of developing countries. The water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector has yet to adequately and explicitly conceptualise the different ways that climate change affects water services and how water services are sustained against climate change disturbances. Without clear conceptualisations, actions taken to adapt water services to climate change run the risk of being ineffective, inefficient, inequitable, or environmentally unsustainable. This research filled the conceptualisation gap in the context of community-managed water services in a developing country setting using Vanuatu as a country of reference. To conduct this research, I followed tenets of transdisciplinarity and utilised a case study methodology in two rural sites in Vanuatu that included 70 participants from rural communities and local and central government. Methods included semi-structured interviews, technological and environmental surveys, observations, participatory workshops, and document analyses. I first drew on three bodies of climate change theory-practice to fill the conceptualisation gap: risk-hazard, vulnerability, and resilience. I demonstrated that using risk-hazard, vulnerability, and resilience lenses each make different, but valuable, contributions to conceptualising the biophysical, social, and social-ecological impacts of climate change on community-managed water services. I argued that the WASH sector currently favours a technocratic framing of the climate change problem and must consider the wider range of perspectives that I demonstrated. I then synthesised key concepts from risk-hazard, vulnerability, and resilience theories, such as those relating to risk management, agency, and human-environment feedbacks, into an integrated conceptual framework to emphasise their synergies and manage tensions between them. My proposed framework acts as a heuristic for assessing the capacity of community-managed water services to sustain water access against climate change disturbances. The framework sensitises WASH stakeholders to the different ways of regarding climate change impacts and facilitates interdisciplinary research. Lastly, I showed how my findings are useful in a real-world setting. I discussed how my proposed framework can be used to inform Government of Vanuatu strategic decision-making processes. I also considered how my framework can be used to evolve a Vanuatu-based NGO framework and I shared lessons learned from carrying out my analyses with other researchers in Vanuatu

Frontiers 13: Support mechanisms to strengthen equality and non-discrimination (EQND) in rural sanitation (Part 2 of 2)

Achievement of adequate and equitable access to sanitation for all, and an end to open defecation, requires that special attention is given toward disadvantaged groups. It has become apparent that the benefits of conventional rural sanitation programming and service delivery are often not spread equally, and risk leaving disadvantaged groups behind. This issue of Frontiers of CLTS (the second in a two-part series) examines the potential of support mechanisms designed to help disadvantaged groups access and use hygienic toilets in driving more equitable rural sanitation outcomes. It covers the latest thinking on the opportunities and challenges of support mechanisms, and explores what works remains to be done.In this issue, we use a broad definition of 'support' for creating equitable outcomes. Although financial and physical subsidies often quickly come to mind, a broader practical understanding of support needs to encompass both 'hardware' mechanisms and 'software' approaches, as well as various combinations of the two (Myers et al. 2017; ISF-UTS and SNV 2018)

Analysing the capacity to respond to climate change: a framework for community-managed water services

© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. In this paper, we present a conceptual framework for guiding interdisciplinary research on analysing the capacity of community-managed water services to respond to disturbances from climate change. Climate change poses a serious threat to the sustainable delivery of community-managed water services in developing countries. We synthesized key concepts from the latest research on vulnerability and resilience theories into a shared framework that functions as a heuristic for the analysis of different elements of the capacity to respond to climate disturbances and how they are related to community-managed water services. Primary elements of the framework include conceptualisations of the capacities to respond to specific hazards (e.g. through risk management and knowledge of thresholds) and to disturbances in general (e.g. through agency, social structure, and adaptive management practices), the potential for capacity to be differentiated across scales, and the social and biophysical system characteristics that influence capacity to respond to climate change. We describe how each these elements relate to sustaining community-managed water services against climate change throughout the paper. We also discuss subjective choices (temporal frame, system boundaries, scale of inquiry, and desired forms of capacity) that analysts must make when considering how capacity to respond to climate change is analysed