Sanitation 21 : simple approaches to complex sanitation : a draft framework for analysis

In order to ensure a more sustainable excreta management in the future, the reason why well designed urban sanitation systems fail is investigated. Conventional sanitation planning and design seems to be failing because of current technical planning and design practices, based on logical normative technical planning approaches. The objectives upon which decision are based are distorted by special interests, or by poor understanding of the real needs of the population. They result in plans which do not respond to the rapidly changing urban context and diverse conditions which pertain in modern urban spaces. To advance the objective of universally accessible sanitation, the decision-making process has to be changed dramatically in order to respond to the human and political context in which they are made.

The presented approach promotes an analysis of the objectives of a sanitation system across all domains of the city, including the household. Other domains include the neighbourhood, city and beyond the city. It promotes an analysis of the external drivers and contexts which impact on behaviour in each domain, analyses technical options in terms which relate elements of the system to these domains and encourages a realistic assessment of the management requirements in each domain. And then prompts the planner/ designer to ask : “Will this work ? Are the management requirements matched by management capacity throughout the system ? Is what we propose fitting the purpose ?”