Suchergebnisse

Household access to- and disposal of- water is one of the main building blocks of a well functioning society. Sadly, these services remain absent, unaffordable, or of inadequate quality for many of the world's urban populations. This is the case for many households of Bujumbura, where service provision is not as much a question of passive reception as one of active co-provision. Households are actively involved in finding ways to extend the service, creating alternatives, and developing coping strategies through which they try to ensure water can be accessed and disposed off adequately. Without this active involvement of households the state through its public utilities would be unable to reliably provide these services to the city's urban population. Numerous factors have become challenges in the provision of public services. This includes: the pollution of the resource and the environment; high levels of poverty relating to affordability of provided services; and a high degree of infrastructure failures. Within this context, the concept of system-D describes fend-for-yourself approaches that have become crucial in the provision of such services. Planners working in such contexts have to understand such processes in the working of urban systems, as well as the ethical implications they carry. Based on the assumed need for a normative ethical approach to planning this work engages with urban justice debate through an analytical framework developed by a post-colonial translation of the Susan Fainstein's (2010) Just City concept. Through this analytical framework a multi-scalar analysis seeks to evaluate equity, diversity, and democracy in the case of household water access and disposal in Bujumbura. In addition, through an 'Ordinary City' framing the empirical insights from the case study feed back into the urban justice debates, presenting a process of translation and an innovation to the Just City concept. Finally the work proposes action-oriented recommendations that can contribute in steering the ethical development of these services; such as small-scale investments into storage tanks at key facilities (such as local health centers) or intorducing the use of appropriate technologies to facilitate water transportation for households (such as the Hippo Water Roller).

Reconciling limited water availability with an increasing demand in a sustainable manner requires detailed knowledge on the benefits people obtain from water resources. A frequently advocated approach to deliver such information is the ecosystem services concept. This study quantifies water provision as an ecosystem service for the 43 000 km 2 Pangani Basin in Tanzania and Kenya. The starting assumption that an ecosystem service must be valued and accessible by people necessitates the explicit consideration of stakeholders, as well as fine spatial detail in order to determine their access to water. Further requirements include the use of a simulation model to obtain estimates for unmeasured locations and time periods, and uncertainty assessment due to limited data availability and quality. By slightly adapting the hydrological model Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), developing and applying tools for input pre-processing, and using Sequential Uncertainty Fitting ver. 2 (SUFI-2) in calibration and uncertainty assessment, a watershed model is set up according to these requirements for the Pangani Basin. Indicators for water provision for different uses are derived from model results by combining them with stakeholder requirements and socio-economic datasets such as census or water rights data. Overall water provision is rather low in the basin, however with large spatial variability. On average, for domestic use, livestock, and industry, 86–105 l per capita and day (95% prediction uncertainty, 95 PPU) are available at a reliability level of 95%. 1.19–1.50 ha (95 PPU) of farmland on which a growing period with sufficient water of 3–6 months is reached at the 75% reliability level – suitable for the production of staple crops – are available per farming household, as well as 0.19–0.51 ha (95 PPU) of farmland with a growing period of ≥6 months, suitable for the cultivation of cash crops. The indicators presented reflect stakeholder information needs and can be extracted from the model for any physical or political spatial unit in the basin.

Reconciling limited water availability with an increasing demand in a sustainable manner requires detailed knowledge on the benefits people obtain from water resources. A frequently advocated approach to deliver such information is the ecosystem services concept. This study quantifies water provision as an ecosystem service for the 43 000 km2 Pangani Basin in Tanzania and Kenya. The starting assumption that an ecosystem service must be valued and accessible by people necessitates the explicit consideration of stakeholders, as well as fine spatial detail in order to determine their access to water. Further requirements include the use of a simulation model to obtain estimates for unmeasured locations and time periods, and uncertainty assessment due to limited data availability and quality. By slightly adapting the hydrological model Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), developing and applying tools for input pre-processing, and using Sequential Uncertainty Fitting ver. 2 (SUFI-2) in calibration and uncertainty assessment, a watershed model is set up according to these requirements for the Pangani Basin. Indicators for water provision for different uses are derived from model results by combining them with stakeholder requirements and socio-economic datasets such as census or water rights data. Overall water provision is rather low in the basin, however with large spatial variability. On average, for domestic use, livestock, and industry, 86–105 l per capita and day (95% prediction uncertainty, 95 PPU) are available at a reliability level of 95%. 1.19–1.50 ha (95 PPU) of farmland on which a growing period with sufficient water of 3–6 months is reached at the 75% reliability level – suitable for the production of staple crops – are available per farming household, as well as 0.19–0.51 ha (95 PPU) of farmland with a growing period of ≥6 months, suitable for the cultivation of cash crops. The indicators presented reflect stakeholder information needs and can be extracted from the model for any physical or political spatial unit in the basin.

Front Matter -- Preface -- Contents -- Executive Summary -- 1 Key Issues in Water Services Privatization -- 2 History of U.S. Water and Wastewater Systems -- 3 Forces of Change in the Water Service Industry -- 4 Models of Water Service Provision -- 5 Structural, Pricing, and Regulatory Issues -- 6 Broader Implications of Water Services Privatization -- 7 Conclusions -- References -- A Privatization of Water Services in England and Wales -- B Overview of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) -- C Seattle Public Utilities Treatment Plant, Design-Build-Operate Project, Risk-Sharing Matrix -- D Biographical Information -- Index.

Cities seeking to reform water management practices that degrade sustainability are challenged by limited resources, financial needs of legacy infrastructures, institutional barriers, and rigid regulatory environments. Stakeholders in urban water programs report that financial aspects of One Water top their list of concerns. As shown by local initiatives, integrated water management strategies based on the One Water concept can help to mitigate these problems and provide additional benefits and co-benefits. Experiences reported by cities identify practices that facilitate financial solutions to ongoing concerns. Drawing from three sets of One Water cases, 36 examples were shown to include significant financial innovation. Analysis of them pointed to strategies that involve organizational approaches, regional shared governance, partnerships, resource conservation, and corporate social responsibility. Financial innovation in each category requires further study to identify new opportunities and to validate feasibility, along with benefits and co-benefits.

How do Community Contribution Requirements Affect Local Public Good Provision? Experimental Evidence from Safe Water Sources in Bangladesh We exploit the random assignment of communities selected to receive a safe drinking water program to various contribution requirements: cash, labor or no requirement to contribute. Imposing a cash contribution requirement greatly decreases program take-up, while imposing a labour contribution does not. Program impact is correspondingly lower under the cash contribution requirement than under the labour contribution requirement or contribution waiver. The cash contribution requirement screens out communities with low arsenic contamination, but screening does not lead to increased treatment effects on the treated. Our results suggest that there are substantial welfare gains to be made in such projects in poor communities by allowing households to contribute in labour rather than cash. ; Group Size and Collective Action: Evidence from Bangladesh We provide the first causal empirical evidence from a real-world setting of the effect of group size on collective action. Exogenous variation in group size arises from an application of Maimonides' rule, combined with a randomized controlled experiment. We find that when communities are faced with a collective action problem – to cooperate on a program of safe drinking water provision – in larger groups, per capita effort falls. Despite larger groups are more successful in installing safe wells, they achieve smaller increases in the use of safe drinking water, possibly because reduced participation weakens constraints on elite capture. ; Experience of Inclusive Institutions and the Value of Participation: Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh I advance our understanding of institutional development by investigating how citizens value inclusive institutional arrangements and how these values evolve. Results from an incentivized lab-in-the-field experiment show that citizens prefer taking collective decisions by a participatory process. Then, exploiting randomly assigned exposure to inclusive institutions through a Community-Driven Development program, I find that experiencing such institutions changes citizens' values of participatory governance. However, changes in citizens' preferences do not translate into changes in real-world participation behaviors or increased adoption of inclusive institutions. ; Understanding Institutional Persistence: Exposure to Community-Driven Development and the Value of Autonomy and Democracy We elicit incentivized preferences over different decision-making processes for a safe drinking water program: community's own pre-existing local institutions; decision-making by external agents (project staff); imported democratic and inclusive institutions. We find strong preferences for imported institutions, although influential groups attribute a higher value to local institutions. These results suggest that local institutions do not reflect majority preferences and may be dominated by traditional elites. We then measure whether preferences over alternative decision-making processes differ in communities who have been previously exposed to democratic and inclusive decision-making during a previous safe drinking water program. We interpret these results within a framework of institutional development.

Considered to be the largest contributor to the growth in the world's urban population in the coming years, India and its urbanisation process have reached a critical juncture. As one of the fastest growing countries, urbanisation is undoubtedly an opportunity and a challenge for India with huge implications for the rest of the world. One crucial issue in this respect is the provisioning of basic urban services in our cities. Through a case study of four Indian cities, this work examines the current unmanaged growth (business as usual urbanisation) and the costs associated with it. Using a social cost accounting (SCA) methodology, it estimates the market and non-market costs associated with the delivery of water, sanitation, transport and energy services. Thus the study goes beyond often discussed issues of access to services and the direct costs involved and invites attention to often ignored social and environmental costs. Each service provision is also categorized into public, private and self-provision across the three sectors and explored further. The study highlights that despite high levels of coverage in the four cities, the quantity and quality of services are inadequate in many respects, especially in the case of water and transport, and have high associated social and environmental costs.