Lessons Learnt from the Sanitation Challenge Conference

- by Judith Tukahirwa

The PROVIDE project was an active co-organiser of the Sanitation Challenge conference in Wageningen last May. The conference aimed at a scientific discussion on new sanitation concepts and techniques, together with models of governance and experiences from all over the world.

The international conference hoped to address stressing challenges in saitation affairs in the framework of the International Year of Sanitation. Over 100 experts on sanitation and waste management issues from various fields (academic field, technocrats, government, private sector and non-governmental organizations) merged to discuss sanitation challenges in both the developed and developing world. It was agreed that there was need to shift from traditional dichotomies of strongly centralized, advanced technologies which are very costly and unsustainable in the developed world and existing local decentralized, community based and low-technological practices and systems in the developing world to develop rural and urban sanitation with a mix of scales, strategies, technologies, payment systems and decision-making structures, that better fits the physical and human systems for which they are designed. This information was very similar and useful to the PROVIDE project, as we try to use the modernised mixtures approach to improve sanitation and waste management situations in East Africa. It was interesting to note that the developed world strongly believed that it was time to move away from their long term traditions of modern or advance technologies to what the modernised mixtures approach is advocating for. In addition to that, in looking for new solutions and innovations it was observed that this will not succeed unless the local conditions are taken into consideration. The conference was very beneficial because it was in agreement with the Modernized Mixtures Approach which advocates for a consistent optimisation of technologies, management arrangements, actor involvements and supporting policies for sanitation and waste management, against the specific local context of specific counties.