Water & sanitaton
Overview
Water rightly constitutes one of the most prominent and hotly debated environmental issues of the 21st century, with important links to health and disease, livelihoods and agricultural and economic development.
There is growing acknowledgement that water availability is highly variable and shaped by dynamics over many scales, whether the effects of climate change locally or globally, or socio-political arrangements which alter distribution.
Failure of global portrayals and policies
Nevertheless global projections of water availability tend to draw on aggregate numbers (concerning both populations and the volumetric control of water) that obscure the politics of water use and control. Moreover, global portrayals of water and sanitation ‘crises’ rarely address local-level uncertainties generated through complex interactions between hydrological and technical interventions on the one hand, and socio-cultural processes on the other.
Solutions, consequently, often fail on both sustainability and equity grounds. While detailed studies, both historical and contemporary have highlighted that water systems cannot be isolated from socio-cultural and political systems, global and national interventions still tend to be techno-centric and rely on water management.
An alternative approach is needed
STEPS work in this domain will build on longstanding experience in the water field in both IDS and SPRU to develop alternative approaches to achieving sustainable and equitable water and sanitation practices that embrace complex local dynamics, and promote decision-making processes and institutional arrangements that embrace diversity and meet the priorities of poorer groups.
Water and Sanitation publications
All of our Working Papers are published with an short and easy-to-read companion briefing, under a Creative Commons Licence.
STEPS Working Paper 6: Water & sanitation
Liquid Dynamics: challenges for sustainability in water and sanitation (pdf 556kb)
By Lyla Mehta, Fiona Marshall, Synne Movik, Andy Stirling, Esha Shah, Adrian Smith, John Thompson
ISBN: 978 185864 655 3
Floods, droughts, 6,000 babies dying daily due to waterbounre diseases and growing sanitation problems in booming peri-urban and urban centres. No act of terrorism generates devastation on the scale of the crisis in water and sanitation. This paper demonstrates there is a big disconnect between global rhetoric and the everyday realities of poor and marginalised people.
Order a printed copy from the IDS bookshop, cost £5.00
STEPS Briefing 6: Water & sanitation
Lyla Mehta
Download this briefing (pdf 243kb)
STEPS Working Paper 21: Reform
The Dynamics and Discourses of Water Allocation Reform in South Africa (pdf 1,867kb)
By Synne Movik
ISBN: 978 15684 775 5
STEPS Briefing 21: Reforming Water Rights: Dynamics, Discourses and Risks
Download this briefing (pdf 239kb)
Peri-urban project:
The peri-urban interface and sustainability of south Asian cities
The expanding fringes of Delhi are indicative of the conditions that a growing proportion of the world's poor and marginalised citizens will inhabit in decades to come.
Our Urbanisation in Asia project uses water conflicts as a lens through which to explore the technological and environmental sustainability challenges in peri-urban areas.
STEPS Working Paper 35: Peri-urban
On the Edge of Sustainability: Perspectives on Peri-urban Dynamics (pdf 640kb)
by Fiona Marshall, Linda Waldman, Hayley MacGregor, Lyla Mehta and Pritpal Randhawa
This paper examines some of the many ways in which the peri-urban has been theorised, considering, in particular, the implications for a normative research agenda towards improved environmental and social justice. The paper discusses the value of different notions of sustainability in the context of the peri-urban, challenging the view that ‘sustainability’ is not an appropriate goal in relation to cities which are seen, by some urban theorists, as inherently ‘unsustainable’.
Order a printed copy from the IDS bookshop cost £5.00
Our other projects
- Environmental change and maize innovation in East Africa focussing on dryland Kenya, maize and farming system dynamics in areas affected by climate change.
- Global Epidemics - HIV-AIDS, SARS, avian flu, BSE - procedures for addressing epidemics that support rather than compromise poor people and support social justice.
- Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto Recommending new ways of linking science and innovation to development for a more sustainable, equitable and resilient future
- Rethinking Regulation -addressing the gap between current assumptions about regulation in the cases of drugs, seeds and water in China and Latin America, and more complex realities.
- Beyond Biosafety Connecting civil society actors in the highly polarised debate transgenic crops. Kenya and Philippines
- Biotechnology Research Archive: 10 years of research in to genetically-modified crops, development and the global food crisis.
- Risk, uncertainty and technology - how different institutions and groups frame and respond to risks and uncertainties in areas of rapid scientific and technological advance.
STEPS Water Symposium November 2009
The STEPS Water Symposium 2009 was entitled ’Liquid dynamics: accessing water and sanitation in an uncertain age’. Delegates discussed water and sanitation policy in a changing world.
- Water Symposium programme (pdf 251kb)
- Accessing Water and Sanitation in an Uncertain Age - article by Jeremy Allouche and Synne Movik about the issues discussed at the Water Symposium
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- The STEPS water team held an event at World Water Week in Stockholm in August, using case studies from our peri-urban work in Delhi and Community-Led Total Sanitation.
Blog from World Water Week in Stockholm
Photos from World Water Week
STEPS at World Water Week 2009, Stockholm
- The Hay Festival Greenprint Forum, In collaboration with UNESCO - Earth, Wind, Fire and Water. STEPS Centre water and sanitation convenor speaks on the water panel. 21 May 2009
- Going to Scale with Community-Led Total Sanitation: Reflections on Experience, Issues and Ways Forward by Robert Chambers, Price £ 12.95
- Community-Led Total Sanitation As the International Year of Sanitation, 2008, drew to a close, the CLTS conference highlighted this innovative way of mobilising communities to completely eliinate open defecation. Dec 16-18 2008
- Sanitation Scandal - the priorities for World Water Week 2008
- Water: the ethics of efficiency Lyla Mehta writes about whether our food is too thirsty for Food Ethics magazine (pdf 2MB)
- World Toilet Day 2007 - examples of the Community-Led Total Sanitation approach
- World Water Day podcast (5.21 mins, 3MB)
The STEPS Centre marked World Water Day 2007 with a special podcast in which STEPS member Lyla Mehta and IDS Research Associate Robert Chambers talk about what they believe are the most pressing issues for water and sanitation. - Top five priorities for World Water Day 2007
Coping with water scarcity - Lyla Mehta
Spend less to achieve more - Robert Chambers
Rain-fed areas and rice farming - John Thompson
Sanitation, suffering and safety: women and water - Petra Bongartz - Irrigation, contamination & food safety for the urban and peri-urban poor. Research by STEPS member Fiona Marshall
- The politics and poetics of water scarcity - research by STEPS member Lyla Mehta
- Reframing Resilience The STEPS Centre's theme for 2008 was resilience; engaging with resilience thinking and exploring practical implications for policy in agriculture, water, peri-urban dynamics, epidemics and regulation.
Affliated projects
Find out more about our affiliated projects
Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Indonesia, China, Nepal and trials in Africa.
A participatory approach to encourage communities to carry out their own appraisal and analysis of community sanitation.
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Padlocked water tap / Crispin Hughes / Panos |
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