This report aims to provide a model for countries to use in addressing their own urban sanitation priorities and ensuring the full participation of the health sector in the strategic development and maintenance of urban sanitation. It sets out the stages in the development of an urban sanitation strategy and includes an example of a pilot project in Zambia.

This volume is the result of years of commitment with world-wide sanitation challenges from various research networks linking the editors and authors of this volume to many other sanitation scholars and professionals. Major contributions to this volume are derived from the work done in the PROVIDE project (working on sustainable urban infrastructures in cities of the Lake Victoria Basin, East Africa), the DESAR project (research and pilot projects in Decentralized Sanitation and Reuse, the Netherlands), and among others within NETSSAF (large scale implementation of sanitation in Africa), and EcoSan networks. The major milestone for this book to emerge was however the IWA Sanitation Challenge Conference of May 2008 in Wageningen, the Netherlands where all the authors of this book presented their papers. The conference was organized by a consortium of sanitation specialists at Wageningen University’s Environmental Policy Group (the editors) and the s- department of Environmental Technology, LeAF (Lettinga Associates Foundation) and Wetsus (Center of Excellence for Sustainable Water Technology in the Netherlands). It was a unique event as it enabled a truly multi-disciplinary approach in discussing Sanitation Challenges in North and South with social and political scientists, natural scientists, environmental engineers and practitioners in one s- entific conference. This volume presents a selection of the social scientific insights and research results presented at the Sanitation Challenge Conference: the concepts, decisi- making support tools and the perspectives from farmers and consumers towards sanitation innovation.

Report from communities prioritized for improved water supplies under the Consensus Building for Maseru Peri-Urban Community Water Supply and Sanitation Project.

More than 2.6 billion people in the developing world lack access to safe water and sanitation service. The Millennium Development Goal’s (MDG) target is to halve the number of people without access to a sustainable source of water supply and connection to a sewer network by 2015. That target is unlikely to be met. If there is anything that can be learnt from European experience it is that institutional reform occurs incrementally when politically enfranchised urban populations perceive a threat to their material well-being due to contamination of water sources.