International Summer School "Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor"
International DAAD Alumni Summer School: „Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor - Natural Hazards, Climate Change, Governance and Human Rights”
In informal settlements of mega cities of Sub-Saharan Africa, water and sanitation services are still severely lacking. As a result, a high number of people suffer from preventable illnesses and die every year. Population growth will further increase these challenges in future. Improving global access to clean drinking water and safe sanitation is therefore one of the most effective means to enhance living conditions in order to break the cycle of poverty, enhance public health and save lives in these urban slums. Flash floods caused by heavy precipitation events in small areas pose a great threat for especially the urban poor, living in informal settlements like slums. In these areas of high risk, there is no or only inefficient resilience against a variety of hazards. The lack of infrastructure specifically in the water sector leads to an inability to deal with storm water. The main form of waste and sewage disposal is an open sewage channel running through the slum areas. The deposition of waste in the surrounding living quarters and areas used for urban and peri-urban agriculture by a flash flood increases health risks.
The Alumni Summer School “Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor - Natural hazards, climate change, governance and human rights” offered the chance for researchers to tackle the problems related to the fast growing informal and degrading formal urban settlements in an inter-disciplinary team. The Kenyan capital city Nairobi was taken as an example since most work has been done and results have been achieved in technical cooperation with Kenyan institutions for sustainable improvement of the water and sanitation sector. The Summer School is jointly funded by DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit).
The Summer School was jointly funded by DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit). The Summer School was held in Nairobi, Kenya from 4th December to 17th December 2011. The Summer School was organised by the Centre for International Capacity Development Universität Siegen (UoS); Institute for Flood Management & River Engineering, University of Kaiserslautern (UoK), Biomechanical & Environmental Engineering Department, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT); Department of Geography, Kenyatta University; College of Agricultural and Environmental Science, Makerere University (MAK). The event was supported by German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and German International Cooperation (GIZ).
The summer school was organized as a meeting point of academia and multi-stakeholders development organizations to facilitate exchange of knowledge and expertise. More than 50 participants – German Alumni, professionals and technicians from the area, PhD students and slum dwellers – representing various disciplines as well as different sectors of society worked together for understanding the burning problems of informal settlements and discussing short-term and long-term solutions. Extremely high population growth and density living in poverty are paralleled by poor or missing water and sanitation infrastructure. A distinct pro-poor policy as stipulated by the Kenyan water sector reform and underscored by the new Kenyan Constitution with a formulated right of access to water and sanitation for everybody is welcomed as a decisive step forward. Strengthening the key water and sanitation services providers is the way forward for improving livelihoods of millions of people. The participants agreed that intercultural and multidisciplinary attempts are offering solutions for policy change. Therefore, a series of seminars and summer schools should address the topics of “Water Supply and Sanitation for the Urban Poor” concentrating on various aspects in the urban centres in East Africa in the next years. The joint effort of academic, professional and development institutions is highly appreciated. More research is needed to consolidate existing findings e.g. from the Kenyan water sector and lay the standards for up-scaling and dissemination.
Objectives of the Summer School
The main objectives of this Summer School were to develop research based tools for addressing the water and sanitation demands of the urban poor in Kenya and subsequently formulate up scaling strategies implementable by Multi-stakeholders development organisations as well as the national government.
Sub-objectives included:
To strengthen skills and competencies of Alumni and other participants in Natural Resource Management (NRM) and Flood Risk Management, in the urban poor setting;
To initiate, nurture and improve regional and international networks of (North-South and South-South) experts working on aspects of ”water for the urban poor”;
To give participants the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in research related to “water for the urban poor”, “Storm Water Management” and “Climate Change”, and develop concepts that benefit academicians, practitioners and communities alike;
To create an opportunity for Alumni and other participants to share experiences with local communities on urban water concepts and their management in Eastern Africa;
To create an opportunity for a regional exchange of knowledge and experience, as almost all Eastern African countries are involved in a water sector reform process working on different levels and assisted by the German Development Co-operation;
To catalyze innovations in communicating research findings on natural resources and conflict transformation in an urban setting.
Five working groups covered following aspects:
Technical solutions: WSS Engineering with a focus on low cost technology appropriate for informal settlements, on site solutions versus sanitary sewer systems (Infrastructure water kiosks, sludge management, EcoSan) ; (coordinator: Dr. Urbanus N. Mutwiwa, JKUAT)
Governance: Governance with a focus on institutional behaviour, private-public ownerships/ partnerships, and the realisation of human right to water (linkage of institutions of water & sanitation data and health data); (coordinator: Prof. M. Mwanjalolo, MAK)
Conflicting Uses: Conflicting uses of water in urban centres and climate change: adaptation strategies, green belts, re-use of waste water/manure for urban gardening (Water Quality); (coordinator: Dr. George Makokha, KU)
Management Options: Business/economics with a focus on tariff setting, equity, utility management, re-investment (Incentives for investments); (coordinator: Prof. Dr. G. Foerch, UoS)
Risk Management: Storm water management in urban informal settlements: infrastructure and health (Information local vis-à-vis state-of-art knowledge); (coordinator: Prof. Dr. R. Juepner, UoK)
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