Socio-cultural and Institutional
Challenges in Sanitation
Bahadar Nawab, PhD
Head Development Studies/Sustainable Sanitation
COMSATS University, Abbottabad, Pakistan
bahadar@ciit.net.pk
Paradigm Shifts in Sanitation
Sustainable
Sanitation
Conventional
water
and sanitation
Sustainable
Sanitation
Time line
Since human
life until 1800
1800 till to date
New baby
Sustainable
Sanitation
Must not
be
imposed
on
Society
Sustainable
Sanitation
Development of
Technical solutions
together with
community
Society
Different problem definitions
Different solutions
• Technical problem? Better designs…
• Ecological problem? Improved toilets,
treatment or re-use of waste…
• Poor hygiene practices? Health and hygiene
training.
• Economic constraints? Subsidies or loans.
• Not only who should define the solutions, but
who should define the problem????
Water and Sanitation in Pakistan
• Acute crisis, fear of health problems from poor
sanitary conditions
• Problem: lack of sanitation and water
facilities
• Solution: Provision of water, toilets and/or
latrines
Importance of understanding sociocultural aspects of sanitation
• Current policy and technologies are based on
very simple, universal, western-based ideas of
problems and solutions within sanitation:
– What is the problem? How is it identified?
– What is the solution? How is impact measured?
The Challenge
• Little attention is paid to understanding how
people view sanitation or think about potential
links between hygiene, poor health and
sanitation.
• Many countries blindly followed the
conventional and the western excreta handling
approaches
The Challenge
• Today the focus of intervention is to eliminate
open defecation by constructing latrines, toilets
and drains
• But does it help?
• People who are excreting and government
departments who are dealing with excreta tend
to have different understanding and know-how,
malignancy, disposal techniques and re-use
options
The Challenge
• How to enter the community
• People’s perceptions about sanitation
• How they make choices and decisions about
sanitation
• How they get support for their desired
project and implement it
The Challenge
•
Who sets sanitation policies?
•
Who defines their goals and objectives?
•
Who is implementing the policies how and for whom?
•
Are the existing and proposed sanitation institutions in
compliance with local actors’ perceptions, values, local
institutions and practices?
•
How do the different actors perceive and communicate
with each other?
•
Do they have common ground for understanding and
overcoming sanitation issues?
The Challenge
How can we understand local people
practices, priorities, preferences and
perceptions about sanitation and development
technical solutions together with them
How we overcome those Challenges?
• We need to better understand how individual
residents, local communities and government staff
reason and view their sanitation conditions in order to
improve the success rate of interventions
• We need to know the historical and prevailing norms,
attitudes and perceptions about sanitation
arrangements
How we overcome those
Challenges?
(Three Stories from Pakistan)
Case-1 (Wet Ecological Sanitation)
•
•
•
•
•
•
49 household
673 individual
One tube well
53 underground water tank
12 households have pit latrine
Greywater in the streets
Methodology
• Individual meetings with key persons
• Community meetings with the men
• Open-ended interview with:
– Household heads/ members
– Religious scholars/Imam
– Head of local government
• Group meetings with women
Community Initiative
• Made village committee with a name of ”Help
Yourself”
• Negotiate with local government
• Implement ecological sanitation project
Greywater
Sanitation
Solution
Option 1
Street
pavements
Option 2
Flush
toilet +
sewer
system
Commnity
Choice
Households toilet connected to
sewer system +treatment through
wetland (ecological sanitation)
Constraint and
opportunities
Options 3
Urinediverting
toilet +
treatment
system for
greywater
Options 4
Pit
latrine
Constructed wetlands in Faizabad Machaki
Constructed wetlands (cont)
Water-based Ecological Sanitation
Case-2 Natural Treatment of Wastewater
Constructed wetland:
• 6900 m2
• 11 ponds
• 455 m3/day
• 7.8 days retention
time
Processes for retention of pollutants
Aerial Photograph of Gadoon CW
Results
Results
Wetland
performance
Pollution retention
2003
• 67% solids
• 74% anions
• 25% BOD
• pH to 6.8
2004
• 87% heavy metals
• 88% anions
• 70% solids
• 53% COD and
increase pH
Case- 3 Dry Ecological Sanitation in Northern
Pakistan
Case-3 from Northern Pakistan (cont.)
superstructure
Pit
Pit holes
Excreta
Case-3 from Northern Pakistan (cont.)
Pit emptying door
Human manure in the field
Raw pit manure
Photo: Ghulam Mohammad
How can we understand
socio-cultural values and
engage people to
improve their lives?
Action Research?
Action Research Model (Susman & Evered, 1978)
- Monitoring the change
- Ongoing review of
method and outcomes
- Evaluating the
effectiveness of the
change programe
Diagnosis
- Documenting the change process
- Data gathering
- Identifying present state and barrier to
change
- Building trust and relationship with people
Specifying
learning
Action
planning
Learning
process
- Formulating
strategy and
policy for action
- Developing
leadership for
change
Evaluation
Action
taking
- Issue and problem
identification
- Data
interpretation
- Feeding back data
analysis
- Gaining ownership and
commitment to action
- Identify change
- Fine-tuning change
Dual Aim of Action Research
(McNiff & Whitehead, 2006)
Action
Knowledge
• First you can improve
learning to improve
practices.
• Second you can
advance knowledge and
theory, i.e., new ideas
about how things can be
done and why; facilitate
communication.
Conclusions
• Local people have the potential and capability
to solve their sanitation problem if they are
given the opportunity to be involved from
inception to completion of the sanitation
projects
• Ecological sanitation needs to be diversified
and adapted to people’s culture, values and
demands rather than generalize solutions
developed under completely different
conditions.
Conclusion
• The worldwide hue and cry on sanitation is
encouraging sign but the efforts of decades
seems less productive.
• New sanitation approaches and slogans are
discovered and implemented which often
drains the donors and public money but
contribute little to the environmental and
health benefits associated with the improved
sanitation.
Conclusion
• The whole reform of sanitation institutions is
restricted to experts and bureaucrats who decide
the technical, administrative, legal and policy
solutions for the rest of the actors. The experts’
solutions therefore, usually fall short of
community expectations
Conclusion (Cont.)
• If research is to improve practice, then action
research has much to offer research as well
sanitation solutions, and it may assist bridging
the gap between research and practice.
• We need to understand sanitation problem in a
holistic way and then build on local men and
women’s practices, norms, values, and
institutions and try to make their existing
practices safer rather than imposing on them
new regulations and foreign solutions.
New Paradigm of Sustainable Sanitation
SocioCultural
aspects
Technical
aspects
Sustainable
sanitation
Economic
and
Institutional
aspects
Ecological
aspects
Health
Development
Thank You