IWA aims to act as an international platform to disseminate information about and promote the actions of cities that we recognize to be leading the way with progressive approaches towards tacking urban sanitation problems. These we refer to as “demonstration cities” as they exemplify that the complexities of urban sanitation are not insurmountable given a concerted effort by local champions who are open to adopting innovative approaches.

Often there is influence or stimulus from international organisations which we should acknowledge, but of particular interest is to shift the focus towards a recognition of the leading role played by local actors - notably city authorities, private entrepreneurs, civil society organisations and utilities (public or private) - and also those national agencies who play an enabling role to support city level initiatives.

Examples of innovative approaches may relate to one or more of the following:

• management arrangements and/or institutional reform,
• policy and or regulatory arrangements
• innovative financing and cost-recovery instruments
• commercial viability of service delivery / sanitation as a business
• wide-scale application of appropriate and cost-effective technologies
• provision of services for slums and informal settlements
• waste collection and treatment combined with resource recovery and reuse
• city-wide planning approaches which are inclusive and respond to the local context.

With a strong focus on regional exchange and peer-to-peer learning, we aim to disseminate information about the experiences in these cities, with the objective that an increasing number of people – particularly other city actors - but also those working at national, regional and international levels, take inspiration from these demonstration cities and consider developing polices and strategies to adopt innovation at scale in the cities where they work.

At the same time, we recognize that many cities - even though they may have good experiences to share - still face challenges that city authorities and utilities are striving to overcome. Through the Under the Urban Sanitation Initiative, we aim to identify areas where IWA members and partners organisations such as SuSanA can contribute towards tackling these challenges.

I would welcome your suggestions as to which cities that you would deem to be 'demonstration cities' and we can discuss further how we can work in partnership towards the achievement of the objectives of the 'Urban Sanitation Initiative' as outlined above.

best regards, Jonathan Parkinson,

IWA Programme Manager - Urban Sanitation Initiative.

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Has noone got any good suggestions about cities that are recognized to be making a pro-active stance and making strong headway against sanitation problems? I'm still interested to hear from you and looking forward to your postings on this. best regards. Jonathan

Dear Jonathan,

Some suggestions about francophone african "champions" on water and sanitation planing:

- Ouagadougou in Burkina (national utility ONEA) has developped a sanitation strategic plan, in a concerted maneer.

They are now implementing it with:
- massive on-site solutions promotion and subsidies
- construction of decentralized stations for desludging
- concertation with and regulation of the informal desludging sector, and training of these profesionals
- experimentation of small-bore sewers in the coming years

One of the most interesting point, to my opinion, on this implementation stage is the attention given to the capacity building, thanks to the CEMEAU (the ONEA training center). The CEMEAU is also open to profesionals from the private and informal sector, the local authorities, etc...

Some "secundary cities" (i.e. between 30 000 and 300 000 unhabitants) from francophone western Africa which have been involved in sanitation strategies:

Three cities (on a total of 12) were involved in the elaboration of Concerted municipal strategies in the CMS Program's framework and are really worth being mentioned:
- Tahoua (Niger): the mayor is now president of the Niger mayors' asociation and making advocacy on the country for local water and sanitation strategies
- Rosso (Mauritanie): the mayor is a charismatic leader who has made his city a champion in the country, and managed to obtain a lot of aid from the donors for the implementation of its strategy
- Dschang (Cameroon): the strategy survived a political change at the head of the city, and contributed to change the whole urban development strategy by putting emphasis on basic services

Three other interesting cities:

In Kayes (Mali) the municipality made its own local W&S stratey (close to a CMS approach), in a concerted maneer with unhabitants' participation (each ward or district has its asociation). They developed an excelent GIS that help them to take decison and to plan the city. Now they are at the stage of developing the municipal services capacities in an integrated maneer (i.e water and sanitation but also hygiene control and "police", urban planing and land tenure, budget and taxes, administration, management and human resources, etc.) as they understood that water and sanitation was linked to all these issues, and building infrastructures. All this approach was suported by the french partner city of Evry and some french donors, but most of the trainings and capacity buildings were made by a South-South approach (by field visits, etc).

The city of Zinder (Niger) wich is involved in a sanitation strategy with a lot of actions. It is a massive donor-funded programm but the local authority seems to be fully involved and assuming its coordination role.

Hi Jonathan,

Read your post just now. Let me know if you have any on-going activities in India and/or if you consider schools to be the entry-point for an urban community.

Thanks,

Ananya

Dear Ananya,

Thanks for your message - sorry I did not respond earlier.

IWA does not directly have any on-going activities in India but supports the Indian Water Works Association, and is also involved with some other activities led by IWA's partners (GIZ, CEPT, SANDEC, related to city sanitation planning). We are also strong partners with BORDA-CDD who are actively promoting DEWATS (as well as working on city sanitation planning and capacity building). Last year we jointly organised a very successful conference in Nagpur which was hosted by NEERI.

I am aware that schools can be a good entry point for promoting WASH but it is not a specific dimension of IWA's Urban Sanitation Initiative. What we are aiming to achieve is to identify which cities are considered to be leading the way in tackling sanitation problems at scale.

I am therefore interested to hear back from people with suggestions as to which cities they consider to be champions of innovation and best practice. We often here about individual projects but what we are looking for hear is examples whereby city authorities are actively working with various partners to support the implementation of a range of different projects (focusing on different aspects of sanitation service delivery) which in combination are resulting in a systematic and comprehensive improvement to city-wide sanitation services.

For this to be achieved, there are likely to be a range of reforms relating to policy development, institutions and regulation, innovation in technological and management arrangements, sanitation planning, capacity building etc.

I am sure that amongst the SuSanA community there are people with some good suggestions as to which cities are leading the way and why they would propose these cities to satisfy the above criteria.

The suggestions from West Africa made by Jean Mare-Ily from Programme Solidarité Eau are very valid. I look forward to hearing additional suggestions and the reasons for your suggestions.

best regards,

Jonathan

Jonathan Parkinson PhD.
Programme Manager – Urban Sanitation Initiative

email : This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Telephone: + 44 20 300 48528
Mobile: + 44 770 220 2646

twitter.com/#!/jparkinson_IWA

International Water Association
Alliance House, 12 Caxton Street
London SW1H 0QS, UK

www.iwahq.org

Company registered in England No. 3597005
Registered Charity (England) No. 1076690

Hi Jonathan,

Thank you so much for providing the details. I read a good initiative here on teh Susana Forum, about Kochi only yesterday:
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/59-wg-...SuSanA+Forum%29#4216
We are working with the rural part mainly. However, we are also planning to start off with the urban scenario pretty soon with the launch of Cricket/Soccer League.

In 2012, we launched the hugely successful The Great WASH Yatra (www.nirmalbharatyatra.org / www.facebook.com/TheGreatWashYatra) in India - a mega sanitation & hygiene carnival with innovative WASH-themed games, performances, & labs. The carnival traveled 2000 kilometers across rural India and was a huge success: reaching 230 million people through media.

Best Regards,

Ananya
Wash United
India

Hi All

Let us get some SuSanA working group 6 members to contribute to this thread and further refine this idea. As we need to share good examples of cities that are being innovative and progressive in solving their respective sanitation challenges. While bearing in mind that the examples are more than likely of cities that we see to be on the right track and moving in the right direction.

I look forward to seeing further momentum in this thread.
Kind regards
Trevor

thanks Trevor for picking up on this thread and giving it a plug. I'd be very interested to hear from members of Working Group 6 (as well as from other members of the SuSanA community) in response to this question.

As Trevor implies, there are no cities that have solved all their sanitation/wastewater management problems, but there are some that are steadily making progress and are more embracing of instutional reforms and new technologies that help them overcome the challenges that they face.

Jean-Marie Ily from PS-Eau has already mentioned a few cities in West Africa that are leadling the way. So, let's here from you about other cities that you think deserve a mention and reference to the people/institutions that are responsible for these developments.

best regards,

Jonathan Parkinson