scholarly journals When behavior change fails: evidence for building WASH strategies on existing motivations

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lia Marshall ◽  
Jessica Kaminsky

Despite increased efforts, an estimated 30–40% of rural drinking water initiatives in developing countries fail to provide sustainable solutions. The Sustainable Development Goal for water (SDG 6) challenges us to solve this problem to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. In this paper, we explore one possible barrier to success: a potential misalignment between local and outside motivations. We address this problem by analyzing how strategies used to successfully (n = 148) and unsuccessfully (n = 70) deliver drinking water to rural areas align with known motivations of local stakeholders. As one tool and starting point, we use definitions in Maslow's theory of motivation to learn and share how to more consistently and successfully build comprehensive motivations into solutions. The results reveal that successful strategies rarely focus on physiological needs (2/148) and often focus on higher-level needs, including self-esteem (75/148), love and belonging (46/148), and safety (69/148). Successful strategies also typically address multiple needs and are designed to meet the actualization (fulfill potential) of both communities and donors. Unsuccessful strategies focus on needs of outside stakeholders above local stakeholders (46/70), fail to address higher-level or multiple needs, and/or unsuccessfully address existing needs.

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 58-77
Author(s):  
Obinna C. Nwinyi ◽  
Osariyekemwen Uyi ◽  
Emmanuel J. Awosanya ◽  
Ifeoluwa T. Oyeyemi ◽  
Anthony M. Ugbenyen ◽  
...  

AbstractAccess to potable water is a major problem confronting most developing nations particularly with the overwhelming health burden posed by polluted water and its sources. In this review, studies on the level of contamination of drinking water sources in different geopolitical zones in Nigeria were assessed. The anthropogenic activities eliciting the pollutions were extensively discussed. Overall, the level of Nigeria preparedness in meeting the sustainable development goal number 6 (SDG no 6: to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all) was evaluated. Cogent methods that could enhance the achievement of SDG no. 6 were suggested. From our analysis of published literature, pre- and post- SDG implementation in Nigeria, it is clear that no significant progress has been made in providing potable water for all in Nigeria. All implementing partners must therefore rejig the process to ensure the availability of potable water, in order to achieve the sustainable development goal six.


Water ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1711 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Bain ◽  
Richard Johnston ◽  
Francesco Mitis ◽  
Christie Chatterley ◽  
Tom Slaymaker

The World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), through the Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP), are responsible for global monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets for drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). The SDGs represent a fundamental shift in household WASH monitoring with a new focus on service levels and the incorporation of hygiene. This article reflects on the process of establishing SDG baselines and the methods used to generate national, regional and global estimates for the new household WASH indicators. The JMP 2017 update drew on over 3000 national data sources, primarily household surveys (n = 1443), censuses (n = 309) and administrative data (n = 1494). Whereas most countries could generate estimates for basic drinking water and basic sanitation, fewer countries could report on basic handwashing facilities, water quality and the disposal of waste from onsite sanitation. Based on data for 96 and 84 countries, respectively, the JMP estimates that globally 2.1 billion (29%) people lacked safely managed drinking water services and 4.5 billion (61%) lacked safely managed sanitation services in 2015. The expanded JMP inequalities database also finds substantial disparities by wealth and sub-national regions. The SDG baselines for household WASH reveal the scale of the challenge associated with achieving universal safely managed services and the substantial acceleration needed in many countries to achieve even basic services for everyone by 2030. Many countries have begun to localise the global SDG targets and are investing in data collection to address the SDG data gaps, whether through the integration of new elements in household surveys or strengthening collection and reporting of information through administrative and regulatory systems.


Author(s):  
Nada Kosanovic ◽  
◽  
Suncica Vjestica ◽  

Despite the fact that we live in a country where the farmers' associations are created among the first on the Old Continent, and where one of the first Institute for Nature Protection is created, statistics warn us that the demise of several hundred Serbian villages and thus the emptying of strategically important areas of the state of Serbia today, is a serious development problem. In this paper an analysis of the rural, age and educational structure of the population, in rural areas of the Republic of Serbia, has been performed. The authors believe that the situation is not hopeless and point out that the sustainable development of the village is possible only if favorable local preconditions for it are met. Therefore, it is necessary to revive and institutionally expand the competencies of rural local communities as a form of local rural self-government in the Serbian folk tradition. Accordingly, decentralization and polycentric development are the main conditions for the renewal of the population and devastated parts of Serbia. Moreover, native networks and integrated rural development are models applicable through LAP in accordance with the characteristics of the area. Nowadays, it is necessary to raise people's awareness of the importance of rural survival and sustainable management of resources in agriculture, i.e. to breathe new life into rural areas, which would also be a motive for staying in the countryside.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 1032 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Drumea ◽  
Bogdan Băcanu ◽  
Carmen Elena Anton ◽  
Adriana Veronica Litra ◽  
Steliana Busuioceanu ◽  
...  

Our study proposes a Romanian national perspective of the gender–sustainability paradigm in higher education under the Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG5) approach. The starting point is the interlinkage of the two concepts, gender parity and sustainability, depicted on a fundamental societal domain. Data collection was completed following a census approach, resulting in staffing data on 47 Romanian state-owned universities. Data collected envisaged the tenure teaching staff, divided into two gender groups; the count was focused on executive roles and collective managerial elected bodies for the 2015–2019 mandate. The gender situation was analyzed quantitatively by the number of teaching staff, their gender structure, and their representation in the executive functions and collective decision-making bodies. We calculated gender indexes and used statistical correlation coefficients to explain the relations between the different categories of personnel and their influence on establishing the management structures. The results of the gender configuration analysis were further associated with the latest national meta-ranking of Romanian universities. Our findings show that Romanian universities demonstrate sustainability under SDG5 through their institutional capacity to use either feminine majorities or a statistically detected pro-female voting propensity in order to construct optimally gendered management structures through vote only.


Author(s):  
Ebele Erhuanga ◽  
Maingaila Moono Banda ◽  
Doutimiye Kiakubu ◽  
Isah Bolaji Kashim ◽  
Bioye Ogunjobi ◽  
...  

Abstract Many households in Nigeria lack access to safe drinking water. Sixty-three percent (63%) of the nation's population live in rural areas where only 3% of households have access to safely managed drinking water. This suggests an urgent need for intervention to offer sustainable solutions to drinking water needs at household levels. An operational research was commissioned by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Nigeria to generate evidence to inform and guide Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programming on household water quality. This involved an assessment of local manufacturing of household water filters; factors influencing social acceptability and market opportunities for clay and biosand water filters in Nigeria. Implementation of the research recommendations by the filter factories resulted in improved bacterial removal efficiency (>97%) in filters. Factors such as filter design and efficiency were shown to influence acceptability of filters, which influenced the price at which users were willing to pay for the filters in the study areas. The market research indicated low popularity of the filters due to lack of promotion and marketing of the water filters. The research outcomes show great potential for sustainability and marketability of clay and biosand water filters for household water treatment in Nigeria.


Author(s):  
Hakyung Lee ◽  
Tran Hoai Son ◽  
Dao Anh Dzung ◽  
Jongkook Lee ◽  
Mooyoung Han ◽  
...  

Abstract Many rainwater harvesting systems have been installed and operated to supply drinking water to rural regions. However, they often lacked the management method to produce safe drinking water reliable. The current practice of operating rainwater harvesting systems did not have systematic monitoring as the basis of reliable operation so that the operators did not have confidence in their operation. To overcome these limitations, a rainwater for drinking (RFD) system has been suggested which was to produce drinking water by adding the proper treatment processes and setting up the proper operational mode. This study aimed to evaluate stable regular monitoring results from a pilot RFD system at a local hospital in Vietnam. Water quality and quantity were monitored by the trained local operator on a quarterly and weekly basis. The raw dataset was then shared with the study team by uploading into an open data access platform, from where the technical support was provided to prevent the provision of unsafe water to users. Ultimately, employing systematic monitoring would help to enhance the resilience of the RFD system, contributing to resolving the drinking water issue in rural areas of developing countries, aiming at the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal 6.


2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 831-847 ◽  
Author(s):  
Róger Madrigal-Ballestero ◽  
María A. Naranjo

Community-based drinking water organizations (CBDWOs) are the most important providers of water in rural areas of the developing world. They are responsible for coping with future threats due to climate change, besides other non-climatic drivers of change such as demographic growth. The inherent capacities of CBDWOs to adapt to external drivers of change would be greatly conditioned by their capacities to initiate and catalyze collective processes. The rich background of CDBWOs' actual and historical responses to drought phenomena is an essential starting point for understanding both the processes and the limitations of adapting to future adverse climatic events. In this study, we contrast six CBDWOs located in the Costa Rican dry corridor, in order to analyze their ability to self-organize coping with recent annual periodical droughts. We found that CBDWOs implement hard, soft, and ecosystem-based adaptation measures. The decisions in this regard are reactive, tend to follow a sequential order, and are context dependent. One of the main factors that facilitates capital-intensive adaptation measures is the ability of CBDWOs to mobilize internal or external financial resources, which further depends on social capital and the governance structure.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2762
Author(s):  
Cristian Alarcon Ferrari ◽  
Mari Jönsson ◽  
Solomon Gebreyohannis Gebrehiwot ◽  
Linley Chiwona-Karltun ◽  
Cecilia Mark-Herbert ◽  
...  

This commentary focuses on analyzing the potential of citizen science to address legitimacy issues in the knowledge base used to guide transformative governance in the context of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (henceforth SDGs). The commentary develops two interrelated arguments for better understanding the limits of what we term “traditional” Environmental Monitoring and Assessment (EMA) as well as the potential of citizen science (CS) for strengthening the legitimacy of EMA in the local implementation of SDGs. We start by arguing that there is an urgent need for a profound renewal of traditional EMA to better implement the SDGs. Then, we present CS as a democratic innovation that provides a path to EMA renewal that incorporates, develops, and extends the role of CS in data production and use by EMA. The commentary substantiates such arguments based on current approaches to CS and traditional EMA. From this starting point, we theorize the potential of CS as a democratic innovation that can repurpose EMA as a tool for the implementation of the SDGs. With a focus on the implementation of SDG15 (Life on Land) in local contexts, the commentary presents CS as a democratic innovation for legitimate transformative governance that can affect socio-ecological transitions. We see this approach as especially appropriate to analyze the implementation of SDGs in rural settings where a specific resource nexus can create conflict-laden contexts with much potential for a renewed EMA to support transformative governance towards Agenda 2030.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. 1343-1354
Author(s):  
Dr. Sakreen Hasan

The urban centers offering diverse employment opportunities and means of livelihood are the main centers of attraction for migration. But the availability of infrastructure is low to accommodate the invariably growing population. The access to basic amenities like electricity, drinking water, toilet facility, wastewater outlet and clean fuel are critical determinants of quality of urbanization. And if it lacks, then it would facilitates the growth of slum.  In this paper it being tried to capture the interdependent relationship between basic amenities and slum population residing in the class I towns in Maharashtra; largest slum populated state of India. As the slum is all about the situation or condition in which the people of medium and lower strata are living. A detailed analysis of proportion of slum population and availability of amenities which includes good housing condition, treated tap water as the source of drinking water, electricity as the source of lightning, households having latrine and bathing facility within the premises, waste water outlet connected to closed drainage, and households availing the banking facilities. This may be a limitation of the study that only these indicators have been taken to assess the availability of amenities and to calculate the amenity index of class I towns of the state of Maharashtra. To achieve the sustainable development goal (Sustainable cities and communities), we have to control the growth of slum population and to combat the formation of slum; we have to analyze the situation of basic infrastructure provided in urban centers. Amenities and slum population has policy implications as to reduce the slum population, provide basic amenities to the households which will improve their standard of living and ultimately lead to reduction in growth of slum and check the future slum formation.


Agriculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Marcin Surówka ◽  
Łukasz Popławski ◽  
Helena Fidlerová

The work discusses issues of the infrastructure, its instruments, and specifics of infrastructure in Polish and Slovak rural areas. The aim of this article is to analyze the level of technical infrastructure development in rural regions of the Małopolskie Voivodeship in Poland and the west part of Slovakia—Trnava self-governing region (Trnava region) as two regions with a similar position regarding regional competitiveness index. Following the topic, after identification of strengths and weaknesses of mentioned regions, the opportunities, and threats of sustainable development of infrastructure in rural areas have been analyzed using the SWOT method. The development of sustainable, reliable, and functional infrastructure does not only refer to the chosen regions of Poland and Slovakia but also other regions in the European Union. Sustainable infrastructure is a factor stimulating social and economic progress as one of the most important determinants of sustainable development and regional competitiveness. The authors notice a particular lack in the sustainable development of infrastructure in the field of water and sewerage management together with the supply of water. Therefore, this article tries to complete the gap in research focusing on the concept of a more systematic approach to technical infrastructure improvement in the context of sustainable development, and strategy of cooperation.


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