Micropolitics and Sanitation

Jambo jambo!

Today’s lecture provided me with some interesting insight in relation to micropolitics’ impact on water access and especially sanitation and hygiene. Up until now, I was more focused on access to water, and the power relations defining who had access to which source, the quantity and the management. 

However, I never extended my considerations further than the implications with what the political nature of water access meant for health and safety. Water has a lifecycle, and was happens once it’s accessed is as relevant as getting access to it. 

Tatiana’s lecture was relevant because it put in light the ongoing and current new approaches to sanitation in international discourse: what is such a private matter (aka what happens when you go to the loo or in a bathroom) is becoming public because the implications are considerable. To name but a few, being able to wash hands and body parts, to wash food, to defecate in sanitary areas -as opposed to 'flying toilets' (see figure 1) which poses the risk of contaminating other areas. The most common form of contamination is due to a high presence of coliform in water sources. 

Figure 1 - The 'Flying Toilet' (from Tatiana's lecture slide)

I - The politics of sanitation at a Micro level

Of course, in rural areas, as my previous blog posts show, community participation necessarily involves tradeoffs, which can disadvantage the less ‘well positioned”, or at least those with less status representation. This isn’t proper to water, as any form of economic initiative at the heart of a community can lead to unequal distribution of revenue, monetary or resources, potentially taken up by local elites. So the impact on sanitation for the poorer households, or for the women / girls (who don’t go to school on menstruation days for example, meaning they have an unequal education, which can have an impact on their social and human capital development ) is extremely relevant. 

In urban communities, with or without participation, gender, and economic power are very important, as it is usually  the landlord who can chose or not to have sanitary washrooms, shared or private, unimproved or open. Potentially, the insecurity component may be slightly higher in urban environments, for women especially, as going to public toilets after dark comes with higher stakes.

II - Community based initiatives to resolve these - Social entrepreneurship, making do and innovation from below 

Interestingly, the more apocalyptic vision portrayed by Mike Davies in his Planet of Slums and the “ecology of sanitation” is somewhat contested by authors such as Parnell and Pieterse who adopt a much more optimistic approach towards the current situation in most large African cities. The idea behind this is that such an environment is prone to the development of 'make do' situations, perfect for social entrepreneurship and the application of a 'Système D' (for 'debrouillardise', which leads to innovation from below, with ideas emerging from communities, households or individuals to considerable impact the environment in which they interact and essentially, live in. 

From there, international investors big or small, can help them through education with technological skills (teaching GIS mapping for example), empowering these local entrepreneurs with key knowledge for them to develop businesses based on them “making do”. Hence, in Mathare, a slum in Nairobi, an application was created, mapping out toilets and indicating which ones had sewage, which ones drained into streams etc...

Although power still determines who has access to which technologies or basic sanitation, these innovations generate direct sense of ownership through their successful 'make do' aspects well as the support they are receiving from international organisms. This diverts slightly from the typical demand - response approach (DRA), in that ideas emerge from social entrepreneurial activities as opposed to mobilising the majority of the community through a more or less centralised organism. These can be backed by more centralised or larger agents from private or public sector for funds, as was tried out in Kibera, Kenya. 

Kwaheri!