Editor’s choice
The SEI Initiative on Sustainable Sanitation (SISS) aims to inject new momentum into sustainable sanitation provision across the world. It does this through a combination of research, knowledge management, capacity development, policy engagement and on-the-ground action.
SISS comes at a critical time. Spurred on by Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals, along with changing national realities, many low- and middle-income countries will need to invest heavily in sanitation in the next decade. The decisions they make and the approaches they take today will have far-reaching consequences for sustainability and for the well-being of their citizens.
SISS envisions sanitation as an integral piece of the sustainable development puzzle. The right sanitation systems not only minimize health and environmental risks associated with open defecation and poorly managed waste disposal – they can also, in many cases, yield multiple benefits in areas from health to food security, resilient livelihoods, business growth, energy, and ecosystem services. The Initiative focuses on productive sanitation approaches to address social, environmental, technical, and cultural dimensions of sustainability.
Sustainable sanitation systems become mainstream choices for sanitation development and accessible to all.
To boost sustainable sanitation provision at scale in low- and middle-income countries, through research, knowledge exchange, capacity development, policy dialogue, with a focus on productive sanitation approaches that yield multiple economic, social and environmental co-benefits.
To help policy-makers, practitioners and communities make the best choices, SISS will:
In the search for improved and scalable implementation models, the initiative examines not just “hardware” issues but also the wider systems around sanitation, including enabling institutional conditions and governance frameworks, and ways to change users’ perceptions and practices. Work under SISS therefore looks at many aspects of system implementation, not least users’ behaviour and choice as well as work at the policy level in several countries.
The book Sanitation, Wastewater Management and Sustainability examines these different aspects of sustainability in depth. It was produced by SEI and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities (GPA) and published in August 2016, and aims to be a key text in the transition to more sustainable sanitation and wastewater management. The most comprehensive overview of sustainable sanitation – in principle and practice – available, it presents evidence, arguments and real-life cases examples for the role of sanitation as a catalyst of sustainable development.
Clean and Green: a new implementation framework for rural sustainable sanitation is the first-of-its-kind framework for implementation of rural sanitation that explicitly addresses efficient local resource management. Many sanitation promotion tools have a narrow focus, but there is a need for tools that include aspects of hygiene, protection of water sources and safe management of waste. Developed at SEI and piloted by WaterAid in Burkina Faso, Clean and Green is a sanitation framework that aims to assist to close the gap on universal WASH coverage, as well as safe management and reuse of resources in sanitation waste or other relevant waste streams, such as animal manure and crop residues. This framework will comprise a series of progressive ‘clean’ (health risk management) and ‘green’ (reuse activities) steps, using participatory assessment approaches to determine locally relevant steps in rural environments. The development of Clean and Green builds on research by SISS, that examined the drivers of sustainability of ecological sanitation projects to see if and how these systems are still being used, and identify keys to success (or failure). The development of Clean and Green implementation tools builds on research to develop participatory diagnostic tools to assess a broad range of health risks and waste flows. Together this evidence will inform the design of new community-level interventions models that we will start to pilot in 2019.
Resource Value Mapping (REVAMP): A tool for evaluating the resource recovery potential of urban waste streams. Another exciting line of work in SISS is development of REVAMP (for Resource Value Mapping). REVAMP is a new tool for city planners, entrepreneurs, investors and other users, designed to calculate what reuse products they could make from the excreta, wastewater and other organic waste generated in their city – and how much the products might be worth. By 2018 we hope to have developed the tool into an easy-to-use, accurate online platform that reflects the wide range of reuse options and technologies available in different city contexts. Read the blogpost about REVAMP. Currently, the SISS team is piloting REVAMP in Colombia and Kenya as part of the UrbanCircle project, which explores the governance dimensions that can facilitate transition to circular economy.
EWI: Empowerment in WASH Index is an innovative tool designed for measuring empowerment and social outcomes of water, sanitation and hygiene interventions. It is usually expected that WASH intervention will result in improved gender equity and other positive (e.g. increased time for productive work or education), there is limited concrete evidence and few ways to measure these changes. The EWI project in Burkina Faso and Ghana is developing a new Empowerment in WASH Index that aims to do just that. Read the impact story about the EWI work.
SISS is envisaged as a five-year programme. The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) is providing core funding. The Initiative and partner organisations will also seek for a range of sanitation-related activities and projects.
Read the new SISS brochure (PDF, 900 KB).
Media coverage / Track the gender equality outcomes of your water, sanitation and hygiene projects with our new tool.
Feature / Revisiting old project sites provides valuable pointers for Burkina Faso’s national sanitation programme.
Feature / Does digging a well, building a toilet or providing a water pipe connection automatically improve gender equality?
Media coverage / Access to water and sanitation affects not only survival but also the possibility to live a socially and culturally fulfilling life.
Feature / In Chía, Colombia, inadequate waste management is putting lives and ecosystems at risk. We worked with locals to crunch data and calculate scenarios for change.
Media coverage / Harnessing the power of faecal matter proves to have benefits not only for sanitation and sewage management but also renewable energy production.
Perspective / A new tool – the WASH Insecurity Scale – reveals detailed patterns of WASH inequality in an African informal settlement.
Feature / A session at World Water Week asked why win-win opportunities are being ignored.
Perspective / Resource recovery from sanitation and waste management can be a lucrative business. You can get it up and running in your city with support of the REVAMP tool.
Perspective / Sarah Dickin introduces a research project that hopes to develop an index of empowerment to use in water and sanitation interventions.
Feature / The Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) is calling volunteers to join a worldwide “Edit-a-thon” of the online encyclopedia’s sanitation-related articles.
Past event / SEI’s World Water Week activity demonstrates how water and sanitation issues run through the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.
Perspective / Costs associated with a lack of sanitation are around US$260 billion annually. Done well, it can play a crucial role in sustainable development.
Perspective / An introduction to REVAMP – a new tool that estimates and values what reuse products could be made from a city's wastewater, sewage and organic waste.
Feature / To mark World Toilet Day, three SEI researchers shared their perspective on global sanitation challenges and what this day means to them.
Project / Bolivia WATCH works to arm the country's institutions with the information and capacity to connect two spheres: safe sanitation and watershed management.
Project / The empowerment in WASH index (EWI) project measures empowerment and social inclusion of water, sanitation and hygiene interventions.
Project / Urban waste into circular economy benefits (UrbanCircle) is developing a way to integrate waste management and resource recovery into a circular economy.
Program / SEI's sanitation experts collaborate with NIRAS and WaterAid on a Sida-funded capacity development program for sustainable sanitation in cities.
Project / Resource-Oriented Sanitation in Emergencies (ROSE) provides guidance for implementing enhanced sustainability of sanitation provision in emergency camps.
Tool / Resource Value Mapping (REVAMP) helps city planners estimate resources and reuse potential in a city's wastewater and their financial values.
Explore a range of SEI published or authored research related to sustainable sanitation.
SEI brief / Learn about the Empowerment in WASH Index (EWI), a new tool for measuring empowerment in the water, sanitation and health sector.
Journal article / Comparison of two initiatives in Bolivia and South Africa offers insights for introducing off-grid “productive” sanitation systems in peri-urban areas.
SEI brief / This brief looks at water security risks in Burkina Faso through a gender lens, providing insights on how gendered norms produce differentiated risks.
Journal article / The 2030 Agenda provides an important framework for developing more sustainable sanitation, in terms of both safe sanitation access and wastewater management.
Other publication / This policy brief summarizes case studies and insights from a session organized by SEI and partners at Stockholm World Water Week 2017.
SEI brief / Clean and Green is the first rural sanitation implementation framework that explicitly addresses efficient local resource management
Other publication / The why, what and how of sustainable sanitation and wastewater management.
Other publication
Other publication
Journal article / Key lessons for future ecological sanitation projects, from four "return to learn" initiatives in Burkina Faso.
SEI brief / What's needed to improve the functionality and effectiveness of the national CHCs programme?
Project / The empowerment in WASH index (EWI) project measures empowerment and social inclusion of water, sanitation and hygiene interventions.
Tool / Resource Value Mapping (REVAMP) helps city planners estimate resources and reuse potential in a city's wastewater and their financial values.
Project / Urban waste into circular economy benefits (UrbanCircle) is developing a way to integrate waste management and resource recovery into a circular economy.
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