Browsing by Subject "Sanitation"
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Item Access to water and sanitation in Atlantic Nicaragua(2011-05) Gordon, Edmund Wyatt; Hooker, Juliet; Dorn, EdwinAfro-descendant communities in Central America have recently made important legal strides by enshrining their right to equal treatment under the law and in some cases their ability to claim a distinct group status in national constitutions. The United Nations recently issued a draft resolution declaring that access to water and sanitation is a universal right, furthering the tools available to marginalized afro-descendant peoples in their battles against poverty and underdevelopment. Unfortunately, implementation of these measures has been slow in some areas and non-existent in others. Though there have been some advances, the situation for Afro-descendant communities remains largely unchanged and the availability of the basic requirements of life for Afro-descendant populations remains among the lowest in the region. Increased attention to the political, social, and especially the material situation of Afro-descendant communities is needed in political circles, as well as in the academic community. There is a lack of scholarly work on the material well-being of Afro-descendent populations in Central America. An important initial contribution in this area would be the compilation, and accumulation of statistical information as a primary step in developing the literature. The focus of this study then is on the Atlantic Coast Afro-descendant populations in Nicaragua. This document will outline the current material circumstances of Nicaraguan Afro-descendant communities using data gathered from a variety of sources, identify the causes of inadequate access to water and sanitation, and suggest strategies to improve the situation of these communities. It is my sincere hope that, at the very least, increased attention will be brought to the situation.Item An evaluation of rural sanitation in India(2015-08) Mauro, Benjamin Matthew; Eaton, David J.; Weaver, CatherineOne billion people practice open defecation globally resulting in approximately 900,000 deaths via contaminated water and contact with human excreta. India is home to 600 million of the individuals engaging in open defecation, and poor sanitation is estimated to cause over 400,000 deaths annually. The Swachh Bharat Mission, the Indian government's scheme to increase sanitation coverage across India, promotes toilet construction by subsidizing the costs. The program has produced limited uptake in hygienic behavior change, and toilet construction goals are not being met. This study evaluates the effectiveness of sanitation interventions in 22 studies in the rural setting. The review identifies successful sanitation interventions and highlights gaps in the existing literature. Three types of studies were evaluated: infrastructure interventions, education interventions, and interventions that employed a combination of the two methods; and the review of the studies found that interventions utilizing community mobilization and subsidies as a part of their outreach were more likely to increase toilet coverage in the rural environment. The review also provides recommendations for future interventions, research, and implementing organizations operating in the rural sanitation environment. The report was written to inform the work of Humanure Power, an NGO working to end open defecation in rural Bihar, India. The potential for conditional cash transfers and pit latrine volumes were explored as solutions to inducing behavioral change, and the report outlined an evaluation framework for the rural environment. This report provides a framework that tracks multiple indicators and incorporates local help to build a sustainable sanitation tracking system to account for the difficulties of program monitoring and evaluation in a resource-limited environment.Item Multidisciplinary thinking to increase sustainability in engineering : a case study in sanitation(2016-05) Wood, Alison P.; Lawler, Desmond F.; Blackhurst, Michael F.; McKinney, Daene C.; Kirisits, Mary Jo; Olmstead, Sheila M.This dissertation uses a case study in sanitation that illustrates the need for interdisciplinary analysis of sustainable solutions to engineering problems. This case study also suggests that one nontechnical factor that might be critical for increasing sustainability is consumer willingness to use the technology, which, along with factors such as cost, will drive technology adoption rates. By developing the ability and willingness to recognize needs for this type of interdisciplinary work and by collaborating with experts in other fields, engineers can more successfully create sustainable solutions to the problems they tackle. The work of this dissertation is in three stages. The first comprises a life cycle cost and cost-effectiveness analysis for a suite of household sanitation technologies. Results of this stage suggest that decentralized technologies are lower cost and more cost-effective for nitrogen management than conventional centralized wastewater treatment in the given case study location; composting and urine-diversion toilets proved the best performers on these metrics. The second stage of research expands the analysis to examine adoption of decentralized sanitation technologies as a two-party decision, with the individual discount rate used as a proxy for factors influencing homeowners’ adoption decisions. Results in two case study locations emphasize the dependence of analysis on case-specific details; in one case, monetary incentives are expected to be successful at bringing municipal and individual decision-makers into agreement to adopt decentralized sanitation systems under many cost scenarios, while monetary incentives are not expected to succeed at bringing about agreement between parties in the other case. The third stage of research uses a survey to examine non-monetary factors influencing homeowners’ adoption decisions surrounding composting and urine-diversion toilets. Results suggest that educational efforts are likely to be important in influencing adoption decisions, although not all homeowners will be swayed by additional information. Together, the three stages of this research illustrate how understanding of technologies as potential solutions to problems of sustainability changes as the analysis expands to incorporate methods from more disciplines. While true assessment of “sustainability” is difficult at best, movement toward increasingly sustainable technologies can be facilitated by broader analyses that lead to more thorough understanding.