Webinar on Improved sanitation outcomes through better data and planning : CSE
Date: 30th June 2023 / Time: 14:30 – 16:30 / Venu: Online / Language: English
The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) is a public interest research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi. CSE researches into, lobbies for and communicates the urgency of development that is both sustainable and equitable. The scenario today demands using knowledge to bring about change. In other words, working India’s democracy. This is what we aim to do.The challenge, we see, is two-pronged. On the one hand, millions live within a biomass based subsistence economy, at the margins of survival. The environment is their only natural asset. But a degraded environment means stress on land, water and forest resources for survival. It means increasing destitution and poverty. Here, opportunity to bring about change is enormous.But it will need a commitment to reform – structural reform- in the way we do business with local communities. On the other hand, rapid industrialization is throwing up new problems: growing toxification and a costly disease burden. The answers will be in reinventing the growth model of the Western world for ourselves, so that we can leapfrog technology choices and find new ways of building wealth that will not cost us the earth. Our aim is to raise these concerns, participate in seeking answers and in pushing for answers, transforming these into policy and so practice. We do this through our research and by communicating our understanding through our publications. We call this knowledge-based activism. We hope we will make a difference.
As a follow-up to the Policy and Practice Forum 2023 Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has initiated a Discussion Series on water and sanitation. The aim of this series is to brainstorm about what we know and what more we need to know, what works and what does not, and what we must do to apply our learning in policy and practice considerations. CSE invites you to join a webinar – a part of this Discussion Series – on using better data and planning to ensure improved sanitation outcomes.
Some of the significant gaps that we have identified in the policy and practice of sanitation are as follows:
- Absence of digital city-level maps showing existing sewer systems — many cities have networks laid at different points in time, and the available maps are usually inaccurate.
- GIS maps showing settlements, data on toilets, households with sewerage and water connections etc.- but who will develop these maps?
- Accurate, actual cost data on centralised sewerage systems and decentralised STPs is largely missing.
- Congruence of City Development Plans (City Sanitation Plans) with the City Master Plans and Regional Plans – points to an urban planning fatigue.
- Engineering solutions available for urban sanitation — what is lacking is an understanding of social-political-economic dimensions when proposing new technologies and solutions.
The webinar will attempt to cover some of these concerns.
This webinar would be useful for Central/state/municipal functionaries, planners, engineers, architects working on town and country planning and municipal administration departments, state urban development authorities, the Jal Nigam, Water and Sewarage Boards; officials dealing with schemes and missions like AMRUT or Swachh Bharat Mission (U); technology providers, consultants, researchers, academicians and NGOs promoting sustainable water and sanitation management.
Webinar Coordinator
Umra Anees
Programme Officer
Water Programme, CSE
Email: umra.anees@cseindia.org
Phone: +91 9773518511
