The poverty penalty and questioning ‘appropriate’ development solutions

 

SC Johnson and CCS during a training. Image from WBCSD)

Problematizing development imaginaries entangled with modernity is essential to understand the complex relationship between the urban poor and the possibilities for solutions to addressing water challenges. Debates around WASH infrastructure have become a notable point of friction amongst environmentalists and well-intentioned advocates of development. (Avellan, Clark, Ward, 2021) Lawhon writes of a modest imaginary rooted in “an acceptance of the realities of heterogeneity, uncertainty and the inability to truly know and control our world and others”. (Lawhon,2023) This is complicated by critical evaluation of technocratic, techno-optimistic approaches to development. While the authors celebrate how technological diversity has shaped permissions to access and manage sanitation, [1] we must also remain wary of normalizing differential sanitation facilities that would not be acceptable in affluent residential areas.

We can turn to Paul Farmer as we contemplate the provisioning and construction of water infrastructure that is the most appropriate for rapidly growing African cities. (Farmer, 1999) These debates are imbued with harmful imperial logics that posit knowledge flows unidirectionally from the Global North to the Global South that must be saved from itself. It seems that the dominant perspective is that if African cities do not have their growth mediated by so-called international institutions, they can only descend into disorder. Let’s take for instance the case of Nairobi and the sani-preneurship taking place. Sani-preneurship can be defined as an entrepreneurial approach to sanitation such as those of the Community Cleaning Services (CCS) where residents of the Mathare slum were supported by the SC Johnson company in cleaning public toilets used by community members for a fee. Training, equipment, follow-ups and mentorship were provided by the company who also sold their products to CCS at wholesale prices. While the role businesses can play in addressing water-related development challenges can be debated, this case study also demonstrates the complexity of urban sanitation and the way in which its challenges are tied to the politics, infrastructures and economies of urban space and basic services.

Water & Sanitation nexus

Lack of water access complicates issues of sanitation and has necessitated the emergence of alternate solutions to meet community needs. One such example is the PeePoo toilet. Yet, I cannot contemplate the effectiveness of this idea without evaluating the biopolitics that allow it to even be proposed as a probable long-term solution. Why is there an expectation that urban residents in precarious housing situations must cope, over an extended period, with a bagged toilet? While recognizing the impetus and urgency of meeting an immediate need, I struggle to move past the fact that the PeePoo toilet fails to address the indignity of the lack of a toilet. Yet, reflecting on this as a question of different, complementary approaches instead of competing approaches allows us to consider constraints within urban informality and pragmatic coping strategies related to compact and modular living. 

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