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 area...
