1. Women in Europe for a Common Future has now published the report of the meeting held in Brussels on 29 January (see blog of 30 January): European Sanitation Policies and Practises in the International Year of Sanitation 2008: Finding solutions for more than 20 million citizens who lack safe and affordable sanitation.
2. All the PowerPoint presentations made at the international conference ‘Sanitation Challenge' (see blog of 21 May) are now available here.
3. Governance: The Global Water Forum has just published Water Financing and Governance − quote: “The financial needs [of the water sector] will not be met without major reforms in water governance. By improving water governance the enabling environment for investment will improve as risks, commercial and political, will be better understood and addressed.”
4. The Assembly of the African Union (see blog of 14 June) has just posted the Sharm El-Sheikh Commitments for Accelerating the Achievement of Water and Sanitation Goals in Africa − see pages 30−32 of this file. “Motherhood and apple pie”, of course. Actions speak louder than Words, so we’ll wait and see what Africa actually does to help itself to achieve its MDG WatSan targets.
Update 30 July: The International Institute for Sustainable Development has just published a Briefing Note on the Outcomes of the Eleventh African Union Summit, including details of the Sharm El-Sheikh commitments on achieving the WatSan targets.
About Me
- Duncan Mara
- University of Leeds, United Kingdom
- I'm an emeritus professor of civil engineering at the University of Leeds in England. I've been working on low-cost sanitation in developing countries since the mid-1970s, and also on low-cost wastewater treatment and reuse. I was a lecturer at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, 1970-73 and then a senior lecturer at the University of Dundee, Scotland, 1974-79 before moving to Leeds in late 1979. I was a visiting professor of sanitary engineering at the Universidade Federal da Paraiba in Campina Grande, northeast Brazil, during 1976-95, and since 1996 I have been a visiting professor of environmental engineering at the Instituto Cinara, Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia.