Wednesday 15 September 2010

CLTS and STEPS

The STEPS [Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability] Centre at the University of Sussex has just published a working paper on CLTS: The Dynamics and Sustainability of Community-led Total Sanitation: Mapping Challenges and Pathways. Here’s a quote:

Even though CLTS has the makings of a development success story, many obstacles remain before it can truly be said to offer a viable route to meeting the MDGs. For example: How does CLTS accommodate dynamism and complexity inherent in social-technological-ecological systems? How are women’s, children’s and men’s often diverging needs accounted for? How can CLTS be scaled up to become a major force rather than an approach characterised through piecemeal, scattered projects? Are there lingering assumptions and power relations that hinder or obstruct the spread of CLTS? In short – how sustainable is CLTS, and in what ways is the notion of sustainability understood? This paper offers some perspectives that may help structure thinking around these questions.

Good down-to-earth stuff!

The list of all STEPS working papers is here. A few of the WatSan-relevant ones are:

Liquid Dynamics: Challenges for Sustainability in Water and Sanitation

Going with the Flow? Directions of Innovation in the Water and Sanitation Domain

On the Edge of Sustainability: Perspectives on Peri-urban Dynamics