1. Modernised Mixtures in Urban Sanitation
Services
Dr ir Bas van Vliet, Environmental Policy Group
Wageningen University.
IRC, The Hague, 9-9-2015

2. Outline
 Modernized Mixtures in urban environmental
infrastructures
 PROVIDE project dealing with urban sanitation in East
Africa
 Findings from sanitation studies in East Africa

3. Modernized Mixtures, alternative for classical
dichotomy on infrastructure development
 Dichotomy with regard to the technology:
● High tech – Low tech
● Large-scale Grid Bound – Small-scale self-reliant
● Linear Material Flow – Closed Loops
 Dichotomy with regard to governance, planning and
management institutions:
● Top-down – Bottom-up Decision-making
● Central – Decentral Management
● Developmental state – Network governance

5. Modernized Mixtures
 Combining technologies and modes of governance from
centralised and de-centralised systems
 Adapted to specific local conditions
 Variations in different dimensions
● scale
● involvement of end-users
● combination of flows
● organization
 Creating a “fit” between options for infrastructures and socio-
economic, technological, political and ecological conditions

6. Four social and technical dimensions
Combined
water and
waste flows
Low cost,
flexible systems
Large
scale,
fixed price
systems
Low
involvement
of end-users
Decentralised
organisation
Centralised
organisation
High
involvement
of end-users
Separated
water and
waste flows

7. “modernized mixtures”
centralised systems
de-centralised systems
Diverse Modernised Mixtures

8. Modernized Mixtures Approach to
environmental infrastructures
These infrastructures are:
 Multidimensional in terms of:
● Technology/infrastructure
● Management/modes of governance
● Services and flows
 At multiple scales in terms of:
● Infrastructure lay-out
● Management responsibilities

9. Provide project on Sustainable Urban
Environmental Infrastructure Development
in East Africa
 Improving Sanitation and solid waste management in
East African urban centers, in dialogue with and
responding to the needs of the urban poor
 Thoroughly identify existing and potential (technical and
governance) arrangements for sanitation and solid waste
management
● policy arrangements involving different (novel)
configurations of actors
● new technological configurations, institutional
arrangements and systems

10. Technical, Institutional,
Spatial Configurations
assessment
Conventional
Traditional
Mixed
Evaluation on:
• Environmental health
• Accessibility
• Flexibility
Assessing Sanitary Systems in East Africa
(Sammy Letema, PhD thesis 2012)

11. Assessment of large, small and mixed
systems in Kampala

12. General Findings
 Neither the conventional large-scale, nor alternative
small-scale environmental technologies will solve waste
and sanitation problems in urban centers of East Africa
 Social and technical diversity in waste and sanitation
services is not the problem but rather the opening to
tailor-made solutions and governance arrangements
 Modernised Mixtures approach offers a framework for
interdisciplinary sanitation research and new policy
orientations
 In terms of governance: Need for networked rather than
neo-developmental state governance to support
emergence of these mixtures

13. Thank you for
listening!
Bas.vanvliet@wur.nl
@basvanvliet2
www.wageningenur.nl/enp