Editorial: City-Wide Sanitation: The Urban Sustainability Challenge

According to the Joint Monitoring Programme, the gap between the richest and poorest has been reduced in 52 countries but increased in 22 countries—mostly countries emerging from conflict (UNICEF/WHO, 2019, p. 34). [...]Part 4 addresses the role non-conventional small-scale or decentralized sanitation can play in providing equitable access to sustainable sanitation services. (i) CWIS Concept Citywide inclusive sanitation as a concept is being continuously refined through on-going debate, practice and implementation. The authors provide available evidence on these three areas, including fecal contamination risks associated with onsite, decentralized and centralized systems in urban living environments, integration of climate change impacts such as flooding into sanitation planning, and use of cost effectiveness analysis against consistent service objectives to support improved comparison of the mix of sanitation options likely to be appropriate to different contexts across a city. ii) Methods Citywide inclusive sanitation as a novel approach to urban sanitation requires an array of new tools and methods to provide answers for planning and programming non-conventional sanitation solutions. The 2-year field research revealed that the high turnover of government staff affected institutional knowledge retention, acceptance and continuity and ultimately the potential to engage in a successful planning exercise. Because baseline data was outdated or non-existent, data collection activities consumed unexpected amounts of time.