Appropriate technology – A comprehensive approach for water and sanitation in the developing world

Appropriate technologies (AT) are only a fraction of the solution in achieving sustainable and safe access to water and sanitation worldwide. The challenges of rapid population increases, urbanization, climate change, poverty, and widespread diseases will affect what are deemed “appropriate” solutions in addressing needs in the water and sanitation sector. Traditional engineering approaches need to be augmented with more flexible trial and error techniques, user participation, and multi-disciplinary collaborative learning in order to create innovative solutions and empower impoverished communities to achieve their own development goals. There are countless historical definitions of AT, all of which are accompanied by individual criteria for a technology to be deemed appropriate. This paper presents a comprehensive definition for AT and demonstrates its application and relevance today with regard to the water and sanitation sector in a developing world context. Rather than prescribing strict criteria, considerations for AT will be outlined and examined through three case studies: the Lorena Cookstove-Guatemala, a Women's Outhouse in Nepal, and Innovation Rice Practices in Bangladesh.