International DAAD Alumni Summer School: „Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor - Natural Hazards, Climate Change, Governance and Human Rights”

In informal settlements of mega cities of Sub-Saharan Africa, water and sanitation services are still severely lacking. As a result, a high number of people suffer from preventable illnesses and die every year. Population growth will further increase these challenges in future. Improving global access to clean drinking water and safe sanitation is therefore one of the most effective means to enhance living conditions in order to break the cycle of poverty, enhance public health and save lives in these urban slums.
Flash floods caused by heavy precipitation events in small areas pose a great threat for especially the urban poor, living in informal settlements like slums. In these areas of high risk, there is no or only inefficient resilience against a variety of hazards. The lack of infrastructure specifically in the water sector leads to an inability to deal with storm water. The main form of waste and sewage disposal is an open sewage channel running through the slum areas. The deposition of waste in the surrounding living quarters and areas used for urban and peri-urban agriculture by a flash flood increases health risks.

The Alumni Summer School “Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor - Natural hazards, climate change, governance and human rights” offered the chance for researchers to tackle the problems related to the fast growing informal and degrading formal urban settlements in an inter-disciplinary team. The Kenyan capital city Nairobi was taken as an example since most work has been done and results have been achieved in technical cooperation with Kenyan institutions for sustainable improvement of the water and sanitation sector.
The Summer School is jointly funded by DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit).

The Summer School was jointly funded by DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit). The Summer School was held in Nairobi, Kenya from 4th December to 17th December 2011. The Summer School was organised by the Centre for International Capacity Development  Universität Siegen (UoS); Institute for Flood Management & River Engineering, University of Kaiserslautern (UoK), Biomechanical & Environmental Engineering Department, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT); Department of Geography, Kenyatta University; College of Agricultural and Environmental Science, Makerere University (MAK). The event was supported by German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and German International Cooperation (GIZ).

The summer school was organized as a meeting point of academia and multi-stakeholders development organizations to facilitate exchange of knowledge and expertise. More than 50 participants – German Alumni, professionals and technicians from the area, PhD students and slum dwellers – representing various disciplines as well as different sectors of society worked together for understanding the burning problems of informal settlements and discussing short-term and long-term solutions.
Extremely high population growth and density living in poverty are paralleled by poor or missing water and sanitation infrastructure. A distinct pro-poor policy as stipulated by the Kenyan water sector reform and underscored by the new Kenyan Constitution with a formulated right of access to water and sanitation for everybody is welcomed as a decisive step forward. Strengthening the key water and sanitation services providers is the way forward for improving livelihoods of millions of people.
The participants agreed that intercultural and multidisciplinary attempts are offering solutions for policy change. Therefore, a series of seminars and summer schools should address the topics of “Water Supply and Sanitation for the Urban Poor” concentrating on various aspects in the urban centres in East Africa in the next years. The joint effort of academic, professional and development institutions is highly appreciated. More research is needed to consolidate existing findings e.g. from the Kenyan water sector and lay the standards for up-scaling and dissemination.

IWM concepts play an important role for rural communities to adapt to impacts of climate change. The holistic concept of resource management that refers to a watershed or hydrological defined planning area is following a systematic approach with a major focus on sustainable development and manifold techniques. Farmers learn to assess the potentials as well as the challenges of their watershed; they work for improving soil moisture as well as groundwater recharge by watershed development measures increasing infiltration – even under increasing climate uncertainties. They reduce over-abstraction of resources and improve the resource utilisation efficiency; they bridge the resources gap between the rainy seasons by limited water storage facilities still manageable by local communities and new water saving irrigation techniques. In general they improve their resilience towards natural disasters resulting from climate change and reduce their dependency on just one income factor, thus they reduce drastically their vulnerability.
(source: G. Förch (2009): Integrated watershed management - a successful tool for adaptation to climate change. Rural 21 Vol. 43 No. 4 pp. 22-25)


 
IWMNet is a network of universities in Germany, Eastern and Southern Africa that emphasises capacity building and research in the field of Integrated Watershed Management (IWM). With the aim of promoting a holistic approach to water resources and sanitation management, it offers Master Programmes, short courses and summer schools and supports applied research within watersheds. In consideration of existing policies, strategies and reform agendas of partner countries, it closely cooperates with relevant institutions to strengthen the ongoing water sector reform processes in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

IWMNet is funded under the 9th European Development Fund (EDF), ACP-EU Water Facility and scheduled from October 2007 until September 2011. It closely cooperates with the German Alumni Water Network (GAWN) as well as the EU-funded capacity building project in Integrated Sanitation Management (UCDISM). Other partners include: the International Water Management Institute (IMWI) in Ethiopia, German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) Water Sector Reform Programmes in Kenya and Tanzania, and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).