The value chain (VC) system is a key way to address important sanitation technological and institutional gaps in production and service delivery (Drost et al., 2012) and could constitute a natural platform for development actions and also serve as a market systems approach to improve access to safely-managed sanitation (Springer-Heinze, 2018a). The value chain concept is used to gain a better u…
This publication was commissioned by the KhoiSan1, the First Indigenous Peoples of Southern Afri-ca, resident in the metropolitan area of Nelson Mandela Bay who represent the greater part of the geo-graphical area of the Eastern Cape2. The Chiefs, a group of colleagues and students from Nelson Mandela University, and I formed a re-search group shortly after my arrival in Port Elizabeth (South A…
Although the vital importance of drinking water provision, and with this the core task of drinking water organisations, has essentially been stable for the past few decades, the challenges water companies meet, the way they operate, and certainly also thecitizens they serve, have undergone significant changes (Geldof et al. 2000; Tonkens 2008). For instance, over the past few decades the water …
Uncertainty and interconnecting crises are no longer exceptional. In almost everypart of the world, living with water crises is an everyday reality for many. Yet,water supply sustains a functioning society, and as such any threat to it must becountered head-on. Frontline water suppliers, routinely forced to respond andadapt so they can deliver water in the face of all challenges, have found tha…
Clean water and basic energy are needed for a decent life. This is taken for granted by most people in the world. Yet still, in 2018, more than 650 million people lack clean water and around 1,000 million people do not have the electric power that could enable them to light their homes, cook their food and access clean water.This book addresses this issue and claims that th…
Water is not only the beginning of all things, as the old Greeks had alreadyrealized, but without water, no life on earth is possible, and clean water is also aprecondition for any form of sustainable development. There is enough availablefreshwater on earth (about 91,000 km3) to supply every individual on earth (about7.5 billion in 2020) approx. 12,000l, more than enough to live decently. Howe…
Chemical monitoring provides a quantitative assessment of individual organiccontaminant concentrations in a water sample but does not account for thepresence of unknown compounds such as transformation products, untargetedchemicals (i.e., not previously known to be present) or for interactions amongchemicals. Bioanalytical monitoring, also called effect-based monitoring (EBM),is complementary t…
Chapters presented in this volume identify the commonalities of water management in societies across a wide range of ecological and cli-mate zones. This constructs a solid step towards the development of effective solutions to some acute water-related problems. A constant theme across time is the need for water, to fulfil which technologies have change…
The fisheries sector provides both food and employment for millions of people as well as fish for consumers who have a right to eat food which has been caught, handled and treated in a good way. Some consumers worry about what happens to their food before they eat it. They look for quality and they worry about what may have happened to fish before they eat it. In the end they have to trust fish…
he transition to low-carbon urban water utilities is an innovative idea, only currently embraced by a few forward-thinking utilities. This roadmap is directed at urban water utility managers in charge of planning future actions, as well as at the stakeholders who will support the utility action plans. Because only a few ‘early adopter’ utilities have embarked on a low-carbon transition, thi…