City-Level Decoupling-Case Studies

densification is restricted by the need to reserve space for future pits. 98 This represents foregone rental income for impoverished landlords, and serves to limit the supply of low income dwellings for rent close to the city. Covering and leaving full pits can contaminate groundwater, with serious health implications if groundwater is used for domestic purposes, 99 which is the case in Lilongwe’s informal settlements. A common strategy for people who cannot afford to purchase water from kiosks is to dig a shallow well on their plot to abstract groundwater for household use. 100 Although people know that drinking water from wells near latrine pits is making them ill with dysentery, they continue to do it because they have few alternatives, and because “mostly it does not kill anyone.” 101 In 2003, a group of women’s savings clubs in Mtandire (an informal settlement in Lilongwe) consolidated to form the Malawian Homeless Peoples Federation (MHPF) and the Centre for Community Organisation and Development (CCODE) was established to support the Federation in their goals related to upgrading services and shelters in informal settlements. 102 CCODE and MHFP are the Malawian affiliates of Slum/ Shack Dwellers International. When the MHPF and CCODE were established, Mtandire’s sanitation problems were visible and urgent. Improving sanitation became salient on the agenda, and since 2004 landlords have worked with CCODE and the MHPF to develop a response which is contextually determined and responsive to households' needs and aspirations. In order to address the needs of the context, new approaches to sanitation needed to: New sanitation responses

• Provide a safe way to deal with human excreta on site;

• Be affordable and accessible to the poor;

• Eliminate the periodic need to dig another pit;

• Eliminate the periodic need to relocate the top structure;

• Be convenient and user friendly;

• Be acceptable and desired by users; and

• Support and improve on longstanding practices.

The aim of the initiative was to devise a sanitation response that would resolve problems related to space scarcity in rapidly densifying informal settlements and health problems associated with pit latrines. The improvement of sanitation is regarded as a 'process, not a project,' 103 developed in situ and driven by those directly affected by inadequate sanitation. The approach is pragmatic, as it tries to determine viable solutions through trial and error. The initiative came about via a process aimed at providing sanitation, so sanitation improvements are triggered by the process itself, not the organisation. 104

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