Introduction
This course is the open version of the Online Course Governance of Decentralized Sanitation offered by UNESCO-IHE. To follow the complete course including full lectures, plenty of additional materials, practical cases, exercises, interaction with other course participants as well as support from lecturers please register here. The online course is part of the UNESCO-IHE Graduate Professional Diploma Programme on Sanitation and sanitary engineering.
Course Rationale: 50% of the world population lives in urban areas (UN, 2008). Most of this growth occurs in slums and informal settlements. It is estimated that slum areas encompass approximately 70% of the urban population (UN-Habitat, 2010). The trends indicate that future urban development will mostly occur in these areas. In Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa "slums are virtually synonymous with urbanization" (UN-HABITAT, 2007:22). Policy makers, municipalities and local authorities face the challenge of providing sanitation services to the growing urban population. A greater part of the present 30% s MDG's gap is as a result of the low basic sanitation coverage in urban slums (WHO/UNICEF, 2008).