Rethinking non-networked water and sanitation supply : water fetching, caloric energy expenditure, and container based sanitation

As local communities and governments in low and middle-income countries around the world look to expand water and sanitation services, they are often confronted with limited budgets and difficult to serve communities. The capital and operational expenditure costs of non-networked options such as shared water points and pit latrines are considerably lower on a per-capita basis than household connections to water and sewer networks. Given significant resource constraints, local governments often default to off-premises and non-networked services options. This dissertation explores two very different forms of non-networked or off-premises water and sanitation options. I focus first on an urban non-networked, on-premises sanitation service in Haiti. I then go on to examine how water fetching is undervalued in the context of rural non-networked, off-premises water sources in Mozambique. Specifically, my analyses contribute to the reduction of current knowledge gaps by: quantifying user knowledge, attitudes, and willingness to pay for a container-based sanitation service; examining the use of heart rate monitoring as a rigorous method for estimating energy expenditure associated with water-loaded hauling; analyzing the magnitude of water fetching energy expenditure in the context of daily caloric intakes and the potential to incorporate caloric energy expenditure into infrastructure cost calculations. Chapter 2 estimates the metabolic equivalent of task (MET) for head-hauling water under laboratory conditions and assess the suitability of using heart rate to estimate energy expenditure for this same activity. The use of heart rate monitors has the potential to provide accurate quantification of the energy expenditure necessary to fetch water in a variety of previously inaccessible locations. Such measurements could potentially impact decision making around difficult investment choices in water improvement projects given that women spend upwards of 40 billion person-hours per year fetching water in sub-Saharan Africa with large associated time and energy costs. Chapter 3 uses heart rate monitoring to estimate the energy expenditure necessary to fetch water among a large sample of female Mozambicans in Nampula Province. It is common for households in rural Mozambique to rely on non-networked, off-premises water points for their daily needs. As a result, women and girls are primarily responsible for fetching large quantities of water, often over long distances. This burden of water fetching is commonly valued at half the wage rate of unskilled labor in economic analyses, making the cost of installing a piped water system over a borewell with a handpump appear excessive. In this chapter I estimate how much energy women in rural Mozambique spend and what share of their total daily energy expenditure is attributable to the sub-activities of water fetching (walking, waiting, collecting or pumping, and water-loaded walking). Female respondents expended a median of 449 kcal/day or 48 percent of their total daily available caloric intake fetching water. Respondents thus expended a significant amount of their total daily available caloric intake fetching water. Chapter 4 describes how a household-level container-based sanitation (CBS) services may help address the persistent challenge of providing effective, affordable sanitation services for which low-income urban households are willing to pay. This chapter presents the results of a pilot CBS service program in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti. I examine changes in households' satisfaction with their sanitation situation, along with feelings of pride, modernity and personal safety between participants using the CBS service and two comparison cohorts. Following the service pilot, 71 percent of participating households opted to continue with the container-based sanitation service as paying subscribers. The results from this study suggest that, in the context of urban Haiti, household CBS systems have the potential to satisfy many residents' desire for safe, convenient and modern sanitation services.

Advisor: Davis J. A. (Jennifer Ann)
Haskell William L.
Luby Stephen