Abstract
THEMES FOR FUTURE ISSUES
DISCOUNTED PRICES AND ELECTRONIC ACCESS TO ENVIRONMENT AND URBANIZATION
MEDIO AMBIENTE Y URBANIZACIÓN (MAyU)
ENVIRONMENT AND URBANIZATION PEN-DRIVE
BLOGS AND FACEBOOK
I. Themes for Future Issues
There is a particular interest here in how to get adequate responses to the lack of provision for sanitation and drainage in urban areas. The scale of the inadequacies in provision is astonishing – and greatly underestimated. There are many very large cities and a far larger numbers of smaller cities and towns that have no sewers or covered drains. For instance, among the major cities that appear to have no sewers or sewers that reach only a very small proportion of the population are Addis Ababa, Bamako, Benin, Brazzaville, Dar es Salaam, Douala, Freetown, Ibadan, Kaduna, Kinshasa, Kumasi, Lagos, Lubumbashi, Maiduguri, Mbuji-Mayi, Port Harcourt, Yaoundé and Zaria. Many other cities have reports of sewers serving a small proportion of their population and these sewers are often reported to be in poor repair or no longer functioning. This is not to suggest that the only sanitation solution is sewers, but most of the cities named above also have large proportions of their population living in dense informal settlements that do not have provision for (for example) toilets connected to septic tanks, or good quality, easily serviced (and emptied) pit latrines. A high proportion of the population has no toilet in their home.
So we welcome papers that look at all aspects of sanitation and drainage for cities, with a view to better understanding the scale and nature of the problem and possible solutions that allow much higher proportions of the population to be well served and that are affordable for low-income households. This includes an interest in new sanitation technologies – but with the proviso that these should match the needs, resources and priorities of low-income urban dwellers. If the interest is in reaching low-income groups with good quality toilets, there is not much point in having a toilet that is perfect from an ecological perspective if it is unaffordable. This also means recognizing the very limited space available in the homes of most low-income dwellers and the need for sanitation solutions that work in large, dense informal settlements and beyond only ground floor models.
There is much discussion among United Nations agencies and other international bodies on whether the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are being met, or will be met by 2015, and what should replace the MDGs after 2015. We welcome papers either on the MDGs or on what should replace them that have relevance to urban areas. This includes reviews of MDG performance in urban centres, although authors will need to think critically about the relevance of available data for assessing such performance. At present, much of the literature on whether or not the MDGs are being met is based on indicators that are invalid for most urban areas. For instance, for water and sanitation, the official UN indicators only indicate the proportion of the population that has access to what they define as “improved provision” and this is certainly not measuring who has provision for water and sanitation that is “safe” or “adequate” with regard to health, convenience and affordability in urban contexts. For monetary poverty, the dollar-a-day poverty line (and the small adjustments made to it) is used as one of the MDG indicators of extreme poverty, but this is known to greatly understate the proportion of urban dwellers with incomes too low to meet non-food needs.
This is an issue that we will develop in collaboration with WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing), which is a global action−research−policy network that seeks to improve the status of the working poor in the informal economy, especially women. More details of this special issue will feature in the October 2014 issue of the Journal.
II. Discounted Prices and Electronic Access to Environment and Urbanization
All papers published in Environment and Urbanization since its first issue in 1989 are available at http://www.eau.sagepub.com/, and all but those issues published during the last two years are open access and as such are available electronically, free of charge. Printed subscriptions of the Journal are also available at no charge to libraries or resource centres of universities or teaching or training institutions in low- and middle-income nations.
In addition, the publisher of Environment and Urbanization, Sage Publications, offers large discounts on subscription prices to charities and students and to all subscribers from low- and middle-income nations − see http://www.eau.sagepub.com/ and click on “subscribe”. With regard to electronic access, there are schemes that allow access to Environment and Urbanization for universities and research centres in low- and middle-income nations − see Research4Life (http://www.research4life.org/). This includes Online Access to Research on the Environment (OARE), which has research journals on the environment, including Environment and Urbanization (http://www.oaresciences.org/en/).
III. Medio Ambiente y Urbanización (MAyU)
The last 20 issues of our sister Journal are available at no charge at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iieal/meda. The latest issue (No 79, November 2013) is on “Manejo de la incertidumbre: diálogo entre investigación y política”.
IV. Environment and Urbanization Pen-Drive
We have produced a pen-drive with all papers from Environment and Urbanization from 1989 to 2011 and also all the working papers published by IIED’s Human Settlements Group. Do contact us if you would like one of these (also providing your postal address); they are available free of charge. All the items on the pen-drive are available open access online – but they will be useful for those with difficult, limited or slow internet access.
V. Blogs and Facebook
Recent Environment and Urbanization blogs (which are available at http://www.environmentandurbanization.org/) include:
The Journal’s Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/EnvironmentandUrbanization) will keep you informed about new papers published in the Journal and about other relevant publications. We very much welcome feedback, and the Facebook page is intended to allow for this and also to be a site for discussion and for suggestions from our readers.