Tenure security and household investment decisions for urban sanitation: The case of Dakar, Senegal

Abstract

This paper explores the relevance of householders' security of tenure to their willingness to pay the capital and operational costs for sanitation in low-income urban areas. When the sanitation norm is self-managed on-site systems, as is the case in many low-income areas of towns and cities, household investment decisions in sanitation are inherently linked to tenure security. Based on evidence gathered in Dakar, Senegal, it is de facto rather than de jure tenure rights that provide sufficient security for household investment in sanitation. We make a critical distinction between willingness to invest and willingness to pay for the capital investment costs and ongoing operational servicing costs of sanitation. Whilst tenants and those with lower tenure security do not invest in capital infrastructure, they are willing to pay for the operational aspects of sanitation services. Current formal policy settings and strategies for urban sanitation tend not to cater for this group; this is a fundamental oversight as these constitute significant and growing segments of the population. Land tenure and sanitation issues need to be considered in an integrated way and the capital and operational costs need to be disaggregated in planning to respond more effectively to the spending decisions of the urban poor. Keywords Urban sanitation On-site sanitation Tenure Household investment Operating costs Dakar Introduction Scott Habitat paper_finalrevised_no ID.docx Click here to view linked References

The role of power, politics and history in achieving sanitation service provision in informal urban environments: a case study of Lusaka, Zambia

“…scott, P, a Cotton and m sohail Khan (2013), "tenure security and household investment decisions for urban sanitation: the case of Dakar, senegal", Habitat International Vol 40, pages 58-64.…”

Strengthening the Human Right to Sanitation as an Instrument for Inclusive Development

“…Fifth, even where the necessary investments are made, it is often on an ad hoc basis, subject to the availability of funds or even actual political will without promoting any clearly defined and detailed overarching long-term strategy (Parkinson et al, 1998). Sixth, tenure insecurity and the underlying power issues especially where service providers are not legally obliged to extend their coverage to people without legal title to their land indirectly limit household investment in and/or access to sanitation infrastructure and force the poor to rely on often unregulated and more expensive informal services for their basic needs in informal settlements (Chaplin, 1999(Chaplin, , 2011Scott et al, 2013). Seventh, in the context of emergencies and humanitarian situations, lack of a rapid assessment mechanism generally limits the ability of humanitarian organisations to provide high quality responses locally (Veeramany et al, 2016;Zakari et al, 2015).…”

Using tenure to build a “sanitation cityscape”: narrowing decisions for targeted sanitation interventions

“…To some extent, we are generalizing these findings; however, it is important to note that mapping the faecal sludge pathways does not require mapping absolute quantities of faecal sludge through the various levels of the pathways model. Indeed, given the wide variation of quality 62. n=363, presented in Scott et al (2013); see reference 5.…”