Sustainable Sanitation for Urban Slum Population

Sustainable Sanitation for Urban Slum Population

Introduction

Rapid urbanization has led to more than half population in the world lives in the urban area. Since 2007, it was marked for the first time in human history that the most of the global population has been living in cities (UN Habitat 2008), further it is predicted that about 60 % of the world's population will reside in the urban area within the next two decades (UN Habitat 2013). In the developing regions in particular, proportion of the cities' population has risen from 1.4 billion to 2.5 billion people or increased from 35 to 45 per cent from 1990 to 2010 respectively (Jacobsen et al. 2012). Poverty levels seem to increase within increasing of urbanization levels. The World Bank (2008) estimated that about one third of poor people living on less than US2$ per day reside in urban areas. This primarily due to the economic condition of the poor migrant that cause formation of a large number of slums, which growing significantly by more than 20 million per year, or about 40 per cent of the urban population (Baker 2008).

The Eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of U...

The Eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of U...

The Eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of U...

The UN Habitat refers it as 'the urbanization of poverty' that the prevalence of poverty move from rural to urban.

Table 1. Urban slum dwellers in developing worlds (source: MDGs Report, 2013)

This accelerated growth of urban slum has been definitely increased pressure on urban infrastructure. Many cities in the developing world are unable to meet the demand for basic services, including sanitation due to lack of resources (Butala et al. 2010). Hundred of slums in the most developing countries live with minimum access to services or remain unserved where overcrowding is the norm (Isunju, et al. 2010).