Understanding behaviour and choice in context: accessing local knowledge to enhance energy access and sanitation interventions 

Convener: Marie Jürisoo, Stockholm Environment Institute

Contact: marie.jurisoo@sei-international.org

Lack of access to improved sources of both energy and sanitation has critical impacts on people’s health and livelihoods. The dependence of 2.6 billion people on traditional biomass fuels for cooking and heating has significant negative impacts on health, causing more than 4 million premature deaths annually through exposure to smoke. Around 2.5 billion people also lack improved sanitation, and water related diseases cause an estimated 1.8 million deaths in children under five each year. Sustainable Development Goals six and seven relate directly to improving access to clean and safe energy and to water and sanitation. To date, introducing technical solutions to address these problems at the local level has proven challenging since we know so little about how human behaviour influences technology uptake. Furthermore, past interventions often failed to include local knowledge and perspectives. Translating SDGs six and seven into action and lasting impact on the ground will require a fundamental rethink about how interventions are designed, along with innovative approaches for understanding individual behaviour and local contexts.

Technology uptake is influenced by multiple behavioural drivers, from psychology to intra-household relationships and socio-cultural considerations.  This session gathers an interdisciplinary panel of researchers to present approaches for understanding behavioural drivers and local contexts in the uptake of improved sanitation and energy technologies in developing countries. Each panellist will present recent, applied research relevant to this theme, and will clearly explain how their findings can be (or have been) used to design more effective, inclusive development interventions.  A 30 minute panel discussion will follow, focusing on the relative importance of different behavioural drivers depending on the specific objectives of an intervention.

23 Aug., 14:00–15:30, Seminar Room U29

• Sanitation uptake at ac omunnunity level: Exploring the role of social capital and leadership in Burkina Faso. Sarah Dickin, Stockholm Environment Institute.
• Sanitation and hygiene practices and performances of households in rural and peri urban settings: From policy making to implementation and social change. Amans Ntakarutimana, University of Rwanda-College of Medicine and Health and Nelson Ekane, KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
• Exploring the local challenges of implementing a community based water and sanitation scheme – the case of Lumuli and Kibena village, Tanzania. Sara Gabrielsson, Lund University.
• Who co-operates and who not: retailer response to municipality plastic bagban in Nepal. Bishal Bharadwaj, Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development, Government of Nepal.

Abstracts

Sanitation uptake at ac omunnunity level: Exploring the role of social capital and leadership in Burkina Faso. Sarah Dickin, Stockholm Environment Institute.

Despite the human right to sanitation, around 2.4 billion people do not use an improved sanitation facility, and almost a billion practice open defecation. This lack of sanitation has wide-reaching implications, including impacts on health, livelihoods and environmental integrity. Despite large-scale investments in sanitation technology, uptake has been poor in many regions due to a lack of “software” interventions such as training, awareness building, and community mobilization that can change behaviours. New attention is focused on creating household demand and promoting the use of sanitation, but there remain many gaps in understanding what contributes to behaviour change. Despite a number of frameworks that have been developed to examine individual-level behavioural determinants, limited work has examined community determinants associated with sanitation uptake. This study aimed to address these gaps by examining community determinants of uptake of an ecological sanitation system in Burkina Faso, a country where sanitation coverage remains very low at around 11%. A social capital framework for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions was applied, and a qualitative approach was used to conduct semi-structured interviews with household members in rural communities where a large ecological sanitation programme was previously implemented.  Interviews focused on aspects of social capital such as trust, reciprocity and mutual aid, and community leadership, and their relationship to sanitation uptake. The results illustrate the role of social capital and leadership in promoting behaviour change, and provide valuable insight to improve how behaviour change interventions are implemented to promote adoption and sustained use of sanitation technologies.

Sanitation and hygiene practices and performances of households in rural and peri urban settings: From policy making to implementation and social change. Amans Ntakarutimana, University of Rwanda-College of Medicine and Health and Nelson Ekane, KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

SDG policy makers and professionals need guidance on effective implementation of sanitation and hygiene practices at rural and peri urban households. This case control study conducted in Rwanda, focused on Community Health Club approach to investigate its implementation and contribution to improving sanitation and hygiene practices in households. Two villages were selected, rural and peri urban, one intervention group (6 month CHC approach exposure) and one control group (not exposed, allowed to benefit from usual government and partner activities). In total, 798 households (95%) were interviewed and spot observations were carried out. Focus group discussions and one-to-one interviews were conducted with local leaders, sanitation professionals and opinion leaders from both groups 2 years after the intervention. The relative risk (case-control) for improved and hygienic toilets, functioning hand washing facilities and soap at hand washing facilities in rural settings was 2 – 22 (95% CI; p=0.000) and in peri urban settings 1 - 6 (95% CI; p=0.000). Both intervention groups achieved this through mutual assistance, projects-initiatives, saving, loan, tontine strategies and support of the vulnerable. These supportive methods combined with CHCs encourage self reliance, equity, ability to afford hygiene and sanitation facilities and behaviour change. This research showed that CHC approach has initiated a potential community development catalyst, empowering households to improve sanitation and hygiene practices after 2 years after intervention.

Exploring the local challenges of implementing a community based water and sanitation scheme – the case of Lumuli and Kibena village, Tanzania. Sara Gabrielsson, Lund University.

Access and availability to clean water and sustainable sanitation systems is currently low throughout Tanzania, with serious and far reaching implications on not only individual health and welfare, but more importantly on community livelihoods and the overall development of the country. The realization of the urgency and complexity of implementing sound water and sanitation systems, particularly in rural areas, prompted an Indian non-governmental organization to initiate a community based initiative in two villages in Tanzania in 2012. The intention of this initiative was to give attention to place-based social needs and ecosystem properties and capacity to enable the construction of a water system where water is harnessed from perennial springs and diverted through a system of pipelines using the principles of gravity flow and siphoning to reach individual family homes. In practice, upon completion all households in a participating village should be provided with a pour-flush water toilet (with twin leach pits) and a bathroom with clean tap water. This paper, based on extensive fieldwork in the two villages between 2013-2016, explores the socio-ecological complexity and challenges of implementing this community based scheme. The findings of this study shows that because the NGO focused more on the hardware rather than the software when implemeting the initiative they failed to get a comprehensive understanding of the local context. As a result consideration for the actual needs and capacity of the community members to contribute and become mutually accountable for the implementation was lost and therefore progress slow and achievements limited.

Who co-operates and who not: retailer response to municipality plastic bagban in Nepal. Bishal Bharadwaj, Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development, Government of Nepal.

Plastic Bag has now become indispensable aspect of retail business in Nepal. Increasing disposal of this white pollutant into the environment has threatened life and livestock. As a response, many municipalities of Nepal are deciding ban on its use, which majorly includes partial ban- colored and thin (less than 20 micron) single use plastic bag and complete ban –  restriction on use of all type of single use plastic bag. The effectiveness of this policy intervention is not uniform. Retailers; the intermediate user of plastic bag, plays pivotal role in success of ban, however their response largely depends upon the way they are affected. The study estimates the effect of different ban enforcement on different type of retailers using instrumental variable approach. From focus group discussion and literature on enforcement; an analytical framework was developed to define cooperation, resistance and reaction on plastic bag ban then used to access the response of retailer to ban enforcement. Subjective expectation of fine was used as enforcement variable. Retailer selling wet goods were found to be resistive whereas cloth and medicine shops were cooperative in complete ban implementation; while the grocery and vegetable/fruit shops waits for enforcement for behavioral change. An effective implementation of ban should enforce wet good seller, monitor grocery and vegetable/fruits and promote cloth and medicine shops.