Peri-Urban Sanitation and Water Service Provision

The report examines the complexities of service provision in peri-urban areas—the transition zones between rural and urban environments—which often suffer from unclear institutional mandates and rapid, unplanned growth. It argues for a shift from linear to circular nutrient management to enhance food security, a systems-based approach to the water-energy nexus, and the use of inclusive, community-led planning to ensure sustainable and equitable service delivery.

• Peri-urban areas (PUAs) often exist in a regulatory 'grey zone' where they fall between the responsibilities of rural and urban authorities, leading to ineffective service delivery and a lack of urban planning.
• The lack of secure land tenure in peri-urban settlements discourages both residents and local authorities from investing in permanent water and sanitation infrastructure.
• Current food production systems are largely linear, wasting approximately 80% of phosphorus during the process of bringing food to consumers, with the remainder often lost through sanitation systems.
• Transitioning to circular nutrient loops, such as using urine-diverting toilets and composting organic waste, can increase the productive use of household phosphorus from 19% to 90% and nitrogen from 6% to 79%.
• Energy is a primary cost driver for water services, with electricity accounting for roughly 80% of municipal water processing and distribution costs.
• A systems perspective on the water-energy nexus reveals that aerobic treatment in wastewater plants consumes 50–60% of total plant energy, suggesting that urine separation can lower energy demands.
• Hygiene interventions, specifically handwashing, can be more cost-effective at reducing child mortality than the sole provision of safe water or sanitation.
• Poor households in informal peri-urban settlements often pay 5-10 times more per litre of water than residents in formal settlements within the same city.
• Inadequate sanitation disproportionately affects women and girls, increasing their vulnerability to attacks and rape when seeking privacy at night and causing girls to drop out of school during puberty.
• Effective peri-urban planning must move beyond top-down 'Master Planning' toward flexible, inclusive approaches such as equity planning and resource-oriented planning.

APA

McConville, J., & Wittgren, H. B. (2014). Peri-Urban Sanitation and Water Service Provision. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-ProjectReport-Ekane-SanwatPua.pdf

Chicago

McConville, Jennifer, and Hans Bertil Wittgren. Peri-Urban Sanitation and Water Service Provision. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2014. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-ProjectReport-Ekane-SanwatPua.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=McConville |first1=Jennifer |last2=Wittgren |first2=Hans Bertil |title=Peri-Urban Sanitation and Water Service Provision |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=January 2014 |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-ProjectReport-Ekane-SanwatPua.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{mcconville2014periurban, author = {McConville, Jennifer and Wittgren, Hans Bertil}, title = {{Peri-Urban Sanitation and Water Service Provision}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2014}, month = jan, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-ProjectReport-Ekane-SanwatPua.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }