1 Introduction
The first part of this Master thesis is related to the DIM-SUM (Innovative Decision Making for Sustainable Management of Water in Developing Countries) EU project, which also involves the Urban Water Programme.
The DIM-SUM project aims at providing tools for an integrated and participatory decision-making process in sustainable management of water. Apart from an adaptive tool box, guidelines and policy recommendations will be given for enabling local decision makers to carry out an assessment of technical scenarios.
Focusing on water supply and sanitation, the DIM-SUM project will carry out one case study in one river basin in each participating partner country (Indonesia, Maharashtra-India, Malaysia and Nepal) in order to evaluate and develop the tools mentioned above. It involves a range of stakeholders, ranging from non- governmental organizations to international organizations. In particular several governmental organizations operating in the developing countries are involved in DIM-SUM, either as direct or indirect project partners, or as supporting partners.
The Urban Water Programme aims at developing support for strategic decisions on the future sustainable systems in Sweden. The Programme has adopted the following general vision for sustainable urban water management: “Every human has a right to clean water. For urban areas our vision is water management where water and its constituents can be safely used, reused and returned to nature”. The Urban Water approach is to develop criteria for sustainable water and wastewater systems, reflecting the multi-disciplinarity needed for comprehensive understanding and analysis. Five groups of criteria are being used, focusing on health and hygiene, the environment, economy, socio-culture, and technical function. Models and assessment methods – the Urban Water toolbox - are being developed and tested for each criteria group in a number of model cities, which represent different types of Swedish urban environments.
Facing impairing quality and quantity of natural resources, an integrated and participatory decision-making process becomes vital. Water service providers are faced with increasingly complex objectives and demands when decision-making processes are related to asset management. This is because of the competing pressures to provide high quality services at low cost to the consumer whilst maintaining and protecting the environment. Therefore, environmental resource efficiency has to be balanced with the risk of technical systems. The various aspects to consider are explained in the many definitions and principles of sustainability that exist in literature. It is necessary that the implications of sustainability in all other decisions that the water service providers may make are considered in order to providing adequate water and sanitation world-wide and preserving and enhancing the quality of life in developed and developing countries.
The concept of sustainability considers a large range of dimensions that take into account the links between economic, environmental and social issues. The most
quoted definition of sustainable development is from the Brundtland Report (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) that defines it as the
‘development that meets the needs of the present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. After 1987 a great number of definitions have published attempting to define the concept of sustainable development and to formulate sustainability principles. Consequently a broad range of aspects have been given and this means that the concept is sometimes vaguely used or badly understood.
Each concept considered in the sustainability definitions is related to a set of indicators, which are the instruments which help us to understand how far we are from sustainability and from the purpose of our work. The aim of sustainability indicators is to guide decision-making processes at various level towards sustainability. A great number of sustainability indicators and criteria (and their definitions) can be found and all of these can be used for different aspects of management.
Therefore, the first step of this work has been a literature review both of the definitions and of the principles related to the concept of sustainability and of the criteria and the indicators that are linked with the many aspects of the found definitions. It has been possible to notice how the considered aspects have changed in the last years and which dimensions of the sustainability term have been mostly considered.
The water management systems can differ according to the local situation. In developed countries their improving means more effective and efficient services for maintaining public health and utility. In the developing world there is a need for an equal basic service provision based on the long-term of water supply and sanitation.
Historically, some aspects of sustainability have been considered for the development of water resources. The objective of enhancing both the social and economic well- being of the community should be reached providing clean water supplies and proposing safe methods of wastewater treatment and disposal to the environment.
A list of sustainability indicators has been selected in this work in order to assess temporal variations of an urban water system. These tools have been applied to a Swedish case study. Temporal trends for the Stockholm Water Company, the largest water company in Sweden, have been assessed. A final method has been used for combining indicators in a Combined Sustainable Development Indicator in order to evaluate the general conduct of the company.
Human activities have serious and unsustainable impacts on the environment, not only in terms of impact on water use or on other natural resources, but also with respect to its impact on social and economic activities. A balance in decision-making processes is required in order to develop solutions that are ‘environmentally non-
degrading, technically appropriate, economically viable’ (FAO 1992), ‘socially useful […] and which can be sustained over time’ (Sustainable Water Services).
1.1 The aims of the work
The aims of this thesis are to:
1. identify the several aspects expressed by the concept of sustainability definitions;
2. suggest a procedure for selecting sustainability criteria and indicators;
3. develop, apply and evaluate a methodology for a sustainable water management assessment in a case study
Objectives one and two are dealt in Chapter 2. A literature review was conducted to identify the broad meaning of the sustainability term. Since a large number of definitions have been found, many aspects and dimensions have been subsequently considered in the water system assessment. In a similar way, the approach of formulating sustainability criteria consisted of a literature review so that a first set of sustainability indicators has been proposed even by considering the goals of the DIM-SUM project.
The third objective is covered by Chapters 3 and 4. Here, a case study involving a water management system in a developed country is performed in co-operation with the Stockholm Water Company. After defining the actual situation and the scopes to reach, a first list of sustainability criteria and indicators related with water management has been developed. A subsequent collection of historical data has been necessary to quantify the indicators previously chosen. The trends which can be assessed by those values can allow to say if and how the studied company is moving towards sustainability.
1.2 Methodology
A suitable and more often used methodology for sustainability assessment is a system analysis using a multi-disciplinary set of sustainability indicators. The methodology that has been used in this work can be structured in the following four phases: goal definition; selection of criteria and indicators; collection of data and evaluation of indicators.
The first phase, the goal definition, aims at the formulation of targets for improving the performance of the water system.
The second step involves the selection of specific criteria from a set of generic criteria. Within each category issue concerning with the sustainability concept, there is a first number of connected criteria. Under each of these criteria, a list of indicators is specified. In order to avoid excluding in advance sustainable solutions, the chosen system boundaries must be set to include whole systems and the sustainability indicators must reflect all the dimensions of sustainability. Some of these indicators can probably be difficult to quantify; however, to assure the multi-dimensional character of the sustainability assessment it is better to include those indicators using crude quantification or qualitative descriptions rather than not including those indicators at all.
The third phase involves the collection of data and information in order to quantify the indicators chosen in the previous selection.
In the fourth and last phase, the evaluation, the quantified indicators have been used for assessing internal trends in order to consider the conduct of the company in time.
1.3 Terminology
Actor: any individual (group or individuals), entity or community likely to play any role directly or indirectly in the decision-making process.
Benchmark: is something whose quality, quantity or capability is known and which can therefore be used as a standard by which others may be measured and compared or as a point of reference from which measurements may be made.
Criterion: is a measure against which options are assessed and a comparison is made of the extent to which they achieve stated objectives. Sustainability criteria can be used to break down the broad objective of sustainable development into sub- objectives easier to assess.
Decision-maker: is the actor for whom the decision-aid tools are developed and implemented.
Effectiveness: is the extent to which objectives are achieved.
Efficiency: is the extent to which resources are utilised to produce outputs (is usually expressed as the ratio of the amount of product to the amount needing to work, in terms of energy or materials).
Framework: is a conceptual model, made of rules, ideas or beliefs, used to deal with identification and organization of indicators.
Performance indicator: is a parameter expressing a measure that is strictly connected with the criteria or the objective to achieve. Therefore, it describes the level of achievement in respect to one or a set of reference values.
Qualitative data: are information expressed by non-numerical values.
Quantitative data: are information expressed by numerical values.
Stakeholders: any individual or group which has, consciously or not, an interest and an importance in how water and wastewater services are delivered. This could include customers, employees, environment and community groups. Future generations may also be stakeholders.
Sustainability: is intended as the guiding principles for efforts to reconcile environmental, economic and social imperatives. Sustainability and sustainable development are usually taken synonymously although they can mean different things. Sustainability is referred to as a desirable state, where human needs are met without undermining natural resources.
Sustainable development: is defined in the Brundtland report as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Sustainability and sustainable development are usually taken synonymously although they can mean different things. Sustainable development is referred to as the process towards sustainability.
Sustainability indicator: is a piece of information, quantitative or qualitative, that aims at measuring and addressing progress towards sustainable development.
Water service provider: is a public, private or combined organisation that provides water supply and /or wastewater services.
