BOOK REVIEW by www.watermagazine.com

Water and Wastewater Management in the Tropics

From the Foreword: "... this book is basically written to "soften" hard-nosed engineers who need to learn how to design and implement more appropriate and thus sustainable water and wastewater management projects in developing countries.... It is not the intention of this book to "convert" environmental engineers into economists, sociologists, or institutional planners. Consequently it is not an endeavour to replace these specialists, or avoid having these specialists working on water and wasteprojects with engineers. On the contrary this book aims at strengthening the dialogue between the different specialist groups by providing engineers with an understanding and a "language" enabling them to efficiently communicate with and benefit from the input offered by other specialists..."

Water and Wastewater Management in the Tropics takes a project approach to the water and wastewater industry. While its main target is the developing world and the tropics, much of its analysis and perspective applies equally to the first world. Case studies presented in the final parts of the book primarily relate to the developing world. The book was edited by Jens Lonholdt and arises from work done in and around the Technical University of Denmark. Publication is by IWA Publishing.

This book has grown from efforts at the University, when teaching engineers, to make engineers of the future aware of, and to have a conceptual understanding of, and tools to deal with, soft issues such as institutional, socio-economic and cultural settings. In the foreword the editor explains the purpose of this educational target being: "...based on a worldwide recognition that these dimensions can be quite decisive for the success or failure of environmental engineering projects in developing countries..." (The reviewer comments, that in his opinion such awareness and sensitivity would make a lot of difference to water and wastewater project outcomes in developed countries too.)

Chapter headings of this 370 page book include: I enjoyed discovering that the editor of the book has chosen this axiom for the book: "perfection is the enemy of progress" in recognition that low income tropical countries cannot afford the high service levels that are increasingly common in high income countries. The book's emphasis on appropriateness, and its qualification of what "appropriate" can mean to different people, is clearly fundamental to the book, and sets it aparts from other texts on the subject. Consideration of what is appropriate, shifts what was previously a concrete, textbook defined hard engineering process, toward a process which takes into much greater account the social, environmental, institutional, and economic context for the project. I congratulate the vision behind the book's production. So often, even in first-world countries, black and white engineering approaches to water and waste water projects can ruin great opportunities for community participation and ownership, environmental education around broader sustainability goals, and the delivery of outcomes that are more integrated.

Other things. The book is liberally sprinkled with useful tables, diagrams, and boxed case study snippets and definitions. Helpful photographs have also been included which illustrate some of the less well known technologies. Most sections contain "Key Issues" summaries which distill core points raised.

While the main chapters of the book have been contributed to by a number of authors, the editor has managed to ensure a consistency of style throughout. This has enabled the core competencies of many to be drawn together in the book, while smoothing some of the idiosyncracies that can emerge in such a text. Its foreword suggests the book is for graduate engineering students, and newly graduated environmental engineers. In my view it is fit for that purpose. Moreover I would suggest it is great background reading for those hard-bitten and battle-weary water and wastewater engineers in the developed world with decades of experience under their belts, wondering why their world has changed since they graduated.

Why is it that water and wastewater innovations arise in the developing world, only to be ignored as inconvenient, or perhaps "inappropriate", in the developed world?

Water and Wastewater Management in the Tropics was published in 2005 by IWA Publishing.
The isbn is 1843390132 (hard cover).
Email: publications@iwap.co.uk
Website: www.iwapublishing.com

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