BPD Sanitation Competition

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BPD is a world-wide network of partners involving government, business, civil society and donors. BPD Learning Research Sanitation Partnerships Sanitation Competition
	Sanitation Title Competition In keeping with the theme of sanitation marketing, BPD launched a competition in December 2007 to find a title for its latest article which deals with the challenges of ‘selling sanitation’. BPD is proud to announce the winner: Alex Nash, of Atkins in Epsom, England, won with “To let or toilet? Is that the question? The hidden challenges of selling sanitation” Alex is the proud winner of a £20 book voucher from Amazon – although he is yet to tell us what he is buying with it. A marked-down book of Christmas puns perhaps? Do contact us if you have ideas of how to take forward work on the themes within the article (to do with sanitation marketing and incentive challenges) as well as recommendations of other work on the topic. Download the full article - To let or toilet? Is that the question? (PDF document - 339 Kb)		Article Abstract For sanitation two currently hot topics are sanitation marketing and community-led total sanitation, in which provoking demand for sanitation is fundamental. There is great interest in both as tools in delivering the sanitation MDGs in urban areas. Yet many urban dwellers either rent and / or lack land tenure and have strong disincentives to investing in fixed sanitation infrastructure. Neither demand-led approaches nor the land tenure challenges are new, but the issues they raise are often glossed over in the desire to promote demand for sanitation goods and services. The article looks back at prior experience in dealing with this challenge and gives an overview of three possible ways to address it. The conclusions remind readers of the pitfalls of ignoring history, suggest how those ‘selling sanitation’ need to be creative in how they address disincentives to invest and make a plea for the sanitation sector to learn from others’ experience.