Making It Work (Part 1 of 2)

Making It Work: Bringing People Together To Find Sustainable Solutions To Urban Waste Water Management.

Colombo is the financial capital of Sri Lanka, home to just under 700,000 people. It's also home to over 1,600 underserved settlements. Most are inhabited by a combination of long time urban residents who have lived in settlements for generations, and those who have migrated from rural areas seeking livelihoods. Over time, these residents have settled informally on both privately owned land and public land owned by government agencies such as the Colombo Municipality and the National Housing Development Authority. As a result, many settlements have very limited access to municipal services, and those that exist are often derived from informally negotiated political arrangements, rendering more sustainable solutions a challenge.

Environmental degradation, vulnerability to flooding, and illness related to the absence of basic services all present a burden on these residents. Gothamipura is one such underserved settlement. This is in contrast to the surrounding neighborhood, which has become a residence for higher income professionals who have secure tenure and fewer problems with urban services.

The Colombo Focus City Research Initiative is one of eight action research projects in eight cities worldwide, funded by the International Development Research Centre. The project aims to address the lack of sewerage - and more recently, lack of tenure - faced by Gothamipura residents, via supporting a unique partnership between municipal authorities, a local NGO, a research institution, and the community itself. Lead by the Colombo Municipal Council, the project has developed and implemented a sewerage system for residents, in order to address the lack of services in a sustainable way.

The goal of the team is to design an integrated model of service delivery that could be applied across Colombo in the future, based on the Gothamipura model. This short film documents the context, objectives, challenges, and outcomes of this ongoing project.

The film is in 2 parts here on YouTube.

Produced by IDRC.
Directed, filmed, and edited by Rana Ghose.

For more information:
http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-81920-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• sri
• lanka
• gothamipura
• colombo
• municipal
• council
• sevanatha
• CEPA
• IDRC
• CMC
• flood
• urban
• planning
• development
• focus
• cities
• research
• initiative
• FCRI
• rana
• ghose