Mathew Kurian & Patricia McCarney 
Peri-urban Water and Sanitation Services 
Policy, Planning and Method

More than 2.6 billion people in the developing world lack access to safe water and sanitation service. The Millennium Development Goal’s (MDG) target is to halve the number of people without access to a sustainable source of water supply and connection to a sewer network by 2015. That target is unlikely to be met. If there is anything that can be learnt from European experience it is that institutional reform occurs incrementally when politically enfranchised urban populations perceive a threat to their material well-being due to contamination of water sources.

Table of Content

Neither Rural nor Urban: Service Delivery Options That Work for the Peri-urban Poor.- Prospects for Resource Recovery Through Wastewater Reuse.- Climate-Based Risks in Cities.- Wastewater Management Under the Dutch Water Boards: Any Lessons for Developing Countries?.- Financing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for Water and Sanitation: Issues and Options.- Budget Support for Local Government: Theory and Practice.- Information’s Role in Adaptive Groundwater Management.- Making Sense of Human–Environment Interaction: Policy Guidance Under Conditions of Imperfect Data.- Approaches to Economic and Environmental Valuation of Domestic Wastewater.- Benchmarking Water Services Delivery.- Planning Clinics: A Primer.- Conclusions: Governance Challenges in Urban and Peri-urban Areas.

About the author

​Dr. Mathew Kurian is Academic Officer and leads the Capacity Development and Governance unit at United Nations University Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources (UNU-FLORES). Prior to joining UNU-FLORES, he served as Senior Water and Sanitation Specialist at Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) of The World Bank where he led policy advocacy efforts related to rural water supply, wastewater reuse, and climate adaptation options in secondary towns. He began his career as a Robert Mc Namara Fellow at the World Bank where his work on land tenure reform was hosted by the Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI), New Delhi.

  Upon completing his Ph D in Development Studies from the Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University, The Hague, Netherlands, Dr. Kurian was employed as Associate Expert (Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs) at International Water Management Institute (IWMI-CGIAR) where he undertook assessments of soil and water conservation interventions in the Mekong and Nile river basins. In 2009 as member of faculty at UNESCO-IHE, Delft, Dr. Kurian led the development of a policy note on urban sanitation and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for the Directorate General of International Cooperation (DGIS) in the Netherlands. While still at UNESCO-IHE, Dr. Kurian developed an online e-learning course on governance of water and sanitation services in developing countries.

  He has published in the area of water institutions and policy and has mentored students of the MSc programme in environment and development planning while on the faculty of University College London (UCL). His experience in the field of capacity development includes training civil servants and managers of water utilities in Iran and Tanzania, consulting assignments withthe Asian Development Bank (ADB), Philippines and teaching undergraduate courses in human geography at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Vancouver, Canada. In his current function, he leads the design of public policy research, policy advocacy in support of evidence-based decision making and fund raising to support establishment of a nexus observatory network.