The aim of this book is to develop knowledge and understanding about how ICT can be involved in local and national innovation systems in developing countries. Special attention is paid to the role of the university as an important stakeholder in local and national development processes. For this purpose, the interdisciplinary group of researchers has made the study carrying the question about the prerequisites for postcolonial identities to make their mark on a national situated ICT development and implementation. The study addresses the emerging implosion of postcolonial situations and ICT development. The theory frame of feminist technoscience studies is included in the analysis as a special resource.

In Kota, the third largest city of Rajasthan, poverty levels are high in many areas and there is a great need to assess the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of different societal groups and sectors to the impacts of climatic variability and change, and to formulate sustainable planning strategies. The city is a large rapidly growing centre (but not a megacity), facing a varied and challenging water situation and anticipated harmful effects of climate change. The methodological approach involves participatory workshops with key stakeholders in urban administration to identify vulnerabilities, and discuss concrete strategies for increasing the adaptive capacity of the most vulnerable areas and sectors. The paper focuses on water resource planning (storm, potable, and wastewater), since it is already a challenging societal issue and one which will become even more critical in the future with climate change. We aim to contribute to improved urban water management for sustainable climate change adaptation in developing countries through an improved methodology of vulnerability assessments, capacity building and social learning, and a deeper empirical understanding of an urban context in Central India.

Projektet ReVAQ startades i syfte att genom kvalitetssäkring av VA-verkens arbete få ett slam som är tillräckligt bra för att accepteras för användning i jordbruket. ReVAQ-projektet är en process som innebär ett långsiktigt, strukturerat och kvalitetskontrollerat arbete. ReVAQ har under en treårsperiod utvärderats av en projektgrupp från CIT Urban Water Management, omfattande såväl de praktiskt uppnådda kvalitetsförbättringarna som förändringar i synsätt och attityder hos t.ex. de medverkande VA-verken och systemets användare. Keywords; ReVAQ, avlopssslam, jordbruk, uthållighet

Det avslutande kapitlet i Elin Wägners bok Väckarklocka (1941) målar upp framtidsvisioner om hållbara samhällen där samverkan och gemenskap är grunden. Nutida feministiska författare betonar också samverkan, både mellan människor och med andra arter, som avgörande för jordens fortlevnad. Tystnad, ren luft och goda grannar ses då som nu som visioner om ett gott liv. Till detta lägger Wägner liksom nutida feminister jämställdhet mellan kön såväl som global jämlikhet och rättvisa.

The use of wastewater sludge on arable land in Sweden has been limited for some years due to the low quality, in some respects, of the sludge and to the reluctance of farmers and the food industry to use it. To improve the quality of the sludge, the ReVAQ project has been started, and it now involves seven municipal wastewater organisations. The goal of the project is to introduce a process in which the quality is successively improved by a series of actions taken by society. These actions include tracking and eliminating sources of heavy metals and other substances. As there are numerous sources of some of the substances, the work concentrates on the major sources. Another important activity is to provide information to the users of the wastewater system. The project is being evaluated by Urban Water AB. The results from the first two years indicate that it may be possible to reach the primary technical goal: to obtain a sludge quality that corresponds to that of household wastewater. The more ambitious goal of reaching a quality corresponding to that of WC water (the sum of urine and faeces) does not seem realistic without far-reaching changes in society. The organisations involved, which take the work seriously and are goal-oriented, have achieved measurable results in a short time. The work is also accepted and supported by the board members. More effort is needed, however, to inform the users about the system, and to [motivate them to] change their behaviour regarding matters such as the purchase of everyday products and the use of the toilet facilities.

In eastern Uganda, volcanic activity in the past has formed a salt lake. Today, the lake is surrounded by a national park hosting elephants and other large animals. Close to the lake within the park is also a small town, Katwe. The human inhabitants live from salt extraction in the lake. The work is manual and bodies are exposed to salt water during daily work. Researchers’ and investors’ visions to develop the salt quality have created fear that while facilitating salt extraction, people’s access and control over the meager income from salt work will be eroded. What we find is a situation where discourses of development – including reducing health hazardous work conditions and increasing involvement in a larger economic system, bodies affected by salt and by hunger, and visions of future livelihoods in a natural reserve are melted together. Will a meltdown of Katwe town and its human inhabitants be the effect, or will their agency lead to new forms of local postdevelopment strategies? We aim to discuss the local situation in Katwe in relation to feminist materialist theory and postcolonial and postdevelopment thought.

The main theme in this thesis is potentials for increased user participation in the development of ecological sanitation technologies. The argument is that ecological sanitary engineering can be regarded as a heterogeneous practice that needs to incorporate environmental considerations as well as users’ knowledges and aspirations. To be a heterogeneous engineer therefore means to acquire skills for advanced dialogue with the users and other stakeholders, rather than providing finished technical solutions. In a case study in rural South Africa, I found that much of the responsibility for taking initiatives for the transformation of the water supply and sanitation systems lies with the community. By contrast, a case study of ecological sanitation in urban Sweden revealed that there was generally very little room for user involvement; instead, sanitation specialists presented a picture of the users as recipients of technical systems and information. These two different cases form the basis for a discussion about the relationship between users and specialists and pose the question of how we can encourage participatory technology development practices that users, specialists and ecosystems can endure. On the basis of feminist theory, technoscience and participatory methodologies, I have identified some criteria for feminist sanitary engineering. These include recognition of diversity, feminism beyond gender/deep feminism, reflectivity and heterogeneous engineering, and action research and user participation. The transformation of sanitary engineering towards the inclusion of these criteria is a long-term process, which needs to begin with reflection among sanitation specialists.

Genus och miljö är två områden som sällan kopplas samman, men som båda ska integreras i olika verksamheter som undervisning, samhällsplanering och samhällsutveckling. Utgångspunkten för denna bok är att de båda områdena förutsätter varandra och måste hanteras samtidigt. Strävan efter jämställdhet måset ta hänsyn till de miljökonsekvenser som följer med förändringar som görs. Ansträngningar att minska belastningen på ekosystemen måste på motsvarande sätt belysa genusaspekter kring frågor som odling och vattenförsörjning eller energianvändning. Strävan efter jämställdhet leder till att vi inte alltid kan se tydligt hur framtidens miljöpolitik ska formas, och miljöproblem leder till att jämställdhetsarbetet måste omformuleras efter hand. Vägen in i framtiden är inte solklar och spikrak, och vi måste beträda den med varsamhet och lyhördhet för olika röster och nya insikter. Boken presenterar grundläggande genusvetenskapliga teorier kopplade till miljöfrågor, naturvetenskap och teknikvetenskap och vänder sig till studenter inom miljövetenskapliga utbildningar samt till studenter inom genusvetenskap med intresse för miljöfrågor.

Engineering is an important force in the building of society. Engineers are identified as problem solvers, but also criticized for causing new problems due to a narrow focus on technology. Feminist theorists as well as researchers within sustainable development have called for a more democratic and accountable practice among engineers, in order to cater for widespread societal and environmental risks as well as moral questions of technological innovations. The introduction of sustainable development has been introduced by the Swedish government into the school system at all levels and specifically in higher education of engineers. Engineering education has a potential to prepare future engineers for engagement in societal aspects to a higher degree, but this requires a more integrated education program where values and discussions are integrated in courses.

In the Swedish Act for higher education, as well as in the policies of technical universities, it is stated that sustainable development (SD) should be integrated into engineering education. Researchers argue that SD needs to be integrated into the overall course content rather than added as a specific course. In this paper, six engineering lecturers have been interviewed to give their views on how SD can be integrated into teaching water and sanitation engineers. Engineering lecturers seem unsure how to interpret SD in relation to their own specific courses. Students are said to request technical knowledge rather than fuzzy ideas of SD and lecturers struggle to open up the teaching to more problem-based perspectives. Sanitary professionals in work practice relate to SD as a core in water treatment processes and regret that responsibility for SD issues fall between traditional departmental structures in society.

In this paper, we aim to explore how the focus on sustainable development affects municipal communication strategies in the sanitation sector. Efforts to reduce harmful substances in the sewage system have increased the focus on households and their use of chemicals ending up in the sanitary system. Yet the picture of effects of communication and how household habits change is rather vague. The present study has included a questionnaire distributed to a nationwide sample of municipal water and sanitation offices, as well as a focus group interview with sanitation professionals in one of the municipalities. Questions concerning communication strategies as well as expectations on households and on their own work tasks were included. It was found that sanitation professionals related to the concept of sustainable development in their work. The most common communication strategies were written information in different forms. Households used phone or e-mail to contact municipal offices. In the focus group interview, technical solutions were given priority as households were not expected to pay special attention to the sewage system. The view of households was ambivalent, and the issue of household communication was recognised as complex. Much of the current situation and approaches depend on the structure of the current large scale sanitation system, developed for convenience and safety during the last century.

During the past 25 years, the focus of the Swedish sanitation sector has turned from the protection of receiving water bodies from nutrients towars recycling and reuse of nutrients. A recent decision in Sweden to recycle 60 percent of phosphorus in sewage is a sign of this changing attitude. The concept of sustainability has contributed to this development. In this process, the interest in household use of the sewage systems has increased. In a number of reports and studies, the attitudes of households towards certain technically modified sewage systems are presented. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the attitudes of engineers and other sanitaiton professionals towards their work for sustainable sewage systems. In two Swedish municipalities, efforts to increase the chemical quality of the sewage have been studied. In one of them, a technical modification of the system in a new built area was tried. In the other, intensified information to a residential area was distributed during several months. Both projects aimed towards increased sustainability on a pilot scale. In this aspect, certain expectations were placed on the households to comply with the intenetions of the project. Sanitary engineers in the municipalities collaborate with other professions within the organisation to develop communication strategies with the households. Interviews with sanitation professionals have touched upon issues of knowledge needs as well as communication strategies. In the core of the study, the roles and expectations of professionals as well as households have been studied, from the perspective of professionals and households as well as engineering educators within the academy. The findings relate in interesting ways with theories of how infrastructural systems have developed. Despite a change towards recycling, the characteristics of the infrastructure remains, as do the expectations on the different actors in the system. A request for changes is formulated in order to achieve sustainable sewage systems in the future.

ICT and the role of universities - a technopolitical and postcolonial challenge When ICT (information and communication technology) development issues are situated in the context of knowledge- and technology co-development between low and high income countries, the need for understandings and praxis of postcolonial ICT emerge and the challenges for the academy and its technical faculties enhance. Relevance seems to be a core concept often raised. For development the change of position from merely technology transfer to co-development is strongly in demand. Feminist technoscience with emphasis on ICT is certainly motivated by transformation goals. The reasons for transformation are not only seen in the ongoing difficulties of achieving appropriate ICT system solutions especially in low income countries, but in the way we face contemporary processes of knowledge and technology development. The prerequisites for the latter are still to be met, and urge for transformation not the least within technical faculties of universities. Experiences from development of feminist technoscience within technical faculties implies recognitions of techno- and research politics deeply rooted in understandings of knowledge and technology production as processes, which occur in distributed systems. In other words, knowledge creation takes place on the boundaries between universities, companies (private sector) and other regional, national and international actors (public sector). Hence the role of the university comes into sharp focus and its (dis)ability of transformation. In the study presented experiences from University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden, will be discussed.

Informationsteknik, IT, postkolonialism, feministisk teknovetenskap, genusforskning, teknopolitik

Universities play a vital role in development and innovation in small and local businesses in East Africa. This has been made possible through Triple Helix processes linking academia, business and government in Innovative Cluster Initiatives. The cluster initiatives are coordinated through country chapters of Pan African Competitiveness Forum (PACF). Scandinavian Institute for Collaboration and Development (SICD) has been linked to PACF since start. In this anthology, active partners in cluster initiatives in Tanzania and Uganda present their experiences of university involvement. The contributors represent business persons in clusters, cluster facilitators, researchers in Uganda, Tanzania and Sweden and key persons of the PACF network.

In Swedish municipalities, householders are addressed as important actors in the efforts to improve the quality of sewage sludge. Householders and sanitation professionals are regarded as integrated and active co-producers of the sanitation system, while limited by the functions offered by the technical and organizational structure. Through interviews with both householders and sanitation professionals, recognition of interdependence was identified in both groups although more communication with counterpart was asked for. If the aim is to increase sustainability in the sanitation system, regardless of technical changes, we argue that two-way communication between householders and sanitation professionals needs to increase and embrace not only advice about choice of products and ways to carry out water related activities, but also planning of activities, feedback on results and other aspects of interest.

It has been well known since the 1960s that developing countries need to improve their capacity to use science and technology and that more efforts must be put into R&D that would benefit poor countries and people. Serious efforts to accomplish this exist but they are still too few and small in relation to the size of the problem. Whilst the supply of knowledge and competent people slowly has been growing, there is still a continued lack of demand for domestic knowledge. Foreign consultants dominate knowledge supply to government, industry and aid donors. Small firms and farms are not used to articulate their demand for knowledge. Such weak demand and timid articulation are typical signs of emerging innovations systems. Despite this, there are signs of a fragmented domestic creative potential that could be mobilised to increase innovation for inclusive development. In this article, practical experiences in Uganda and Tanzania illuminate possibilities to articulate and address the knowledge demand from firms and farms through cluster formation. In this type of cluster formations, universities have key roles as knowledge providers and as intermediaries that assist in building the ties and linkages necessary to move the innovation system to a higher state.

Studies have shown that societal change related to economic growth and development policies can affect the adaptive capacity of communities to a multitude of stressors including climate variability and change. Concerns have recently been raised about the consequences of climate mitigation and adaptation on vulnerable groups and the impacts of large-scale globalization processes on the adaptive capacities of local communities. This chapter addresses how side effects of technological and socioeconomic changes, which we refer to as spinoffs have potential to strengthen climate adaptation strategies. The spinoff examples fall under a two-dimensional framework according to whether they arise from orchestrated or opportunity-driven initiatives and technological or socio-economic changes. Three cases in developing countries undergoing rapid economic growth have been chosen as examples of different types of spinoffs and how they can positively influence climate adaptation and more particularly adaptive capacity. They are: information and communication technology (ICT) in South Africa, changing lifestyles in China and empowerment in India. The cases illustrate that new objects, inventions and trends constantly emerge which have potential to help people improve their livelihoods in ways that can be climate smart. People working as development workers and policy makers need to be observant and engage in open-minded dialogue with communities in order to recognize emergent technologies, lifestyles and trends to facilitate the use and development of on-going or potential spinoffs that positively affect adaptation to climate change.

In Cochabamba, the vulnerability assessment process focused on La Maica community and the agriculture sector. Community stakeholders were involved in workshops while municipal and regional actors participated through interviews. In the Kota process, the municipality was in the geographical focal point and a multi-level stakeholder group focused upon slum inhabitants. The suggested interventions and actions in both cities were dominated by systems (infrastructure and ecosystems) while identified barriers and facilitating factors to implementation revealed a greater acknowledgement of governance issues. Focus on marginalized groups and sectors is facilitated by the direct representations of those issues. While multi-stakeholder processes can be important forums for social learning adaptation planning that benefit vulnerable sectors and groups, with limited inclusion and responsibility given to representatives of marginalized sectors and groups for implementation actions, it is likely that the interests and priorities of more powerful actors will dominate and not contribute to increasing the resilience of the most vulnerable. © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Kota with a high proportion of slum dwellers and extremely high temperatures is under great demand to assess the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of different groups of its inhabitants to the impacts of climatic variability and change. Participatory workshops with key stakeholders in urban administration undertook a short vulnerability assessment to gauge current climate adaptation awareness and measures and discuss and decide on a numbered of proposed actions. The city has many policies and disaster management plans in place although implementation and enforcement was often found lacking. The actions were mainly about infrastructure and ecosystems with few related to boosting and transforming agent capabilities and institutions. The action plans outlining the frequency and responsible institutions for tree planting and cleaning streams also lacked detail or identification of lead institutions, departments, or people. Although stakeholders highlighted that local knowledge was not sufficiently used to inform good planning and policies, the action plans did not include community representatives in decision-making rather only in the implementation of the proposed actions. Although when the group identified slum populations as especially vulnerable the focus of the assessment shifted but in action plans representatives of this group were not included in any decision making or planning processes. © 2017.

We present framings of water issues at three administrative levels in Cochabamba, Bolivia to increase insight of how actors' perspectives facilitate, obstruct or strengthen suggested actions or solutions. Participatory vulnerability assessments were conducted with leaders in one peri-urban community and municipal and regional officials in waterrelated sectors. Actors framed water problems and potential solutions differently, placing blame most often at other levels of responsibility. While all pointed to the municipality as responsible for solving the most acute water problems, it was acknowledged that the municipality consistently underperforms in its responsibilities. All actors promoted concrete and detailed technical measures as solutions to many problems while governance-related ones such as training and increased cooperation between different levels were only discussed at an abstract level. While fiscal federalism would fit some of the suggested management solutions, issues such as ecosystem protection and flooding with cross-border externalities might require shared yet clearly defined responsibilities between different levels. We suggest that the water war of 2000 and the framings that emerged from it have so strongly impacted the current water management situation that alternative management models and solutions are rarely discussed. ©IWA Publishing 2017.