Survey of Stakeholder Perspectives (Activity 1) – Agriculture-Sanitation Expert group
While Sweden has an established history of research and development in ecological sanitation and urine‐separating systems, we have so far failed in linking agriculture and sanitation on a large‐scale within the urban context. In order to manage nutrient flows and strengthen the link from households to agricultural reuse it is necessary to bring such closed‐loop thinking into the urban planning processes. This means that sewage products/components need to be treated as a resource instead of simply “waste”. Dialogue linking agriculture and sanitation planning is needed early in city planning processes so that the connections are made at all institutional levels from centralized treatment and collection plans to household users and finally reuse. This means that there is also a wide variety of stakeholders that must be involved and whose needs must be met if an effective and profitable link between agriculture and sanitation is to be established.
The objective of this working group is to outline the key challenges of introducing closing‐loop sanitation planning into conventional city planning processes. It will identify criteria for stakeholder involvement and leverage points for adapting the planning process. It will do this through a series of activities which are intended to build on each other: i) survey of stakeholder perspectives and criteria, ii) validation of recommended criteria for a closed‐loop planning process, and iii) pilot planning process implementing the recommended process.