Integrating sustainable urban drainage, resource-based sanitation, biogas and food security

Vientiane is at a juncture in deciding how it will deal with the serious impacts of its drainage water within the city and on it receiving aquatic ecosystems. Although policymakers and practitioners acknowledge the sustainability of a multi-goal strategy, their perception  of the complexity of overlapping mandates prevents a shift from a comfortable approach of providing their own solutions for their own specific areas of responsibility, to a multi-goal strategy for climate compatible development.

There is a need for a bird-eye-view of the various cross-sectoral challenges and opportunities in order to provide policymakers and practitioners with strong evidence-based support to trigger multi-institution and multi-mandate discussions.  Instead of seeing problems as local, institutional and individual, this research will provide evidence to support jointly developed and tested sets of locally desired climate compatible solutions (in contrast to externally/donor demanded).  The research will be used to rally support and keep up momentum  in the multi-stakeholder planning process , ranging from policy-makers to private ventures.