Modelling the urban water chain: Incentives and cost recovery in wastewater treatment in developing countries

Abstract

To improve surface water quality in developing countries new approaches to design wastewater treatment schemes have been developed. We identify a compliance problem in these schemes which threatens their success. To analyze this problem, we integrate a compliance game into a model of the urban water chain. We illustrate the model with a numerical example on small scale leather processing. We find that the compliance problem indeed threatens the overall success of the treatment scheme and show under which conditions this is so. With an empirical calibration our model is a ready to use tool to provide quantitative results that can inform planners of urban wastewater treatment schemes.

Keywords:

• integrated urban water management
• urban water chain
• wastewater treatment
• developing countries
• compliance game
• economic incentives
• cost recovery

Acknowledgements

We thank Ekko van Ierland, an anonymous reviewer and Christos Makropoulos (associate editor) for helpful comments.

Notes

1. See Toze (2006) for a general overview on risks and benefits of the reuse of effluent.

2. Note that if , then . This does not represent total breakdown of the process but rather that the treatment process was not designed for this particular pollutant.

3. We do not consider any other problems, for example weather conditions that potentially influence the effectiveness of the plant.

4. There are, of course, other benefits. To illustrate qualitative results it is sufficient, however, to consider only one type of benefit for nutrient removal and pathogen removal.