Examining sanitation provision in Jakarta's kampungs: Access, risk, and right to the city

Abstract

The thesis examines the provision of urban sanitation in Jakarta's kampungs (informal settlements), a context where sharp disparities in basic sanitation services persist. While access to sanitation has been acknowledged as a universal human right, it holds various practical meanings for different communities. Processes of marginalisation in kampungs shape who gains access to sanitation and how, and who gets excluded and how. Through a grounded methodology focusing on everyday social practices and attention to the material and political realities of life in informal settlement communities, the thesis assembles an urban political ecology of sanitation in Jakarta.

The study adopts a mixed methods approach, including ethnographic participant-observation and semi-structured interviews with key informants, supported by quantitative survey data, descriptive statistics and water quality testing, to capture the complexity of sanitation provision and the lived experience of local residents. My approach examines the discrepancies in access and perceptions of risk among different households and neighbourhoods, and foregrounds the how social, political and material relations shape the right to the city.

The thesis argues that the kampungs in Jakarta are produced as spaces of urban marginalisation, which has historically been created and reproduced in contemporary life, impacting on unequal access to sanitation. Throughout the three empirical chapters of the thesis, the approach to an urban political ecology of sanitation in this thesis is organised through concepts of access, risk, and rights to the city. The first conceptualisation of access argues that that inequality in sanitation access is asserted through asymmetrical power relations for securing access and control over the service, shaped by access to a toilet and wastewater disposal infrastructure, home ownership status, as well as the adoption of a range of alternative sanitation practices that vary widely between different household and settlements. Regarding the concept of risk, the thesis examines how unequal risks are produced through uneven development, extending the current understanding of how water and sanitation are perceived, prioritised, and managed by people in Jakarta's kampungs. It is argued that residents hold a complex set of perceptions and beliefs concerning sanitation-related risks, and these beliefs guide their behaviours and decision-making processes. Importantly, residents also contend with a multitude of other risks in their daily lives, necessitating the prioritization of one risk over another. The third conceptualisation of right to the city relates to social struggles around sanitation and how individuals and communities, marginalised by a host of factors, including economic, social, and place-based issues, identify strategies for negotiating access to sanitation and claiming their right to the city. It is argued that individuals and groups employing various strategies to negotiate access have faced challenges in effectively securing their right to sanitation. While some individuals and groups engage in different strategies including collective social mobilisation strategies, nevertheless, on the whole such movements have not been effective to date in securing access to sanitation for urban kampung residents.

With increasing urbanisation and the changing urban ecology, access to sanitation in Jakarta's kampungs will only become an even more pressing issue. Thus, providing adequate, safe, affordable, and accessible sanitation for all users in informal settlements requires understanding the grounded realities of access to sanitation by considering actual capacities and practices as well as increasing education and empowerment among residents. In this context, improved access to basic services becomes a rallying point for reducing inequalities among the population, allowing disadvantaged groups in urban Jakarta to enjoy their right to the city. Show more