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The international community has agreed to halve the proportion of people without access to safe water and sanitation by 2015. Achieving this task is a major challenge that will require strengthened efforts from all stakeholders, and, according to some estimates, a doubling of financial commitment (see Winpenny 2003). Currently, 1.1 billion people...

This paper provides an overview of solid waste generation and management in Asia, which, with rapid economic growth and urbanization, is becoming a major social and environmental issue. Every country or region within Asia has its own background and characteristics in relation to solid waste management and material-cycle policy, even though they...

Materials flow through cities on a daily basis, entering as needed products and leaving as wastes. Management of municipal solid waste provides both sanitation and recovery of valuable materials. At low income levels, market forces lead to recycling with no need for planning. In developing countries today, as in developed countries in the past, the...

This paper starts by tracing the origin of the informal sector and urban environmental management (UEM) paradigms. Their points of intersection in solid waste management and in the provision of water supply and sanitation are investigated based on a large number of published and unpublished studies. In addition to identifying the supply- and demand...

This paper presents an overview of the linkages between population growth, urbanization, economic development, and environmental issues in Asian cities. Focusing on the areas of transport planning and air pollution, solid waste management, and water supply and sanitation, it looks at the major environmental issues faced by cities in the region, at...

Sustainability assessment is growing as a new way to integrate environmental matters with economic and social considerations. The emerging techniques and processes are examined in terms of their application to cities on three levels: projects, plans, and buildings. The global context is used to examine the development of sustainability assessment...

Asian cities have witnessed rapid urbanization and an unprecedented rate of motorization in the last decade. Because of this, negative externalities of urban transport such as congestion and environmental impacts have become serious concerns. A number of past studies in this field have shown that health risks are high in key Asian cities...

The aim of this paper is to introduce the concept of sustainable urban wastewater management in the Asian context. Sewerage systems are key facilities to support public health and sound development in urban areas. They exist in most of the rapidly developing cities of Asia; however, a range of practical, financial, political, and environmental...

Since the 1970s, Asia has been engaged in a process of rapid economic growth through industrialization, with urban populations growing rapidly. This is causing a variety of environmental problems in the region: air pollution due to increasing vehicle traffic, shortage of clean water supply, pollution of urban rivers, and an increasing volume of...

This article focuses on the importance of scale to understanding urban environmental burdens and sustainability. It examines urban environmental burdens at three different scales: (1) within urban areas, where the central concern is how the quality of urban environments affects the lives of the people who live in them; (2) within urban regions...