Key challenges for promoting the inclusion of precarious settlements in the SDG 6 Agenda of the Brazilian Urban Amazon

- What is the research challenge?
The state capital cities of the North region of Brazil, comprised by what is called the 'Brazilian Urban Amazon', have the country's lowest indices of access to Water and Sanitation Services (WSS) and the highest proportion of people living in precarious settlements. The research challenge is to study and map the informational, legal, regulatory, financial and related barriers for the inclusion of precarious settlements in the actions to meet SDG 6 in the Brazilian Urban Amazon.

- Why is it important?
In Brazil, addressing the access gap in the North region focusing on precarious settlements will be the only way to achieve the SDG 6 targets of universal coverage and to comply with the human rights to water and sanitation (HRtWS), whose principles are set to reduce inequalities within the country and between the rich and the poor, by promoting more equitable progress in the expansion of water and sanitation services (UNICEF/WHO, 2021).

- What don't we know?
In Brazil, the figures for access to WSS services are calculated considering the mandatory areas that the utilities have to serve, which generally excludes neighbourhoods with land tenure issues. Thus, precarious settlements are commonly not accounted for in the official indicators and plans of the country, of municipalities and of utilities. Although there are experiences of successful projects of WSS provision to precarious settlements in Brazil in the Northeast and Southeast regions, there is no institutionalised framework established to capture the reality of WSS access in illegal areas (Guimaraes, 2016). Thus, there is no study of the current status of the inequalities in WSS provision to the rich and to the poor, nor into whether the access gap is concentrated in precarious settlements. Also, it is unclear how local authorities and service providers are tackling the issue of WSS provision in urban precarious settlements, especially in the state capital cities of the North of Brazil, where the highest WSS access gap is found.

- How will the project be carried out?
The project will be divided into three phases:
i) To produce disaggregated data for WSS in urban precarious settlements of the North of Brazil;
ii) To investigate the inclusiveness of precarious settlements in the legal, regulatory, policy and related instruments and identify lessons from other Brazilian experiences;
iii) To assess the financial mechanisms in use in the state capital cities of the North region of Brazil, in terms of whether WSS are reaching precarious settlements and how effectively they are doing so.

- What will be the impact?
The intended impact is to shed light on the human rights to water and sanitation and the need for inclusion of precarious settlements in WSS provision in the Brazilian Amazon, incentivising further monitoring, and informing local governments and service providers to put in place inclusive public policies and planning instruments with more efficient allocation of resources to this end.

Water-WISER will train a cohort of 50 British research engineers and scientists and equip them to work in challenging environments both in the low-income settings of rapidly growing poor cities and in the changing urban environment of the UK, Europe and other regions with a historic endowment of aging infrastructure. The vision is for a generation of engineers with the skills to deliver the trans-disciplinary innovations needed to ensure that future water, waste and sanitation infrastructure is resilient to the stresses posed by rapid urbanisation, global climate change and increasingly extreme natural and man-made disasters. Our alumni will address the urgent need to re-imagine urban spaces as net contributors to ecological and environmental well-being rather than being net users of vital resources such as energy, nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon. These new leaders will be an essential resource if the UK is to deliver on its commitment to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 6 which calls for universal access to safely managed water and sanitation services, within planetary and local ecological boundaries. This next generation of research engineers will enable UK-based engineering consultancies, manufacturers, and utility companies to grow their share of the expanding global market for water and waste services, for example; in the water services industry from 3% to 10% (an increase of £33 billion per annum) by 2030, and attract significant inward investment.
The research which Water-WISER cohorts enable will form the basis of new innovations in the design and delivery of resilient infrastructure and services. Innovations developed by Water-WISER graduates will inform how growing cities are designed and built in the global south and will be used to inform the re-engineering and replacement of the aging infrastructure on which the UK's water and waste services are currently reliant. Our alumni will form the new generation of leaders who will play a central role in securing a larger share of the international water and waste management consultancy market to UK consultancies. The network of expertise and skills created by Water-WISER will enhance potential for collaborations between major UK players (for example strengthening links between UK consultancy, the Department for International Development, and leading UK water agencies such as WaterAid and Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor) and between UK companies and partners in the global south including international investors such as the World Bank, European Investment Bank, African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation. Graduates of Water-WISER will enter industry, academia and development agencies having spent a substantial period (minimum of six months) embedded in an industry or development partner organisation delivering their field-based research. Water-WISER students will thus gain a unique combination of trans-disciplinary training, field experience and cohort networking; they are destined for leadership roles in UK and international engineering and development consultancies, academia, international development banks, international agencies such as the United Nations and international non-governmental organisations.