Abstract Globally, 756 million people in urban areas have no access to improved sanitation, while the urban population is increasing rapidly. Providing toilets has often not been a sustainable solution because of failure to link them to the necessary service infrastructure. Resolving urban sanitation problems in low-income countries requires innovations in approaches covering infrastructure, technology, social embedding, financial mechanisms and cost recovery. This paper explores the potential challenges and contribution of NGOs in facilitating new, integrated solutions to urban sanitation problems that address the entire sanitation chain, promising better social, financial and environmental sustainability. A case study of a sanitation project initiated by a large Dutch NGO is presented, using reconstruction of project documentation and interviews with project stakeholders. The analytical framework combines elements from Transition Management (TM) with insights from process approaches to development projects and community development. The choice of the TM concept is motivated by the notion that the new NGO approaches could be conceived as efforts to initiate a sustainability transition process in urban sanitation, whereas its complementation with insights from the development studies domain answers to the need to attune a TM-based framework to participation in the socio-institutional context in low-income countries, to understand the progress of governing transition processes in informal, low-income settings. This context requires special attention for capacity-building and creation of organizational structures in poor local communities. The case study shows that this entailed specialised groundwork, with which the NGO laid a crucial foundation that enabled transition frontrunners to act. Simultaneously, this focus on bottom-up empowerment created challenges for the NGO in effectively involving the right frontrunner actors who could put pressure on incumbent societal structures and institutions. We conclude that transitions in low-income contexts require extra attention to local empowerment and institution building to lay the required foundations for a locally rooted transition process. Development NGOs like the one in our case study have the skills to do this, but need to learn how to combine these with additional necessary competences to facilitate systemic change.

中文翻译：

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非政府组织促进低收入国家向可持续城市卫生转型：转型管理和发展研究的见解

摘要 在全球范围内，城市地区有 7.56 亿人无法获得改善的卫生设施，而城市人口正在迅速增加。由于未能将厕所与必要的服务基础设施连接起来，提供厕所往往不是一个可持续的解决方案。解决低收入国家的城市卫生问题需要在基础设施、技术、社会嵌入、金融机制​​和成本回收等方面进行创新。本文探讨了非政府组织在促进解决城市卫生问题的新的综合解决方案方面的潜在挑战和贡献，这些解决方案涉及整个卫生链，承诺更好的社会、财务和环境可持续性。介绍了一个由荷兰大型非政府组织发起的卫生项目的案例研究，使用项目文件的重建和与项目利益相关者的访谈。分析框架将 Transition Management (TM) 的元素与开发项目和社区发展的流程方法的见解相结合。选择 TM 概念的动机是，新的非政府组织方法可以被视为启动城市卫生可持续性转型过程的努力，而它与来自发展研究领域的见解的补充回答了调整 TM 的需要-低收入国家参与社会制度背景的基础框架，以了解在非正式、低收入环境中管理过渡进程的进展。在这种情况下，需要特别关注贫困当地社区的能力建设和组织结构的建立。案例研究表明，这需要专门的基础工作，非政府组织以此奠定了使转型领跑者能够采取行动的关键基础。同时，这种对自下而上赋权的关注给非政府组织带来了挑战，使他们无法有效地让正确的领跑者参与进来，这些参与者可能会对现有的社会结构和机构施加压力。我们得出的结论是，低收入环境中的转型需要额外关注地方赋权和机构建设，以便为扎根于当地的转型过程奠定必要的基础。像我们案例研究中的发展型非政府组织有能力做到这一点，