Access to accurate and trusted data for transboundary water management is important but not always sufficiently appreciated. Based on the Lake Victoria water levels decline, this technical note demonstrates that when a water crisis unfolds, tensions can arise because of absence of relevant data and uncertainty over data that are available. These may hamper the process towards agreeing on actions to be taken, thus delaying crisis resolution. This technical note demonstrates the importance of reliable data in a sensitive transboundary water situation. Countries therefore should allocate sufficient resources for adequately monitoring the state of transboundary water resources within their territories.

Much attention is being paid to the design and implementation of community-based monitoring initiatives of water and environment, and how to attract more citizens to participate in such initiatives. Although mass participation in collecting and sharing water-related or environmental data and good project design and implementation are key factors for the success of community-based monitoring, these initiatives do not operate in a void. Community-based monitoring initiatives are embedded in, and can influence, existing social, institutional, political and technological settings. In spite of the fact that these contextual factors are not static and constantly change over time, capturing their status quo at the initiation of a community-based monitoring activity delivers critical insights for establishing a sustainable initiative and can be used as a benchmark for assessing its subsequent outcomes and impacts. Yet, the salience of understanding the initial contextual settings is often underestimated, or these are only considered once an initiative has already been established. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of early stage research about such contextual realities. In order to do so, we employed the CPI Framework (Gharesifard et al., 2019) for conducting a systematic analysis of the baseline situation of two newly established community-based monitoring initiatives, one in the Netherlands and one in Kenya. The case study in the Netherlands focuses on the issue of pluvial flooding in an urban setting, while the Kenyan case study deals with balancing sustainable livelihoods and biodiversity management in a rural area. Our baseline analysis showed that aside from the fact that these initiatives have different thematic foci, there are distinct differences between the two in terms of access to technology, availability and accessibility of data, the institutional arrangements for public participation in decision making processes, and the level of citizen trust in the authorities in charge of managing the respective water-related and environmental issues. Based on the findings of this research, a number of recommendations are provided that can be beneficial for the future development and functioning of the two initiatives.

The lack of access to basic sanitation is a global concern and alarmingly prevalent in low- and middle- income countries. In the densely populated settlements of these countries, on-site sanitation systems are usually the only feasible option because dwellers there have no sewers in place to connect to. Using on-site sanitation facilities results in an accumulation of faecal sludge which needs to be properly managed to ensure the well-being of the users as well as the surrounding environment. Unfortunately, often the conditions for faecal sludge management (FSM) within dense settlements are adverse and thus hamper sustainable FSM. We use the normative framework of the FSM enabling environment to gather empirical evidence from densely populated settlements of Kigali city in Rwanda to examine current FSM practices and the extent to which these are being influenced and affected by the setting within which they are taking place. The analysis of the study findings confirms that the existing conditions for FSM in these settlements are inadequate. The specific constraints that hinder the achievement of sustainable FSM include limited government focus on the sanitation sector, high turnover of staff in relevant government institutions, pit sludge management is not placed on the sanitation projects agenda, the existing relevant bylaws are not pro-poor oriented, a lack of clear responsibilities, a lack of relevant local professional training opportunities, unaffordability of FSM services and an inhibition to discuss FSM. Drawing on the involved stakeholders’ own perceptions and suggestions, we identify possible approaches to overcome the identified constraints and to allow all actors in the FSM chain to contribute effectively to the management of faecal sludge in densely populated low-income urban settlements. Finally, our study also presents a contribution to the theoretical conceptualisation of the enabling environment for sustainable FSM.

Crowd-sourced environmental observations are increasingly being considered as having the potential to enhance the spatial and temporal resolution of current data streams from terrestrial and areal sensors. The rapid diffusion of ICTs during the past decades has facilitated the process of data collection and sharing by the general public and has resulted in the formation of various online environmental citizen observatory networks. Online amateur weather networks are a particular example of such ICT-mediated observatories that are rooted in one of the oldest and most widely practiced citizen science activities, namely amateur weather observation. The objective of this paper is to introduce a conceptual framework that enables a systematic review of the features and functioning of these expanding networks. This is done by considering distinct dimensions, namely the geographic scope and types of participants, the network's establishment mechanism, revenue stream(s), existing communication paradigm, efforts required by data sharers, support offered by platform providers, and issues such as data accessibility, availability and quality. An in-depth understanding of these dimensions helps to analyze various dynamics such as interactions between different stakeholders, motivations to run the networks, and their sustainability. This framework is then utilized to perform a critical review of six existing online amateur weather networks based on publicly available data. The main findings of this analysis suggest that: (1) there are several key stakeholders such as emergency services and local authorities that are not (yet) engaged in these networks; (2) the revenue stream(s) of online amateur weather networks is one of the least discussed but arguably most important dimensions that is crucial for the sustainability of these networks; and (3) all of the networks included in this study have one or more explicit modes of bi-directional communication, however, this is limited to feedback mechanisms that are mainly designed to educate the data sharers.