African cities need 'greener' water infrastructure

Terra Daily via AFP: African cities need to move toward greener water and sanitation projects, such as rainwater collection, to keep pace with booming urban populations, a new United Nations report said Monday. "We need to turn to new and innovative engineering solutions and those that in particular address more green infrastructure," Tim Kasten of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) told journalists on the sidelines of a summit for World Water Day 2011.

Traditional engineering solutions were not able to keep up with swelling cities, says the report, "Green Hills, Blue Cities", produced by UNEP and UN Habitat. It argues that access to safe drinking water and sanitation has not matched massive population growth. "We're not able to keep pace. Some of the solutions of the past are not necessarily going to be able to take us into the future," said Kasten….

Kibera, a slum in Nairobi, Kenya, shot by Blazej Mikula, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license