Special Issue "Best Available and Sustainable Wastewater and Sludge Treatment and Management Technologies for the Global South"

Dear Colleagues,

Whereas the Global South is still lacking suitable wastewater and sludge treatment technologies, solutions have often focused on low-cost technologies with cost as the main selection criterion. As a result, often so-called CATNEPs (cheapest available technology not entailing prosecution) technologies have been implemented, worsening the pollution problem. The often lacking maintenance of wastewater treatment technologies in the Global South has further contributed to the pollution problem. Recent international standards such as ISO 30500 (non-sewered sanitation systems—prefabricated integrated treatment units—general safety and performance requirements for design and testing) or ISO 31800 (fecal sludge treatment units—energy-independent, prefabricated, community-scale, resource recovery units—safety and performance requirements) have suggested a comprehensive set of strict environmental emission thresholds leading to BATs (best available technologies). However, best available may still not be sustainable in a Global South context.

We invite papers that analyze BAT in the Global South context and present viable approaches to solve wastewater management problems in a way that may be considered both best available and sustainable in the Global South. Hence, papers should explain in what sense and how the proposed solutions are technically superior, and why the solutions are also sustainable.

Dr. Markus Starkl
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• assessment
• best available
• innovative
• non-sewered
• policies
• sludge
• sustainable
• treatment