Arborloos

I should have said yesterday that the only rural EcoSan system that's currently scalable and has a good chance (given the right advocacy) of contributing to the MDG sanitation target is the Arborloo.

Sustainable Sanitation or just EcoSan?

IWA Publishing will publish in November the book Pathways for Sustainable Sanitation: Achieving the Millennium Development Goals by Arno Rosemarin, Nelson Ekane, Ian Caldwell, Elisabeth Kvarnstrom, Jennifer McConville, Cecilia Ruben and Madeleine Fogde, of the EcoSanRes Programme at the Stockholm Environment Institute (it’s expensive: GBP 25 for 64 pages!). This is part of what the pre-publication blurb says:

The report is a product arising from the work of the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance which was initiated prior to the International Year of Sanitation in 2008 in an attempt to inject sustainable development ideas into the sanitation sector. ... It reviews the global progress being made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target on sanitation. ... The report also provides a critique in that the UN has not yet introduced the concept of sustainability into the MDG programme in general and in particular into the sanitation sector which is highly dysfunctional and suffering from limited political leadership at both the local and global levels. It introduces the various sustainable sanitation options available and what approaches can be taken to improve sanitation systems – not just toilets which are only a small part of the overall system of food, nutrients and water cycles. ... The report estimates the potential fertiliser replacement capacity that reuse of human excreta can have for all world regions. Finally it provides a vision for future development within the sector where more sustainable options like source separation and reuse are promoted giving positive environmental or “green” impacts but also catalysing greater involvement and understanding on the part of individuals in society.

The key bit for me is “... more sustainable options like source separation and reuse ...”, and these are (according to the book’s title) going to achieve, or help to achieve, the MDG sanitation target. Well, I’ve got news for the authors: they won’t! There’s absolutely no way that ‘source-separation EcoSan’ is going to make any significant contribution to the MDG sanitation target. Why? Because there’s only seven years left to achieve the target and EcoSan just isn’t ready to go to scale. Ralf Otterpohl said at the Sanitation Challenge conference (see blog of 21 May) that it was only ready to go to scale in rural areas – and my view, reinforced by what I saw in Ouagadougou (see today’s earlier blog), is that EcoSan progress in rural areas is so slow that not much will happen by 31 December 2015.

There’s no doubt that the EcoSan ‘philosophy’ is sound, but its advocates need to realise that not enough has been done to get it to scale. They might argue that it is already scalable in rural areas – this might be true, but will it actually get to scale before the end of 2015? I have my doubts.

Sanitation conferences

There’s been quite a few sanitation conferences recently (as should be expected in IYS2008): Sanitation Challenge in Wageningen (see blog of 21 May), World Water Week in Stockholm (25 August), and the IWA Congress in Vienna (13 September). Last week it was the NETSSAF conference in Ouagadougou and this week it’s the IWA Sanitation MDG conference in Amsterdam.

Ouagadougou

NETSSAF (Network for the development of Sustainable Approaches for large scale implementation of Sanitation in Africa), a coordination action sponsored by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme, held its end-of-project conference in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso during 24−27 September. NETSSAF’s overall objective has been the coordination and integration of current scientific research and technological innovations in Africa (but in practice Western Africa), and thus create synergies to support the large-scale implementation of sustainable sanitation systems in periurban and rural areas. The aim has therefore been to propose feasible solutions for the achievement of the MDG sanitation target in Western Africa.

The conference itself was OK (rather too much EcoSan for my liking!), but the really interesting part was the all-day field visits on the last day. We were taken to a rural EcoSan project in a village, a periurban EcoSan project in Ouagadougou linked to urban agriculture, and the wastewater treatment plant for Ouagadougou (a series of relatively new waste stabilization ponds with effluent reuse for crop irrigation). The EcoSan projects were interesting as they showed quite clearly that, at least in Burkina Faso, EcoSan is far from being ready for large-scale implementation. Of course, if you regard these two projects as pilot-scale experiments, then that’s fine; but much work remains to be done, particularly in relation to costs (especially in periurban areas), before EcoSan becomes a viable sanitation option able to contribute to the achievement of the MDG sanitation target.

Amsterdam

The IWA conference “Millennium Development Goals on Sanitation” was held in Amsterdam during 30 September – 1 October. There was quite a bit on EcoSan, including the really pertinent paper entitled “What prevents ecological sanitation from going to scale?” by Dr. Snel (IRC) and Dr. ir. Mels (University of Wageningen), who had this to say:

From a user’s perspective, there generally remains a reluctance to focus on eco-san as a possible option, mainly because of reluctance of handling the by-products (urine and feces). Although a number of the champions in eco-san would argue that social barriers are overcome (or will be shortly!), the overall results from the questionnaires in both Phase I and II do not reflect this finding. In order to work towards a solution, it is of critical importance that stakeholders ranging from government personnel to households are more aware of the existing possibilities that eco-san can provide. Lack of information and know-how remain the real barriers towards the possible development of eco-san at any scale of development.

So now we know! So why not promote Arborloos – no handling of either urine or faeces!

Then there was my 2p’s worth (here) and an excellent thought-provoking paper “Sustainability in environmental protection (Priority to MDG over EWFD)” [EWFD = the EU Water Framework Directive] by Emeritus Professor Gatze Lettinga, but actually given by Professor Jules van Lier (both of Wageningen University). Dr. Darren Saywell (Development Director, IWA) also gave an excellent and equally thought-provoking paper on “Sanitation for 2.6 billion people. What we know and don’t know about the biggest public health scandal of the last 50 years”.

As part of my actual presentation I gave a sneak preview of a few of the results of UN-Habitat’s Lake Victoria study – details here. ‘Improved’ water supplies are a long way from ‘Adequate’ water supplies!! The same is true for sanitation. Oh dear!

Bucket latrines almost eradicated in South Africa

The South African Department of Water Affairs and Forestry has just published The National Sanitation Bucket Replacement Programme: Lessons Learnt. This programme was “aimed at replacing all the bucket toilets in formal settlements in South Africa that were established before 1994”. The programme started in February 2005 when a total of 252,254 bucket latrines were in use in formal settlements in South Africa. The original aim was to replace them all by December 2007, mostly by flush toilets or, in some cases, by VIP latrines. The government allocated a total of about ZAR 1.8 billion over the 3-year period 2005/06 − 2007/08 (equivalent to around USD 270 million) − this was “one of the largest allocations for any single government infrastructure project in South Africa”. By December 2007 81% of the bucket latrines had been replaced, and by March 2008 this had risen to 91%. Presumably now the figure is very close to 100%. The DWAF report is really interesting as it gives details on exactly how this very impressive programme worked in practice at national, provincial and local levels. So, very well done, South Africa!

India (see blogs of 18 January, 17 April and 7 August), take note!

The Big Necessity

Another truly excellent book to read in IYS2008: The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste, by Rose George (Portobello Books, 2008) − read some reviews here. [In the US it’s called The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters (Metropolitan Books, 2008).]

IWA World Water Congress, Vienna

The International Water Association held its biennial World Water Congress in Vienna during 7−12 September [there were other important Congresses in Vienna in 1515 and 1814-15 which had rather different outcomes!]. It was a really huge event with ~2,800 participants and many parallel sessions, so impossible to go to everything one would like to. IWA covers more or less the whole water cycle in all parts of the world, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise that ‘high-tech’ was represented more than ‘low-tech’ – although for the first time at these biennial conferences IWA made a really good effort, through its Development Director, Darren Saywell, to mainstream ‘development issues’ in general and sanitation in particular. The problem was, as in Stockholm (see blog of 25 August), too many presentations, so too little time for debate (and, even when there was some time, things went ‘off beam’ quite a bit – at least in a few of the sessions I attended).

Monday 8 September
I went to the afternoon sessions on the ‘Future of Sanitation: Expanding sanitation options to meet diverse needs around the world’ (fortunately interpreted as around the developing world). The main topic was the draft Vienna Charter on Urban Sanitation – a companion in-the-making to the Bonn Charter on Drinking Water. More work needs to be done, but let’s hope it turns out to be a really pertinent document.

Tuesday 9 September
The morning started with UN-Habitat’s Dialogue on Urban Sanitation organized by Dr Graham Alabaster, a good event in the ‘Development Corner’. Afterwards Graham and I discussed how best to publish the data UN-Habitat has collected on WatSan access not only in 17 towns around Lake Victoria, but also in ~100 cities in the developing world. It’ll take some time to write it all up properly and get it published. It should be ready for Stockholm next year, and it’ll be well worth the wait – it’s explosive stuff, so it has to be done very carefully!

In the afternoon there was a workshop organized by the IWA specialist group on Environmental Engineering Education. The question posed was “Water, engineering and education: are our educational institutions meeting today’s imperatives?” So it should have been good – but it wasn’t, as the presentations were somewhat ‘off beam’, so the question couldn’t be answered! It was also very disappointing that there was nothing on environmental engineering curricula in developing country universities, far too few of which address the real problems these countries face. And, of course, education is not only about today’s imperatives but also, and more importantly, about tomorrow’s.

Wednesday 10 September
I went to the session on waste stabilization ponds – no choice as I was a co-author of a presentation (already published in Water Science and Technology – see here) given by Professor Andy Shilton of Massey University, New Zealand. I then participated with Andy and Professor Marcos von Sperling (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil) in an informal meeting to plan the next IWA waste stabilization pond conference to be held next April in Belo Horizonte, for which Marcos is the main organizer.

Thursday 11 September
Last day of the congress proper (field visits tomorrow) and a session on urban sanitation and drainage which was jointly organized by IWA and SIWI. However, so few people turned up that the organizers decided to discuss the working relationship between IWA and SIWI and in particular how to coordinate better the Stockholm World Water Week, the current IWA biennial World Water Congresses and its new biennial Development Congresses (the first of which will be held in Mexico City in September next year).

Later in the morning I attended a demonstration on the use of solar cookers to disinfect water and a very simple kit to check the bacteriological quality of the water given by Professor Robert Metcalf of California State University Sacramento. Really excellent! More details here.

All in all, an excellent week!

Health & the Environment, Africa

African ministers responsible for health and the environment met in Libreville, Gabon, during 26−29 August 2008 for the WHO/UNEP-sponsored First Inter-ministerial Conference on Health and Environment in Africa − Health Security through Healthy Environments. The executive summary of the conference background technical paper Traditional and Current Environmental Risks to Human Health starts off really well:

Unsafe water bodies, poor access to safe drinking water, indoor and outdoor air pollution, unhygienic or unsafe food, poor sanitation, inadequate waste disposal, absent or unsafe vector control, and exposure to chemicals and injuries have been identified as key environmental risks to human health in most countries in Africa. The underlining reasons for this situation include inadequate or flawed policies, weak institutional capacities, shortage of resources, and low general awareness of environment–health linkages among policy makers and in the community. It is suggested that governments re-orient their national policies to foster a greater contribution of environmental management towards public health.

In the Libreville Declaration the ministers reaffirmed their “commitment to implement all conventions and declarations that bear on health and environment linkages” − including the eThekwini Declaration on hygiene and sanitation. However, they recognised that there were “constraints on accelerated implementation of the necessary integrated strategies to protect populations against risks resulting from environmental degradation, including risks related to unsafe water supply, sanitation, air quality, vector-borne diseases, chemicals, waste management, new toxic substances, desertification, industrial and domestic risks, and natural disasters”, but they nonetheless declared that “we African countries commit ourselves to … ensuring integration of agreed objectives in the areas of health and environment in national poverty reduction strategies by implementing priority intersectoral programmes at all levels, aimed at accelerating achievement of the Millennium Development Goals”.

All a bit wishy-washy! And WatSan wasn’t even mentioned in the set of Libreville Recommendations! No wonder Sub-Saharan Africa has problems!!