The global conversation on "the world we want" continues. The results of the thematic discussions - including water - are expected in June. There are many hints that the goals and targets on basic services like water and sanitation - as included in the MDGs - will be enhanced with greater emphasis on equality and rights.

The Beyond 2015 campaign coalition has developed a position paper suggesting that "while the current MDGs have served to focus efforts on poverty eradication and overall development, progress has been uneven and governance and human rights have been neglected."¹ It hence calls for the foregrounding of the human rights to water and sanitation in the future post 2015 development framework.

WaterAid’s report "Everyone, everywhere" released for the World Water Day this year proposes that the post-2015 framework for development should:
1)    Target universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene by 2030
2)    Address inequalities in water, sanitation and hygiene access
3)    Embed human rights in water sanitation and hygiene provision²

The working groups of the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme’s also suggest universal coverage and the monitoring also of water, sanitation and hygiene at schools. From a rights perspective, it can be noted that the groups agree that progress towards universal coverage should not only be measured as increasing number of people with access to services, but also in terms of reducing inequalities. Such inequalities are to be monitored between:
-    Rich and poor
-    Urban and rural
-    Slums and formal settlements
-    Disadvantaged groups and the general population³

The UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, who chairs the Equality and Non-Discrimination Working Group in the JMP process, presents these ideas on monitoring in a succinct form. (Whereas this document suggests that data should also be "disaggregated according to gender, age and disability," such inequalities related to individual status are not deemed possible by the JMP to monitor as they rely largely on surveys conducted at the household level.)

The extent to whether a rights-perspective actually furthers access to water, sanitation and hygiene is debated. Is it a weakness that so few national legal frameworks include the (human) rights to water and sanitation? Clearly, without legal provisions at national level it is difficult to claim access rights through court processes. Or, human rights can be seen primarily as ethical demands⁴ to be argued as effectively outside of the courts by organized social movements.

The human rights to water and sanitation will be the topic of one of the workshops at the World Water Week in September, 2013. It will look into how research on the rights can be translated into relevant regulatory, legislative and policy instruments, and what are the benefits of using judicial processes for enhancing access to water and sanitation. And in relation to the post-2015 agenda: What are the human rights' implications for monitoring access to water, sanitation and hygiene locally, nationally and globally?

Reference
1. Beyond 2015 (2013) Water in the post-2015 development agenda. Beyond 2015. Global Thematic Consultation on Water and the Post-2015 Development Framework, page 2
2. WaterAid (2013) Everyone, everywhere: A vision for water, sanitation and hygiene post-2015. London, WaterAid. - page 35
3. JMP (2012) Proposal for consolidated drinking water, sanitation and hygiene targets, indicators and definitions. Summary of the consultations. - page 3
4. As argued in Sen, A. (2004) Elements of a Theory of Human Rights. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 32, 315-356.

Programmet har i år samarbete som övergripande tema, men många fler ämnen relaterade till vatten kommer att diskuteras. Flera seminarier kommer att tydliggöra angelägenheten i att samarbeta kring vatten som resurs i både mat- och energiproduktion, för hygien och sanitet, mellan och inom länder och mycket mer. Framförallt kommer fokus att ligga på konkreta exempel där samarbete leder till lösningar och extra fokus på hur bra projekt skall kunna skalas upp och få mer genomslag. Det är relevant för både beslutsfattare, forskare och praktiker.

För den som inte känner till Världsvattenveckan (eller World Water Week in Stockholm som är det internationella namnet), så har den ägt rum en vecka om året i Stockholm sedan 1991 och organiseras av SIWI. Den har växt till det största årliga mötet för att diskutera vattenfrågor kopplade till utveckling. Befolkningstillväxten och ökad efterfrågan på mat och energi bl.a. gör det till en än större utmaning att samarbeta inom och mellan länder och jurisdiktioner; olika sektorer i samhället; föda in vetenskap till beslutsfattare och påverka användare; och faktiskt mellan färskvatten och hav. På öppningsdagen måndagen den 2 september välkomsttalar Biståndsminister Gunilla Carlsson och Stockholms Finansborgaråd Sten Nordin. Jan Eliasson, vice generalsekreterare för FN, håller ett anförande och en eminent panel av talare från OECD, UNESCO, WWF, Global Water Partnership och World Business Council for Sustainable Development kommer att belysa vikten av samarbete från sina respektive perspektiv.

Programmet, som organiseras av mer än 260 organisationer i samverkan, innehåller åtta vetenskapliga workshops, 120 seminarier och flera prisceremonier. De viktigast prisen är förstås Stockholm Water Prize, Stockholm Industry Water Award och Stockholm Junior Water Prize som riktar sig till ungdomar över hela världen. Som studerande eller ung yrkesverksam finns nu också möjlighet att registrera sig till två specialutformade seminarium, en diskussion om att jobba med vattenfrågor och en arbetsmarknadsdag. Utställningen kommer att vara öppen för er som är intresserade av att träffa organisationer som arbetar inom vattenområdet och man kan även få hjälp med att skriva ett attraktivt CV. På ”Ideas Market” kan man söka bidrag till sin smarta idé eller projekt.

Världsvattenveckan 1-6 september kommer att vara världens mötesplats för alla som vill berätta eller veta något om vatten – blir det din?

Kolla programmet och registreringsinformation på www.worldwaterweek.org.

Recently I was in Botswana giving a course on planning for wastewater and sanitation management for the Department of Water Affairs (DWA) who has recently taken over the mandate for provision of these services. It became very obvious during the week that the participants were interested in managing conventional centralized wastewater systems and did not see a place for decentralized or on-site services in their mandate. In fact, there seems to be no clear institutional mandate for non-centralized services. Previously DWA had responsibility solely for water provision. So perhaps it is not surprising that they see their new sanitation responsibilities purely from the "how do we clean the water" perspective.

This perspective is not at all unusual in the sector which is generally referred to as the water and sanitation sector. The water-sanitation connection is deeply ingrained in the sector. Engineers are trained on technologies based on centralized sewerage and politicians promote these big investments as "state-of-the-art" solutions for their populations. The trouble comes of course when we start to realize that the vast majority of the world’s population does not have access to water-based sanitation and that the costs of building and maintaining such systems are prohibitive to providing sanitation for all. On-site and dry solutions are and will continue to be a critical part of providing the health and environmental benefits of universal sanitation.

Often responsibilities for sanitation get divided up based on desired out-comes, e.g.  health, water or environmental protection. However, this often leads to one-sided thinking on solutions. Such is the case in Botswana where the DWA aims to "promote water conservation through the reuse of treated wastewater" without considering that dry toilets can also conserve water. Housing sanitation in health departments can have the opposite affect with the focus being on pathogen control to the exclusion of reuse potentials. If the contents of pit latrines and septic tanks are classified as solid waste rather than wastewater, responsibility for on-site sanitation can end up with the waste management department who are often not invited into wastewater sector discussions. Determining the proper home for sanitation has major consequences for what type of system is promoted for use and on the potential for treating the waste flows as resources.

So the challenge is how do we find a proper home for sanitation that covers service provision for all (not just those with flush toilets) and at the same time provides opportunities for resource recovery?
A number of Swedish utilities (e.g. Roslagsvatten) have now taken over responsibilities for both wastewater and solid waste which gives them the flexibility take a holistic perspective in handling "waste fractions". Another example is Telge in Södertälje which has collaborated with the Swedish Farmer Association in development of their black water treatment, allowing for out of the box thinking and more possibilities for recycling.  Both have created a home for sanitation by working in wider collaborations than the typical institutional silos of the water-sanitation sector. Perhaps we can share some of these experiences with our colleagues in Botswana?

Idag var startskottet för vår nya seminarieserie om den hållbara maten. Vi hade bjudit in tre spännande talare för att diskutera hur man som konsument väljer bra mat, som tar hänsyn till klimatet, vår närmiljö och sociala aspekter av livsmedelsproduktionen. Först ut var Johanna Björklund, forskare vid Örebro Universitet. Johanna berättade om hur den mat vi äter påverkar miljö och sociala förhållanden både i Sverige och globalt. Sverige importerar idag 50 % av den mat vi konsumerar. En stor miljöbov är den globala djurhållningen. Tre fjärdedelar av all jordbruksmark är idag avsatt för animalieproduktion och den genererar 18 % av växthusgasutsläppen. Animalieproduktionen bidrar även till andra problem så som skövling av skog för bete eller foderproduktion, övergödning, antibiotikaresistens mm. Köttproduktionen konsumerar även enorma mängder vatten. Trots de stora miljöbelastningarna denna produktion medför har konsumtionen av kött i Sverige ökat markant, närmare sagt med 50 procent sen 1990. Vi äter betydligt mer kött än vad vi behöver. Johanna menade att för att lösa problemen behöver vi bygga kretslopp. Avståndet måste minska mellan växter och djur samt mellan stad och land. Genom att minska köttkonsumtionen, köpa mat som är närodlad och ekologisk samt minska matsvinnet kan man som konsument bidra till att livsmedelsindustrin rör sig i mer hållbar riktning.

Efter Johanna var det Louise Könings tur att berätta om hur Coop arbetar med konsumentinformation. Louise inledde med att berätta att Coop ställer höga krav på leverantörer vad gäller miljö, hälsa och etik. Principen har varit att inte välja bort ohållbart producerade varor utan istället underlätta för konsumenten att göra bra val genom tydlig information. Coops miljö-eller rättvisemärkta varor står för 5,6 % av försäljningen varje år. De allra flesta premierar med andra ord fortfarande pris före miljöpåverkan. Man ser dock att man har en viktig roll i att informera folk om vad de köper och man har även bedrivit en del påverkansarbete. Nyligen sänkte man exempelvis priserna på ekologiska grönsaker och frukt för att folk skulle köpa mer ekologiskt. Coop har även upprättat en medlemspanel där kunderna kan lämna synpunkter på sortimentet. Louise uppmanar alla att engagera sig i medlemspanelen så Coop kan förbättra sitt hållbarhetsarbete ännu mer.

Sist ut var Oloph Fritzén. Oloph har under en längre tid varit verksamhetsledare på Stockholms närmsta bondgård som ligger på Järvafältet. Nu har han lämnat Hästa gård och flyttat ut till Muskö där man håller på att starta upp Drömgården - en medlemsägd bondgård som syftar till att minska avståndet mellan konsument och producent. Liksom Johanna påpekade är det växande avståndet mellan landsbygd och stad ett problem och konsumenten har idag mycket lite insyn i hur livsmedelsproduktionen går till. De flesta bönder i Sverige producerar antingen grönsaker, spannmål, kött eller mjölk.  Genom att producera en produkt blir man sårbar för prissvängningar och får en mer osäker ekonomi. Producenterna har marknadens krav på att vara billig och idag är det svårt för bonden att visa upp hur produktionen går till. Visste fler om hur exempelvis kycklinguppfödningen ser ut skulle färre konsumenter köpa kyckling. För att få inspiration och idéer till Drömgården reste Oloph till USA där han besökte så kallade CSA-gårdar (Community Supported Agriculture). Dessa gårdar producerade allt som behövdes för att försörja sina runt 200 medlemmar: grönsaker, kött och spannmål. Medlemmarna betalade en fast avgift och kunde varje fredag besöka gården och plocka på sig mat för den kommande veckan.  Till Drömgården är alla välkomna som är intresserade av att lära sig mer om lantbruk och som vill veta hur deras mat producerats.

När det sedan blev dags för frågor var det många armar som viftade i luften. Tydligt var att detta är ett ämne som engagerar! Det känns både kul och nödvändigt att vi fortsätter att diskutera hur livsmedelsproduktionen kan bli mer hållbar. Den 15 maj hålls nästa frukostmöte om det hållbara maten och då kommer vi prata om matvarubutikens roll i hållbarhetsarbetet – varmt välkomna!!
 

Oloph Fritzén talar inför KSLAs fullsatta källarmatsal.

For many years, OECD has been a proponent for ‘green economy’ and has published reports on many green growth related topics. A month ago OECD hosted a high-level meeting about “Managing and measuring our increasingly scarce natural resources”.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss how to best show the economic costs of not putting environmental policy in place, and the economic benefits of doing so and achieving environmental goals. The Swedish government has recently declared that they will publish a report on that theme. In addition to the representatives of all OECD-member nations, some UN agencies and a few NGOs have a place at the OECD-high-level-meetings. On the behalf of 180 million members around the world, the trade unionist at the negotiating table declared that:

•    The highest economic costs and benefits related to the environment will be found if one looks for the positive health effects on labor-productivity from policies improving the environment. As between 60-70 per cent of GDP, +/- 10 percentage points depending on the country and the year, consists of compensation for work, it is the possible impact of environmental degradation on labor force participation and labor productivity that will produce big numbers in the analysis.
•    Poor air quality, undrinkable water and contaminated food should be a major priority, as this negatively affects a worker’s ability to do productive work. Water availability and affordability of good-nutrition food on the other hand do wonders for human health and work productivity.
•    If, or then, essential natural resources, as food, water and energy, become more scarce they also become more expensive, which means that the poorest households will not have the purchasing power to eat properly and maintain their health, with detrimental effects not only for them but for the whole economy if work productivity is affected.
•    Trade unions always call for “green decent jobs, with good pay”. The reason is that it will become increasingly costly for the global economy if not (all) jobs turn ‘greener’ (thriftier, more efficient, cleaner and more renewably-based). Furthermore working conditions must be conducive to good health, and salaries high enough to allow people to sustain themselves, their families and secure all family members’ health and productivity. Trade unions start their reasoning concerning these green economy issues from their members’ horizon and bottom up. OECD argues from the GDP-level and top-down. But as we usually agree on the interdependencies of the environmental, social and economic sustainability dimensions we meet in the middle, as one should in most negotiations.

These issues, and other green-growth related topics, will also be discussed at OECD the upcoming week, when OECD organizes the Annual Conference of the Green Growth Knowledge Platform together with UNEP. The World Bank, which has recently published a study claiming that air and water pollution cost China more than half of its economic growth, and the largest loss is related to health effects, is also one of the organizers.

The 4th of April a conference was held in Stockholm focusing on how global health is related to environmental problems and climate change, and how costly it is to not to curb these environmentally induced health problems. Clearer examples of how the sustainability dimensions – the environmental one, the social one, and the economic one - are interconnected, and how beneficial it is to turn their present vicious circles into positive feed-back loops are hard to find.

The Caspian Sea is the largest inland body of water in the world, accounting for over 40% of the total lake waters of the world. It is a transboundary body of water located in a water scarce part of the world, with growing populations and potentially negative effects of climate change. Is there a risk that excessive water abstractions will turn the Caspian Sea into a new Aral Sea? Recent events indicate some worrying signs.

The Volga River in Russia contributes 80% of the inflow into the Caspian Sea. It also controls sea level changes. When there is plenty of rainfall in the catchment, inflow increases and the sea levels rises. The last short-term sea-level cycle included a sea-level fall of 3 m from 1929 to 1977, followed by a rise of 3 m from 1977 until 1995. The level right now is high, even to the extent of causing flooding in low-lying areas in the South.

Several of the sea’s riparian states – Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan – have already established small-scale abstraction schemes. On the Turkmen coast there are three desalination plants, with the largest having a capacity of 35,000 cubic meters per day. Kazakhstan has a large facility in the city of Aktau that produces some 18 million cubic meters of drinking water annually. Azerbaijan has plans for irrigation schemes making use of Caspian water.  The Caspian Sea has the potential to provide much water to new irrigated agriculture schemes. 

The biggest initiative to date, however, is the recently initiated Iranian Caspian Sea Water Transfer Project. It was presented by Iranian President Ahmadinejad last year as a boost to the economies of Iran’s central areas and to stop desertification. The project intends to desalinate water from the Caspian Sea and move it via a pipeline into North-Western Iran where it will be used for domestic and irrigation purposes. The first stage of the project envisages having 200 million cubic meters of water drawn from the Caspian per year. In a final phase the project aims to transfer 500 million cubic meters of water annually to the Iranian central plateau and Kavir Desert via a 500-kilometer-long pipeline. The project will cost $1.5 billion in its first phase. Read more here.

The reactions to this project have been mixed. Russia is alarmed. The fate of the Aral Sea is still a vivid memory and many official reactions are negative. The Russian fishery commission Rosrybolovstvo believes that the Iranian project “should be closely studied within the framework of the five-party commission for the Caspian.” Kazakhstan is also critical, “If Iran goes ahead with its intention, naturally, negative effects may ensue, in particular, in the Kazakh part of the Caspian. Our off-shore areas are the shallowest, and our scientists believe that the level of water may fall considerably.” Still, the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences states that “this withdrawal is quite possible from the ecological standpoint; the Iranians have declared the intention to take 500 million cubic meters of water, which poses no great risks to the sea.” Those riparians already pumping Caspian water out of the sea are not saying much.

Few if any studies have focused on the possibility of the Caspian Sea to turn into a new Aral Sea. The risk is probably not so big. The Aral Sea was drained following massive diversions on its two main tributaries, reducing the lake inflow by approximately 10,000 million cubic meters per year. It was a major withdrawal compared to the lake size. The Caspian Sea on the other hand is much bigger and the inflow by the Volga River is approximately 250 000 million cubic meters per year. Still, sea level changes in closed basins happen at the balance between inflow and evaporation and a number of large pumping schemes could offset this delicate balance and initiate falling sea levels. The risk should not be underestimated.

In any case, this large transboundary body of water would benefit from new approaches in water management. More communication among the riparians, demand-driven solutions to water scarcity, and better use of scarce water than irrigating the desert – it would all benefit the Caspian Sea.

SIWI i spänd förväntan! UNESCO och SIWI har under en längre period fört en dialog om behovet av ett så kallat Kategori II center kring ’Vattensamarbete’.

Under 2013, som också av FN utnämnts till det ”Internationella året för samarbete kring vatten”, förväntas UNESCO besluta om den svenska ansökan om att få etablera ett center kring vattensamarbete. SIWI kommer att vara värd för centret och Uppsala Universitet och Göteborgs Universitet är partners. UNESCO driver sitt arbete, bland annat det som rör vattenfrågor, genom etablerandet av centers med olika fokusområden. UNESCOs vattenprogram har under en längre tid arbetat med bland annat ett program som heter PCCP (from Potential Conflict to Cooperation Potential), där man tagit fram studier kring ämnet. Den forskning och det policyarbete som SIWI bedriver inom ramen sitt tematiska arbetsområde för gränsöverskridande vatten tillsammans med School of Global Studies, Göteborgs Universitet samt Institutionen för Freds- och Konfliktforskning, Uppsala Universitet, är av stor relevans för UNESCO:s arbete. Ett center kan också ses som en viktig kunskapsbas för det mer praktiskt inriktade ”Shared Waters Partnership”-program som SIWI implementerar på uppdrag av FN:s Utvecklingsprogram (UNDP).

Arbete kring gränsöverskridande vattendrag, samt frågor kring internationellt samarbete, fred, säkerhet och utveckling, har sedan lång tid varit svenska prioriteringar. Sverige har en långvarig tradition av stöd till olika internationella flodområden, i Afrika, Mellanöstern och Asien. Ett UNESCO-Center vid SIWI med fokus på dessa frågor kommer att på ett tydligt sätt markera Sveriges prioritering av dessa frågor, samt också tydliggöra den svenska resursbasens kapacitet vad gäller att arbeta med frågorna. Både UNESCO och SIWI ses som neutrala parter med hög trovärdighet, och har därmed förutsättningar att kunna bli engagerade i olika processer, även i potentiellt konfliktfyllda områden.

Jag sitter på tåget och blickar ut över ett snötäckt Sverige. Jag är på väg för att träffa Lena och Eva som arbetar med miljöutbildningar på Ekocentrum i Göteborg. Vi ska diskutera SWHs bidrag till deras permanenta miljöutställning. Nyligen hade vi planeringsmöte på SWH och jag sitter nu och tänker på alla de spännande aktiviteter vi planerat under året; seminarier, frukostmöten, nätverksträffar och mycket mer! 

En sak som jag verkligen ser fram emot är de policyrekommendationer som våra klustergrupper kommer att producera. Samtliga grupper går nu in på sista året och det är dags att sammanfatta och dra slutsatser från det arbete som bedrivits. När jag började på SWH som praktikant var min första uppgift att starta upp klustergruppen ”Gränsöverskridande Vatten”. Nu drygt två år senare kan jag konstatera att vi hunnit med en hel del, bland annat producera en databas över TWM aktiviteter i världen samt hålla både workshops och seminarier. Förra veckan träffades vi för att stöta och blöta idéer för vår policy brief. Det rådde ingen brist på förslag utan nu är det min uppgift att samla dessa på papper och utveckla dem för att till slut formulera en policy brief som alla mina klustergruppsmedlemmar kan skriva under på.

Det blir ingen lätt uppgift då det är många som ska enas men de många författarna är just klustergruppernas styrka. Ju fler som är eniga, desto större genomslag.  Som klustergruppsledare ser jag fram emot spännande diskussioner och så småningom att få dela de färdigtryckta rekommendationerna med er alla!

The follow-ups to the Rio+20 Conference - 20 years after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro – include several initiatives by the UN Secretary General. At the conference participants from governments, the private sector, NGOs and other groups, convened to formulate a resolution for the future of our planet. This resolution partly took its point of departure in the Millennium Declaration and the Millenium Goals, presented in the year 2000 on the important issue of combatting poverty, an issue that is as burning today and which has resulted in a ‘Global Call to Action Against Poverty’.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have served as a shared framework for global action and cooperation on development since 2000. As the world approaches 2015, the overall target date for achieving the MDGs, thinking has begun on how to advance the global development agenda beyond 2015. To support this effort, the UN has established the UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda, launched a High-level Panel of Eminent Persons and appointed a UNGS Special Advisor on Post-2015 Development Planning.

These processes are complemented by a set of eleven global thematic consultations and national consultations in over 60 countries facilitated by the United Nations Development Group and a ‘Global Online Conversation’ - all of which aims to contribute to a vision for “The World We Want” beyond 2015. The thematic consultations include a “Post 2015 Water Thematic Consultation”. That consultation started 14th January and ends a 17th of February 2013. Read more here.

Over the course of these 5 weeks, the UN Water Resources Management stream will lay out weekly related topics with key questions to which the viewers are invited to comment, discuss and debate about in the open platform. One of the issues concerns “Climate Change and Water Related Risks” and is opened for discussions 22nd-28th of January.

The framing paper for this specific subject, Climate Change and Water-related Risks, is available here.

Background material provided by UN on the subject:
UN Water Policy Brief: “Climate Change Adaptation: The Pivotal Role of Water”
UN Water Leaflet on Climate Change and Water

The aim of the water consultation is to facilitate voices from a broad range of stakeholders to build consensus around key challenges in water in the post-2015 development agenda. The discussions focused on the different sub-themes will be followed by a consultation exploring the linkages between the themes and will be fed into the intergovernmental process to develop Post 2015 Sustainable Development Goals.

Crisis, crisis, crisis. Isn’t that what we hear in almost every discussion on water management in the future? The World Economic Forum Global Risk Perception Survey published in January this year identified the “Water Supply Crisis” as one of the top five risks facing humanity in the next decade. “Mismanaged Urbanisation” was also rated high. Combined, these two risks conjure up images of Mad Max-style chaotic cities with ragged inhabitants fighting over the last drops of water. Paradoxically, the pre-eminence of “crisis-thinking” takes place against a background of great improvements in access to drinking water supply across the globe in the last two decades. We have also - this far - been able to use more and more water to prop up standard improvements for the booming urban middle-class. But culturally programmed as we are on classic Greek dramas, we know that after Hubris we must be brought down in a Catastrophe. What does this drama hold for our urbanising world?

Let’s take a closer look at the WEF survey. One thousand experts were asked to rate risks on a scale from 1 to 5 where 5 means the risk is almost certain to happen in the next ten years. Experts across the globe rated the risk of a water supply crisis to just over 4, thus very likely to occur. The risk they were asked to rate was: “Decline in the quality and quantity of fresh water combine with increased competition among resource-intensive systems, such as food and energy production.” But defined this way, I think most people – experts or not - would agree that the “water supply crisis” is already here.

The WEF survey thus adds very little to what we already know: competition over fresh water resources is increasing and this affects quantity and quality negatively. Last year’s OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050 projected that with current practices, an additional 2.3 billion people will live in water-stressed areas by 2050. Global water demand rises with 55% from year 2000; most of this increase comes from energy production and industry. Although water for domestic use will double it still makes up less than 15% of total consumption, most of which will be consumed in cities. Yes, some 240 million people – mainly rural - will still lack safe water. But the bright side is that this is less than a third of today’s figure. Notably, the number of children dying from water-related diseases will plunge from almost 2 million to 0.5 million per year.

So again this paradox. Water is becoming scarcer, yet projections show there will indeed be enough water for booming cities and for an improved global health status. How is it possible? Well, let’s first acknowledge that resource scarcity and low water supply are often distinctly different problems. Kisumu in Kenya is my favourite example. A city of half a million, sitting on the verge of the second largest freshwater lake in the world, yet only able to supply 35% of its inhabitants. Already ten years ago the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) performed a statistical analysis dismissing the common belief that water scarcity implies lower access to drinking water. In fact, IIED found more evidence for the opposite: where water was scarcer, access was higher. Without digging deeper into the dynamics of this phenomenon, let’s just conclude once and for all that the relationship between shortage and access is not so straight-forward as many actors in this drama would have it.

Before panicking about looming water shortages, urban managers should worry at least as much about storm water management. According to the United Nations, many of the mega-cities in the South are already particularly vulnerable to flooding, and climate change is likely to aggravate the problems.

 
The projected risk for flooding of large cities in the year 2025. Source: United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects, the 2011 Revision. New York 2012

If there’s an urban water crisis, it is not only about water shortage and taps running dry. Some cities are likely to face the risk of too much water, rather than too little. A safe bet is that as the plot of the drama thickens, urban water managers will be challenged by a multitude of issues, such as flood management, equitable distribution, environment protection, quality and health aspects. This is important to remember also for Swedish professional actors focusing on the world water market. Knowledge and solutions are needed to tackle a range of future urban water security challenges in an integrated way.

How the drama ends? I wouldn’t dream of disclosing that in a review!

 

My youngest daughter and I just finished watching the BBC series on filthy cities, where the journalist Dan Snow digs deep into the historical dirt of London, Paris and New York. For someone in the sanitation business of today it is quite compelling to see how many parallels can be made between e.g. New York of the 19th century and the reality in many mega cities today on dirt and disease, corrupt politicians taking the cash and leaving the trash, slum landlords making fortunes on impoverished slum dwellers, and sewage treatment plants that are unable to cope with the sheer volume of wastewater. My only disappointment on this otherwise excellent series is that Mr Snow misses out on this very obvious link to today’s cities in e.g. South Asia.

Dan Snow also talked about the gong farmers, or muck rakers, of medieval London, who did their best to remove solid and liquid waste from the city. The equivalent of gong farmers also exists today in many cities and towns all over the world. It is easy to forget that the majority of people in African and Asian cities rely on on-site sanitation, if they have access to any sanitation at all (WHO&UNICEF 2000, kolla Chowhudry). These on-site sanitation systems usually consist of pit latrines or septic tanks, both types eventually fill up and are in need of emptying to function in a sustainable way.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has financed an excellent study on fecal sludge businesses (can be downloaded here) in thirty different cities and towns across Asia and Africa, a study in which authors found out that 34% of the over 13,000 interviewed households across the thirty cities still use manual emptiers (Chowdhry and Kone, 2012), hence the equivalent of the English gong farmers. I have seen manual pit emptying in peri-urban Dakar, and it is indeed a gory business. An indoor household septic tank was emptied by a local adolescent who had formed a sort of canal on the slightly from the loo towards the entrance sloping hallway floor, between two for the purpose built sand walls about 0.2 m high. He then scooped up the septic tank content with a bucket and sent it into the little canal, in which the sludge slowly found its way out of the house, into the street and over  into a hole the pit emptier had prepared before the onset of the operation. Incredibly messy and very unhygienic; raw fecal sludge is disease-carrying and poses health risks to today’s manual pit emptiers.

In rural Bangladesh manual pit emptiers are probably holding 100% of the market share of the pit emptying business. The organization BRAC (www.brac.net), one of the world’s largest NGOs, has engaged in pit emptying businesses after having been very successful in providing single and double pits to rural Bangladeshis (read more on their sanitation program here). The pit latrines need to be emptied in order for the access to sanitation to be sustained over time. Manual pit emptying in Bangladesh is as stigmatized, unhygienic and hard job today as it used to be in Europe in the past. It is, however, difficult to see how we can quickly move away from manual emptying in many contexts. A more productive and pragmatic solution today is probably to try and improve the situation for manual pit emptiers, which is one aim of BRAC. Fecal sludge has more characteristics than only being a smelly disease-carrier in its raw form. Treated fecal sludge, in which disease-causing microorganisms have been reduced to reasonable levels, actually represents a value as a fertilizer. This is known among farmers all over the world, and fecal sludge, unfortunately often raw, is often used as a fertilizer input in agriculture. BRAC is interested in trying to put the fecal sludge from the pit latrines they help construct into that type of good use, but without the pathogens. One line of BRAC development is therefore micro enterprises with e.g. pit emptiers working together with farmers to produce organic fertilizers out of fecal sludge. The most important nut to crack for this organic fertilizer business to work is development of cheap and simple treatment methods of raw and semi-raw fecal sludge from pit latrines to kill off the sturdiest of the sturdiest among the disease-causing organisms: helminths. BRAC has in fact launched, through IRC, an international call for proposals on this very topic, click here, so please, if you have good and simple ideas on fecal sludge treatment methods, do not hesitate, submit your proposal before Jan 11, 2013 to help sanitation development in general and Bangladeshi pit emptiers in particular!

Dan Snow ended the program on NY by highlighting how cities are tethering on the edge of destruction under their own filth and how we over the centuries have found ways to deal with the filth, not only through technical inventions but also through good governance. He said that the battle against filth will never be over, which is of course true (there is every day evidence of that in my own kitchen!). When sanitation systems break down, as in NY during the hurricane Sandy, cities are flooded with both liquid and solid waste. Other cities and towns, like e.g. Dhaka, are flooded on a daily basis with liquid and solid waste irrespective of whether a hurricane has passed by or not. There is still a long way to go to get the world as a whole up to speed on sanitation. Improvement of fecal sludge treatment is one good way of contributing to the sector development, so do check the above link and submit your ideas!

References

• Chowdhry, S. and Kone. D. 2012. Business Analysis of Fecal Sludge Management: Emptying and Transportation Services in Africa and Asia, Accessed on Dec 4, 2012.
• WHO & UNICEF. 2000. Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation. Global Water Supply and Sanitation Assessment 2000 report. Accessed on Dec 5, 2012.

More interesting reading material on fecal sludge management and emptying

• Eales, K. 2005. Bringing Pit Emptying out of the Darkness - A Comparison of Approaches in Durban, South Africa and Kibera, Kenya.  Accessed on Dec 5, 2012.
• Kone D., 2010. Making urban excreta and wastewater management contribute to cities' economic development: a paradigm shift. Water Policy 12 pp. 602-10.
• Kvarnström, E., Verhagen, J., Nilsson, M., Srikantaiah, V., Ramachandran, S., Singh, K. 2012. The business of the honey-suckers in Bengaluru (India): The potentials and limitations of commercial fecal sludge recycling - an explorative study. Occasional paper 48 (online). The Hague: IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. Accessed on Dec 5, 2013. 
• Mbéguéré, M., Gning, J.B., Dodane, P.H. and Koné, A., 2010. Socio-economic profile and profitability of faecal sludge emptying companies. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 54, pp. 1288-95.
• Schaub-Jones, D., 2005. Sanitation Partnerships: Beyond Storage: On-Site Sanitation as an Urban System. [online] London: Building Partnerships for Development in Water and Sanitation. Accessed on Dec 5, 2013. 
• Seidu, R., 2010. Disentangling the risk factors and health risks associated with faecal sludge and wastewater reuse in Ghana. PhD, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Department of Mathematical Sciences and Technology.
• WRC. 2011. What happens when the pit is full? Developments in on-site fecal sludge management. Seminar report. Accessed on Dec 5, 2012.