Papers to Practice

This episode is part of season that looks at understanding the interrelations between sanitation and climate change. Climate change is real and many people in the world are already getting used to its consequences. Sanitation is affected in multiple ways by climate change. But sanitation is also a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions as we have seen in previous episodes. Unfortunately, the effects of climate change on WASH services are probably going to be worse for the most vulnerable populations. 

How can we empower governments in low- and middle-income countries address climate change? 

The paper we are going to talk about provides some guidance to answer this question. We talked with Juliet Willetts, professor at the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney to better understand how.

The paper outlines a co-production approach to understand sanitation and climate related risks. It suggests a  ‘climate resilient sanitation system’ framework as guidance for governments, also outside Indonesia, to engage in actions of response. The framework structures the actions along seven key domains ranging from planning and decision-making to infrastructure and learning over time as a starting point to address the complexity governments must face when planning for citywide inclusive and resilient sanitation. 

To read the paper: Co-developing evidence-informed adaptation actions for resilient citywide sanitation: Local government response to climate change in Indonesia. www.doi.org/10.1177/23998083221098740. To learn more about this the speaker: https://profiles.uts.edu.au/Juliet.Willetts Related publication: Analysing the capacity to respond to climate change: a framework for community-managed water services. www.doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2018.1562867.

Today’s episode looks at sanitation technologies appropriate for flood-prone areas--those that experience more sudden and regular occurrences of flooding, whether it be related to our ever changing climate or the historical trends in the region.

For this episode we have a guest interviewer, Marcio Botto, who is a WASH Service Advisor at CAWST and fluent in Portuguese. Originally, we had discussed doing the entire interview in Portuguese, but decided to move forward with the interview in English. Regardless, we thought why not shake it up a bit with a new interviewer. In this episode, Marcio talks with author João Paulo Borges Pedro about his classification of flood events and review of suitable sanitation technologies. One of the key findings is that, in fact, many options exist. The challenge is with how people interface with them, and ultimately their acceptance of the technology implemented dictates whether it will function over the long-term.

To read the paper, visit: https://iwaponline.com/washdev/article-abstract/10/3/397/75339

To learn more about this research you can visit the following:

Research Grupo: https://www.mamiraua.org.br/gp-inovacao

Sanitation technology for flooded Amazon: https://transforma.fbb.org.br/tecnologia-social/fossa-alta-comunitaria

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhNqJh_-Ko8

Our ever changing climate presents major threats to both water and sanitation services. This we have known for some time! AND interestingly (perhaps tragically), sanitation is one of the contributors to THIS change.

The sanitation sector contributes between 2 and 6 percent of the earth’s methane and between 1 and 3 percent of the nitrous oxide emissions. While they are lower in concentration compared to carbon dioxide, they are powerful contributors.

To ensure universal access to water and sanitation services over the long-term requires not only that we understand and improve system and service resilience, BUT ALSO that we understand the emissions produced by different options, to ultimately reduce them where possible.

In this interview, Dorothee Spuhler speaks with Rebecca Ryals and Sasha Kramer about one such option. EcoSan has the potential to increase safety, sustainability and jobs, while mitigating climate change through the reduction of GHG gases and producing an effective fertilizer for agriculture. They discuss the research they have conducted to measure carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide from two EcoSan operations in Haiti, anaerobic waste stabilizations ponds, and a open field where sewage is known to be illegally dumped, to ultimately understand the fluxes related to non-sewered waste management.

You can read the paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652619311576

The public health benefits of sanitation are widely recognized. To minimize the disease pathways at the city scale, everyone needs to have access to safely managed sanitation. That said, public health is not the only consideration. Global estimates of greenhouse gas emissions have not taken into account the complex service chain in growing cities, which has led to the underestimation of these emissions and their overall impact on the environment.

This interview unpacks an assessment carried out in Kampala, Uganda to better estimate emissions from all stages of the sanitation service chain, ultimately to be enable decisions where both public and environmental health are protected.

The safety of sanitation workers remains an often-ignored aspect of fecal sludge management. This paper, using an inductive, unbiased approach to highlight a number of safety issues faced by sanitation workers, including exposure of sludge,  even in a mechanized context. The paper identifies three safety concerns: inhalation of harmful gasses, contact with sludge, and physical injury. When it comes to measures to mitigate these risks, the paper looks broadly at elimination, substituting, controlling, and finally personal protective equipment (PPE). The bigger discussion is about who is responsible. Often there are high expectations of these sanitation workers to address all the risks, when in fact the responsibility should fall elsewhere--on households and even at the policy/ standard level.

Based on the uptake of the 3 episodes launched in 2021, we have decided to have a go at it again in 2022! 

The sanitation sector continues to innovate and evolve in order to tackle the persistent and emergent challenges related to delivering inclusive safely managed services globally. To support these efforts and facilitate sharing across the globe, we too have evolved in the knowledge management space. Turns out busy professionals welcomed listening as an alternative to reading when it comes to sanitation research and publications.

In 2022, CAWST & EAWAG have expanded the season to 6 episodes, building off what we heard and learned last year. Each episode we (Laura Kohler & Dorothee Spuhler) will sit with the authors of selected sanitation publications and ask them directly who should know about work and what are the key points so that professionals and practitioners working in the sanitation sector globally can put these papers to practice.

Stay tuned for the season 2 launch in June!