Feces and forests: Why poor WASH is a threat to the environment

Poor WASH is an environmental hazard that can affect human health as well as wildlife, ocean, and ecosystems, experts say. “Globally, our sanitation impacts water quality in communities across the globe,” said Erica Perez, Coral Reef Alliance’s senior program manager in Hawaii. In many countries, for example, there are no treatment plants for fecal sludge, which means it’s often emptied into the environment and bodies of water, said Josiane Nikiema, research group leader of circular economy and water pollution at the International Water Management Institute. “Sanitation becomes a direct contributor to environmental pollution and to causing a number of negative health impacts on the communities that are exposed to these kinds of issues.” According to the World Health Organization, at least 2 billion people are thought to drink from a water source contaminated with feces. This can lead to a number of diseases including diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and polio. Each year, contaminated drinking water is thought to be the cause of over 485,000 diarrheal deaths. Solid waste also poses an issue, Nikiema added. In many low- and middle-income countries, a lot of waste isn’t properly collected and is either burned or discharged directly in the environment, she said. “It's going to end up in rain gutters and when you have rains and floods, this waste is directly brought into contact with the different people who are living in the same area,” she said. But it’s not just humans that are impacted. The ocean and its ecosystem can be casualties of wastewater pollution, Perez said, as can wildlife on land, added David Bonnardeaux, director of environment at Pact. For example, in Uganda, Bonnardeaux told of an infant gorilla that died of a human strain of scabies. Poor sanitation in a local community was partly to blame, he said. In Hawaii, Perez said wastewater, caused by cesspools along shoreline, were directly affecting the health of coral reefs as well as water quality in the area. “One of the components that I think the conservation industry is realizing is [that] to tackle wastewater and sanitation impacts at a human health, ecological, or coral reef scale is going to take a lot of time and a lot of commitment from multiple sectors,” she said. How to tackle WASH’s environmental pollution Thus far, a lack of cohesion between the WASH and conservation sectors has been a barrier to tackling this, Bonnardeaux said. “There is an issue of awareness. There’s also an issue of these two communities not necessarily talking to one another,” he said, adding that sometimes the WASH sector thinks about how to protect water from contamination but doesn’t factor in what impact their activities might be having on wildlife. For example, inserting a pump where groundwater levels are low could impact streams and rivers and reduce the environmental flows that a lot of the wildlife require, he said. The only way to tackle sanitation within conservation, Perez said, is by bridging the two sectors “and to continue having conversations, bringing it to the table, and bringing it to the forefront of conversations in both industries.” The Ocean Sewage Alliance is one example of how these industries are starting to come together. A coalition of organizations — including The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute, and Reef Power — as well as scientists that works to find solutions to the detrimental impacts sewage and other wastewater pollution can have on the ocean “while increasing the health and well-being of both humans and nature.” “It requires infrastructure development and design. It requires sustainable financing. So it needs all of these different minds to come together to tackle this issue,” Perez said. “Sanitation becomes a direct contributor to environmental pollution and to causing a number of negative health impacts on the communities that are exposed to these kinds of issues.” --— Josiane Nikiema, research group leader of circular economy and water pollution, International Water Management Institute. For Nikiema, there are also institutional and technology gaps preventing the proper disposal of waste and wastewater. If the trucks that are supposed to collect waste are old and they repeatedly break down, the institution is not able to properly finance operations, she said. “Because of that, some areas of cities will not be served properly, will not receive proper collection services, will not receive proper treatment services,” she explained. Bonnardeaux called on donors to start funding projects that can demonstrate they’re taking an integrated approach to WASH and conservation while implementers should start taking steps to show donors what such programs might look like. “Within this particular issue, there is such a huge barrier of capital investment in sustainable financing to improve sanitation that those success stories will mean something,” Perez said. “The more that we share the success stories, the more we can highlight how we can overcome these massive barriers.” One such solution could lie in recycling waste, Nikiema said. In Ghana, for example, IWMI has been testing the production of compost made from treated fecal sludge and combining it with organic solid waste. Producing compost this way increases the availability of the resource while improving soil health, creating jobs, and contributing to climate adaptation, she explained. “Because when you apply the soil, it has a strong impact on water retention.” The compost obtained is then marketed to farmers who can use it to grow crops, but waste management companies are also interested in the initiative because it allows them to add on an extra set of activities to a business model that they already have, Nikiema said. “It becomes an opportunity because the reuse at the end of the chain is going to drive the entire sector and in a way incentivize them to do better than the current practices that are extremely unsustainable.” Nikiema urged the sector to think of other innovative recycling solutions, such as producing animal feed from waste. “The limit now is your imagination. You can create as much as you want. You can recover as much as you want and you can implement it to the extent that it really satisfies the needs that you have on the ground. Visit the WASH Works series for more coverage on water, sanitation, and hygiene — and importantly, how WASH efforts intersect with other development challenges. You can join the conversation using the hashtag #WASHWorks.