Water and Sanitation

In one of my previous blogs I mentioned the World Banks Resilient Water Infrastructure Design Brief and the strategic fra mework on WASH climate resilience. Both of these documents set to inform; as climate change becomes ever more prevalent new infrastructure must be created, mitigation must take place, and old infrastructure must be adapted in order for global citizens to exist in healthy conditions.  The key concepts in the title of both documents is  resilience;  the ability  to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions. This definition is  essential for the future of people as the Anthropocene continues and the impacts of climate change begin to be felt more profoundly.  Water, sanitation and climate change an inextricably linked and I wish to discover more about this in my research for this post.  Resilient Water Infrastructure Design Brief focuses in on three main hazard types; flooding, drought and hig h winds.  Water utilities face myriad potential shocks and stre

With 780 million people lacking access to an 'improved water source' -  piped household water connection, public standpipe, borehole, protected dug well, protected spring, rainwater collection (WHO-UNICEF) -worldwide, u rban groundwater acts as a substantial contributor to accessible freshwater. Previously local rivers could be relied upon but as pollution becomes prolific and climate change causes drastic changes, they can no longer be used, groundwater though is a climate - resilient source of freshwater in sub - Saharan Africa  . As urbanisation takes hold of areas of sub-Saharan Africa, which up until now have been rural, urban planning must consider the new structure of the built environment necessary to provide for all citizens and achieve the  United Nations sustainable development goal 6, universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water. In many places surface water requires treatment (chlorination) before consumption, ground water drawn up from wel

 November 19th was World Toilet Day.  Figure 1: World Toilet Day Poster Before starting this module I was unaware of the existence of World Toilet Day. This is due to the fact that in the UK I do not have to consider my daily toilet usage. I have mentioned before how important toilets are for health reasons, they also have an impact on the economics of a region also. When people have insufficient access to toilets the resulting health issues lead to an over burden on healthcare systems and productivity loses, access to toilets also impact education. Figure 2: Global causes of childhood deaths in 2010 Toilets are already the 'unmentionable ' side of water and sanitation, however within that the issues facing women are even more hidden. As a woman I wish to focus on how gender and water relate within the realms of sanitation for this post. 49.6 percent of the world's population is female, meaning there are almost 4 billion women menstruate each month and yet this is a little

Following on from my last post I have realised how key funding is to sanitation infrastructure. By infrastructure I refer to the physical facilities needed along with organisational structures required to keep a project moving. There are multiple sources of investment; market, NGOs, government or private individuals. Each of these need to be explored as I currently believe none of these options can succeed on their own. It's important when considering funding to incorporate the entire infrastructure required. It is easy to gift a single toilet to a community for political gain, ' poo litical tactics ',   but if training is not available and maintenance is not taught, the project will be unsuccessful. New sanitation infrastructure can be built to be resilient and sustainable, saving money in the long term, providing jobs, and a good quality of life for millions of individuals. With 90 percent of the world population set to live in an urban environment by 2050 , millions of n

The 26th conference of parties, COP26 to you and me, has drawn to a close in Glasgow. There has been a conference on climate every year since 1994 and yet this is the first where a water pavilion has appeared. With 100,000 people protesting on the streets of Glasgow and Greta Thunberg stating that politicians were greenwashing what has really gone on and has anything been achieved? Figure 1: Protestors in Glasgow Water is a significant issue that climate change will affect and in turn will impact on the human populations and ecosystems of the planet.  The UN-Sustainable Development Goal 6 states that “Water sustains life, but safe clean drinking water defines civilisation”, with this statement in mind, how many regions cannot be defined as civilisations?  With significant individuals flying in from across the world,   400 private jets creating more CO2 emissions   than 1600 Scots in a year, you'd think that more would be achieved. Unfortunately significant countries such as China,

 If I'm honest I've been putting off writing this second post. When the issue is so large that it affects billions of individuals it becomes hard to know where to start. I have decided to try and follow personal links in this blog, so with that in mind, this post will focus on the slums in Kampala, Uganda. In 2019 I worked with an organisation called My Name is Human , many of the projects were based in Uganda, my friend lived in Kampala and I was in frequent contact with individuals living in the Kampala slums.  Figure 1: Peri-urban area of Kampala. The infrastructure required for water and sanitation differs depending on the location. Piped water as well as more advanced sanitation are more common in urban environments than in rural ones, however slums exist in a grey area.  Sub Saharan Africa has a high prevalence of slums accentuated by high population growth unmatched by the weak economic opportunities, rapid rural to urban migration, and weak urbanisation strategies.  Wit