India – Rising prices intensify problem of malnourishment among labourers

May 18, 2009 · 0 comments

PUNE: A survey conducted by the city-based Arogya Sena has revealed that 24% of workers in the unorganised sectors are malnourished. The instance of malnourishment among women working in agriculture fields on a daily wage basis is as high as 47%.

The results of the survey, conducted last year, have recently been released. The survey sought to assess the impact of rising food prices on the diet of daily wage labourers.

“The current scenario of continuing inflation of food prices raises a serious concern about food and the nutritional security of the poor. The continuous rise in food prices has eroded the purchasing power of the workers of the unorganised sector,” said cardiologist Abhijit Vaidya, national chief of Arogya Sena, a voluntary organisation that works for the health rights of the common man.

Workers of the unorganised sector are worst hit because food, to begin with, has always been unaffordable for them and higher prices have only made things worse, said Vaidya.

The survey was conducted on 311 people divided into six groups for purposes of study. The first group comprised of 48 male labourers from Maldhakka chowk. The second were 50 male labourers from Timber market. The third group constituted 72 labourers (24 male and 48 female) from Market Yard and the fourth and fifth group comprised of 52 labourers from Dhankawdi iron market and 57 women labourers. The last group studied was an all-women labourer group (32) from the agriculture fields in Bhandgaon (Pune-Solapur road).

“We have found that an unorganised worker spends 49.6% of his income on food-related items. But despite this, the average calorie intake of a labourer is just 1,137.8 calories a day, which is too little,” said Vaidya.

The main components of their meals usually are chappati or bhakri, rice, cereals and vegetables. Non vegetarian and dairy products are rarely eaten.

Explaining the present definition of the poverty line, Vaidya said the government has pegged it on a monthly income of Rs 434 for an individual.

“It is presumed that this is the amount required for a person to get a required intake of 2,100 calories a day. In this definition, it was wrongly considered that the urban poor spend their entire earnings only on the purchase of food items. And virtually no consideration was given to the expenditure incurred on shelter, clothes, health, education etc,” Vaidya explained.

The current average income of an urban labourer is around Rs 1,100 a month. On this, he cannot fulfil his daily food requirement of 2,100 calories, even if he spends his entire monthly income on food-related items. The reason for this is that food prices are constantly rising,” said Vaidya.

There is no doubt the urban poor has enjoyed some increase in income as a result of high economic growth and liberalisation of the economy. Yet, a vast majority of them living in rural areas are dependent on meagre incomes from agriculture and low-productivity jobs from non-agricultural activities, which rise and fall with the ebb and flow of precarious events.

“There is an urgent need on the part of the government to strengthen the rationing system. And, at the same time, the government must see to it that all food-related items are being made available to the urban poor at the cheapest rates possible,” said Vaidya. If the poor remain underfed, it would be impossible to tap their potential to accelerate growth, he added.

“We will present the survey report to Bhalchandra Mungekar, a member of the planning commission in the first week of May. A copy will also be sent to the chief minister of the state for discussion in their cabinet,” Vaidya said.

Source – Times of India

Nairobi – Iko toilets are now hubs of entertainment

May 15, 2009 · 4 comments

kuriaAnswering a call of nature in Nairobi’s Central Business has always been a nightmare but it is no longer a scary business

Mr David Kuria has been on a mission to ensure trips to city toilets are both pleasant and memorable.

For him, toilets are not all about filth and rot envisioned in most people’s minds.

Disturbed by lack of toilets in most towns and informal settlements, he quit a well paying job as an architect with a non-governmental organisation to engage in ‘toilet’ business.

“I quit at the time when polythene papers were being used as toilets in Kibera and other slums. I felt I could play a role in improving people’s lifestyles,” he says.

Kuria, 37, says he quit his job because it limited his services to the rich few.

“I used to serve only a few people who could afford to pay for it, yet the masses I really wanted to serve lived miserably. I could not resist climbing down to their world,” he says.

Kuria made solid waste management his entry point. While still working for the NGO, he fundraised for people who had taken up garbage recycling.

“That way, I became part of the solution to the sanitation problems of the majority. One thing led to another, culminating in ecologically friendly toilets I christened ‘Iko’, a convenient version of ecological,” he says.

Andrew Macharia Gakunju, 70, who founded City Garbage recyclers in Maringo estate, was among Kuria’s earliest beneficiaries. Kuria lobbied the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to fence off a plot Macharia had acquired from the City Council of Nairobi to keep away grabbers. UNDP also donated various recycling machines and a pick-up truck to Macharia.

In appreciation, Macharia recommended Kuria for an award from Ashoka; a global organisation that identifies and invests in leading social entrepreneurs. He won a Change Makers award of $200,000 (Sh16 million). The East African Breweries later donated a similar amount to Kuria “to further boost his worthy cause”.

Armed with architectural skills and the experience gleaned over eight years in urban and environmental management, Kuria opted to devote his time to create toilets that are environment friendly.

He has taken solid waste management a notch higher through his plan to covert human waste deposited at ‘Iko’ toilets into energy saving biogas to light premises and into natural manure to be packaged and sold at affordable prices to boost agriculture.

He says urine will be collected in tanks and processed into urea to be used for top dressing crops instead of Calcium Ammonium Nitrate, which is beyond the reach of most farmers.
Kuria works in collaboration with Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT).

To facilitate conversion of urine into urea, he plans to install a waterless urinal technology imported from China.

“The urinals will save us more than 10,000 litres of water at each toilet daily,” he says.

Kuria also wants to change the notion that a toilet is a messy, dirty place.

Catholic priest ‘blessed’ it

“Besides the snacks, the music and a business like atmosphere in and around the toilets, we are talking to politicians to hold public functions within the ‘iko’ toilets,” he says.

Public Health Minister Beth Mugo has held a function at one of the toilets. Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka had his shoes brushed at a stand near one of the toilets at Aga Khan Walk.

Kuria says a Catholic priest also ‘blessed’ one of the toilets.

The architect says he will sign contracts with popular musicians to entertain their fans at the toilets.

“Those who love ohangla, isukuti, mugithi, nyatiti and ndombolo may soon find themselves dancing around ‘Iko’ toilets,” he says.

He also plans to bring aboard comedians such as the popular Vitimbi troupe.

Sports are high on the agenda of Kuria’s promotional exploits to change people’s thinking about toilets.

“This month, we are launching a toilet tournament in Mathare to link toilets with sports”.

And that is not all. Kuria says he is working on a reality show on toilets to be aired on local television.

“There will be prizes for those who best portray toilets as multipurpose utilities,” he says.

With a chuckle he says: “Toilets are the multiple service units of the future. You may soon be doing mobile phone money transfers in the toilet. Airtime is available and it is only a matter of time before you start buying handsets at toilet booths,” he says.

There are eleven ‘Iko’ toilets in Nairobi and Limuru and Naivasha. At the precincts of the toilets, there are outlets for snacks, fruits and water.

Other services include shoe shining. There are also installed music systems to belt out tunes that soothe nerves as one answers the call of nature.

Kuria says his innovative approach to the vital toilet service has earned him recognition from the World Toilet Organisation, based in China, with the inclusion of ‘Iko’ toilets in the hall of fame of sanitation. He is also among 2,000 businesspeople recognised by Ashoka.

He plans to expand these facilities countrywide exapnsion. “We also want to go to other countries. Uganda and South Africa have already approached me for ‘Iko’ toilets,” he says.

Born in 1971 in Elburgon, Kuria went to Michinda High School and the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. He graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1992. He is pursuing a Master of Arts Degree in Environmental Science. He is married with two children.

Read More – The Standard

USAID Grant: African Urban Poor – Improved Water and Sanitation (AUP-IWS) APS

May 14, 2009 · 0 comments

African Urban Poor – Improved Water and Sanitation (AUP-IWS) APS

Creation Date: Mar 09, 2009
Current Closing Date for Applications: Feb 08, 2010
Funding Instrument Type: Grant

Category of Funding Activity: Natural Resources

Award Ceiling: $4,500,000
Award Floor: $1,500,000
CFDA Number(s): 98.001 — USAID Foreign Assistance for Programs Overseas
Cost Sharing or Matching Requirement: Yes

The purpose of this Annual Program Statement (APS) is to disseminate information about the United States Agency for International Development(USAID) African Urban Poor Improved Water Supply and Sanitation Program (AUP-IWS) APS.

USAID anticipates awarding a maximum of three assistance instruments from applications submitted in response to this APS during the first initial round. It is anticipated that grants will be funded for amounts between $1,500,000 and $4,500,000 for the life of proposed projects.

Link to more information

Gordon McGranahan – Health and the urban environment: revolutions revisited

May 13, 2009 · 0 comments

Health and the urban environment: revolutions revisited

From cholera pandemics to smog episodes, urban development driven by narrow economic interests has shown itself to be a serious threat to human health and wellbeing. Past revolutions in sanitation and pollution control demonstrate that social movements and governance reforms can transform an urban health penalty into a health advantage. But many environmental problems have been displaced over time and space, and never truly resolved. Health concerns need once again to drive an environmental agenda – but this time it must be sustainable over the long haul, and globally equitable. With the global economic crisis raising the ante, what’s needed is no less than a revolution in environmental justice that puts health, not economics, at the core of its values.

Revolutions in public health
For much of the 19th century, deteriorating environmental health conditions accompanied urbanisation and economic growth. In England, where economic growth was most rapid, there is evidence that urban mortality rates rose – until people acted in a concerted fashion to improve urban living and working conditions. A sanitary revolution was at the centre of the ensuing transformation. By the end of the century urban affluence had become a means to improve public health, at least locally.

Unfortunately, the sanitary revolution did little to prevent pollution of the ambient environment. Sewers released human waste into waterways, contaminating the water for downstream users. Better chimneys improved indoor air quality, but allowed more extensive ambient air pollution. The sanitary revolution was also limited to relatively affluent parts of the world. There are more people without adequate sanitation in the world today than there were at the start of the sanitary revolution.

In the 20th century, there was a pollution revolution – again centred on health in the wealthier world. Many place the turning point of this environmental revolution at London’s Great Smog of 1952, the start of an extended air pollution episode that killed an estimated 12,000 people in one of the world’s wealthiest cities. The response stimulated the birth of modern epidemiology. Just as important, health became central to environmental legislation, and in many countries it remains so to this day.

Unfortunately, just as the sanitary revolution failed to address ambient pollution, the pollution revolution did not address the global environmental burdens of economic growth and urbanisation. Climate change, coupled with recent food and oil price volatility, heralds a new global crisis, demanding a sustainability revolution.

An optimist views the success of the past revolutions as evidence that the sustainability revolution will be relatively unproblematic, and perhaps even result from economic growth itself. For the pessimist, however, the revolutions of the past are illusory: affluence and sanitary and pollution controls merely helped to shift environmental burdens along over time and space – from localised burdens addressed by sanitary reforms, to regional burdens addressed by pollution reforms, to global burdens that epitomise the new sustainability challenge. Since there is nowhere left to shift global burdens to, this kind of displacement is no longer an option. Moreover, since “development” has been highly uneven, a large share of the world’s most deprived urban dwellers now live in unsanitary conditions, threatened by urban pollution and, increasingly, by climate change.

The truth probably lies somewhere between the optimist’s and pessimist’s views. A new revolution is needed, but while there are lessons to learn from the past, more of the same just won’t do. Indeed, environmental sustainability is not enough. A fairer distribution of environmental risks is also needed within the current generation. In short, what is needed is a revolution in environmental justice, across to future generations, but also in the present.

Health and environmental justice
Given the predominance of economic thinking in modern politics, it is tempting to assess sustainability and environmental justice in economic terms. Policy researchers are forever being told that the best way to get the ear of government is to translate their concerns into dollars and cents. The highly influential Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change would seem to be a case to point. When it comes to open political debate, however, a health perspective is preferable on at least two counts.

First, economic valuation is a fundamentally flawed means of assessing environmental injustices. Secondly, and just as important, while health injustices may be difficult to assess with any precision, health has already shown itself to be a potent force in motivating constructive social action. Cost-benefit ratios are not.

Economic valuation relies on prices set by markets, or prices that markets would set if they were functioning well. The environmental challenges lie precisely in those areas where market prices, and even prices based on the logic of markets, are misleading. Environmental injustices, as well as market prices, reflect the fact that markets distribute wealth too unevenly, discount the future too heavily, and ignore environmental impacts that circumvent market negotiations. Looking to economic valuation to assess these market failures can be self-defeating.

A memo leaked from the World Bank in the early 1990s stated that “the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable”. It caused quite a stir. Larry Summers, currently Director of the US National Economic Council, undoubtedly regretted having signed it. But the real problem is that the offending statements were all too accurate a representation of conventional economic thinking. The logic is essentially that the health and safety of people on low wages are worth less because the market values them less – just as the market values their labour and belongings less. Most people, including economists, find this notion immoral, but the logic is implicit in most economic valuation, and guides important policy decisions.

Used well, economic valuation can force decision makers to face up to unfair realities. Overused, it can easily reinforce and even create those realities.

When it comes to identifying and addressing the most critical injustices, health provides an important counterpoint. From a health perspective, it is hard to justify shipping toxic waste to low-wage countries. It would still be possible to argue that the toxic waste trade has a positive net effect on receiving countries by increasing their income, but the many debatable assumptions implicit in such arguments would have to be made explicit, rather than being implicit in the valuation system. Similarly, from a health perspective it would be difficult to justify burdening future generations with life-threatening climate hazards for the sake of greater consumption in affluent countries today.

The economic crisis as a hinge event
Just as global environmental burdens are beginning to bite, we are also experiencing the first truly global economic crisis. This is unlikely to be coincidental, and we may well be looking forward to more global economic crises triggered by environmental stresses and scarcities. Currently, the economic crisis creates some serious obstacles to a new public health movement, but also creates vital opportunities.

The obstacles are already evident. Concern about the economy now largely dominates public discourse, and poverty is on the rise. The opportunities are more subtle. They reflect the fact that the crisis is forcing some serious rethinking of global institutions and has wrong-footed those who unthinkingly claim that the market always knows best. An economic crisis can easily become a hinge event, and what emerges is far from predetermined.

Economic crisis was central to the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of capitalism’s “creative Destruction” and reinvigoration, and to Karl Marx’s theory of its demise. Whatever is to happen to global capitalism – and in the short term, muddling through is more than a remote possibility – this is an absolutely critical time to shift health to the centre of global debate, not to strengthen the health sector, but to improve health globally, now and into the future.

Next steps
Health concerns need to drive a new urban agenda for the 21st century as they did for the 19th-century sanitary movement, and the 20th-century environmental movement.
Health can provide core values for environmental and social justice, while economics cannot.
The ongoing economic crisis is raising the ante, making it far more important to create a new environmental health movement.

About the author – Gordon McGranahan is director of the Human Settlements group at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

Source – http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/opinion/39064

PATH & WaterAid reports on stalled progress against diarrheal diseases

May 12, 2009 · 0 comments

Two New Reports Highlight Stalled Progress Against Diarrheal Disease: Nearly 1.6 Million Children Die Each Year From These Preventable and Treatable Diseases

Source – PRNewswire-USNewswire, May 12, 2009

PATH and WaterAid America released two new reports today that show that the international aid community and developing-country governments are not responding to clear evidence on child mortality by targeting resources where the disease burden is greatest. Diarrheal disease, a leading killer of children under age five worldwide, is responsible for the deaths of nearly 1.6 million children annually, yet it receives very little attention from both policymakers and the public. During the 1980s and 1990s, diarrheal disease mortality rates were cut by nearly 50 percent, made possible by wide availability and implementation of lifesaving prevention and treatment interventions.

Today, diarrheal disease receives significantly less funding than other diseases, despite accounting for 17 percent of deaths of children under five. And in some parts of the world, the severity of the disease is increasing. Diarrheal Disease: Solutions to Defeat a Global Killer from PATH and Fatal Neglect: How Health Systems are Failing to Comprehensively Address Child Mortality from WaterAid America highlight the urgent need to refocus attention on diarrheal disease, a prolific global killer. At the same time, a broad and diverse group of more than 75 organizations from many sectors have signed a Call to Action, demonstrating a unified show of support for aggressively meeting the challenge diarrheal disease presents today.

“The global health community knows what is necessary to save the lives of children suffering from diarrheal disease,” said Dr. John Wecker, director of the Immunization Solutions and Rotavirus Vaccine Program at PATH. “And now is the time to educate policymakers, donors, and international and national leaders about the need to implement the solutions to prevent and treat the most severe causes.”

Key findings in the reports indicate:

– The international aid system and developing-country governments must respond to evidence on child mortality–of which diarrheal disease is a leading cause–and better target resources where the disease burden is the greatest.
– Comprehensive health systems strengthening that addresses environmental factors such as sanitation and water are critical to improving overall health and reducing diarrheal disease deaths. The Millennium Development Goal on child survival (MDG 4) will remain beyond our reach until diarrheal disease and the poor sanitation and unsafe drinking water that can lead to it are addressed.
– There are more lifesaving prevention and treatment solutions for diarrheal disease than any other major childhood killer. These interventions include safe water, improved sanitation and hygiene, breastfeeding and optimal complementary feeding, rotavirus vaccines, zinc treatment, and oral rehydration therapy (ORT)/oral rehydration solution (ORS).
– Millions of children’s lives could be saved by addressing diarrheal disease with a coordinated approach among health care providers, policymakers, and the international aid community focusing on both prevention and treatment interventions.

The report releases come at a critical time when the World Health Organization (WHO) is reviewing data from studies of vaccines to prevent rotavirus–the most common and lethal diarrheal disease–from clinical trials in Africa and Asia. The WHO will consider a global recommendation that every country introduce rotavirus vaccines into its routine immunization schedule based on this data.

“While diarrheal disease is a global killer, today the burden is greatest in developing nations in Africa and Asia where access to clean water, sanitation, and urgent medical care may be limited,” said Nancy C. Bwalya-Mukumbuta, program manager at WaterAid in Zambia. “The international aid system and developing-country governments need to come together with a strong voice and respond to diarrheal disease, one of the leading causes of child mortality, in a targeted manner.”

The Call to Action urges advocates, including organizations from the health, development, environmental, water/sanitation, and research communities, to push for adequate funding of both prevention and treatment interventions for diarrheal disease. These organizations, such as the UN Foundation, Save the Children, WaterAid America, and Earth Day Network, are also joining together to reaffirm their commitment to the MDGs. World leaders have committed to child survival and improving conditions for future generations around the world by 2015 through the MDGs. But, today, progress toward these goals is seriously off track. If diarrheal disease and the poor sanitation and unsafe water that can lead to it continue to be ignored, the child survival MDG will be unobtainable.

“The persisting high mortality rate from diarrheal disease in the presence of existing, cost-effective interventions and available resources to implement them represents a continuing scandal,” said Olivier Fontaine, Medical Officer, Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development at the WHO.

To access Diarrheal Disease: Solutions to Defeat a Global Killer, please visit: <http://www.eddcontrol.org/files/Solutions_to_Defeat_a_Global_Killer.pdf>

To access Fatal Neglect: How Health Systems are Failing to Comprehensively Address Child Mortality, please visit: http://www.wateraidamerica.org/fatalneglect

To read the Call to Action and get involved, please visit:
http://www.eddcontrol.org/call-to-action.php.

Conserve/India – Handbags from recycled plastic creates jobs for urban poor

May 11, 2009 · 1 comment

conserve1Trashy Fashion From India

Plastic bags are a plague. They can be found in just about every corner of the planet— in fields, trees, rivers, oceans and even in the stomachs of birds and sea creatures around the globe.

They don’t biodegrade in landfills and almost every piece of plastic ever made is still in existence today.

Enter Anita Ahuja, founder and president of Conserve, based in India. Anita has come up with a way to upcycle the plastic bags plaguing her region and also help numerous people find gainful employment. The result is Conserve’s stunning range of bags made from recycled plastic. We caught up with Anita to ask her a few questions about her fashionable eco-bags and her amazing enterprise.

Please tell us a bit about Conserve.
Along with support and encouragement from my family and friends I established Conserve, a non-profit organization in 1998 with a mandate to work in the area of energy efficiency and waste management. In 2002, Conserve started working on developing an alternative recycling or rather up-cycling process that uses abundantly and freely available bags as a resource for income generation for the urban poor through their conversion into a “renewed” material which we call HRP – Handmade Recycled Plastic.

Conserve has trained people from urban slums of Delhi to process waste into recycled sheets, which is more energy efficient and environmentally friendly than conventional recycling processes. This process converts used polythene bags into a ‘renewed’ innovative material with significantly different properties and great visual appeal, without the use of any additional colour or dyes.

Conserve’s process of recycling is far more environmentally and energy friendly than the conventional plastic recycling process. Moreover, it is very good for the environment as it uses existing everyday skills of local people. Now Conserve is supporting nearly 100 rag pickers and has about 50 employees working for them.

Read More

Dakar, Senegal – Garbage used for building material

May 6, 2009 · 0 comments

In Médina Gounass neighborhood of Guédiawaye, a slum on the outskirts of Dakar, people use garbage “to shore up their flood-prone houses and streets”. “Garbage, packed down tight and then covered with a thin layer of sand, is used to raise the floors of houses that flood regularly in the brief but intense summer rainy season, and it is packed into the dusty streets that otherwise become canals. The water lingers for months in the low-lying terrain of this bone-dry country. Garbage is a surrogate building material, a critical filler to deal with the stagnant water — cheap, instantly accessible and never diminishing. The plastic-laden spillover from these foul-smelling deliveries pokes up through the sandy lots, covers the ground between the crumbling cinder-block houses, becomes grazing ground for goats, playground for barefoot, runny-nosed children and breeding ground for swarms of flies. Disease flourishes here, aid groups say: cholera, malaria, yellow fever and tuberculosis”.

[...] “In an upside-down world where garbage is sought for and dumped among homes, not removed, “people have no alternatives; they are left to themselves; they can only count on themselves,” said Joseph Gaï Ramaka, a leading Senegalese filmmaker, who made a documentary [see below] about an incomplete government effort, the Plan Jaxaay, to build modern housing for people in vulnerable neighborhoods.

Read more: Adam Nossiner, New York Times, 03 May 2009

[dailymotion id=x1y8tl]

Pune, India – In five years, asthmatic children doubled in city

May 4, 2009 · 0 comments

Pune: As the world observes Asthma Day on Tuesday, parents in Pune have a serious cause for worry. A new study by Chest Research Foundation (CRF) reveals that children suffering from asthma have almost doubled in the city in five years.

The first study, involving 3,000 children completed in 2003, showed that asthma was prevalent among 2.9 per cent of schoolchildren in Pune. In the present study, 3,909 children from 17 schools were observed and it was seen that asthma prevalence was 5.4 per cent. “This is an almost 80 per cent jump,” says Dr Sundeep Salvi, director of Chest Research Foundation.

The study in randomly selected schools was conducted by Maria Cheraghi as part of her PhD thesis with the University of Pune. Dr Sundeep Salvi, director of CRF, supervised the study.

The study involved 1,565 students from municipal schools and 2,344 from private schools. Asthma was seen to be more prevalent among students of private schools (5.9 per cent) as compared to those in municipal schools (4.7 per cent).

Dr Salvi attributed the difference to factors like lifestyle, food habits, obesity, lack of exercise and urban indoor air pollution.

He says children born in homes using biomass fuel for cooking, such as kerosene and wood, showed a three-fold risk of getting asthma as compared to children in homes that use LPG for cooking. Also, children born in homes that did not have a separate kitchen had a significantly increased risk. Children who lived in homes that had damp walls also face a higher risk. “Children born by Caesarean Section had a four-fold risk of having asthma as compared to those born by normal delivery,” says Salvi who is presenting these findings at the European Respiratory Society Annual Congress, to be held in Vienna, Austria, next September.

Talking about Caesarean delivery quadrupling the risk, Dr Salvi noted that similar observations have been reported in other parts of the world.

“Babies born by normal delivery come in contact with the mother’s normal bacterial flora in the birth passage, which stimulate immunological responses in the child that have several benefits. Children born by Caesarean delivery do not come in contact this useful bacteria and their immune system develops in a manner very different from babies exposed to these bacteria,” Salvi explained.

He further said, “The abnormal immune response in babies born by Caesarean delivery is believed to lead to asthma as they grow older.”

“Doctors have been reporting an increase in asthma cases. The study has given us some conclusive scientific evidence,” says Salvi.

“Such a rapid increase in cases in such a short time is unusual and worrisome. Though the study has been conducted in Pune, we fear the findings may apply to the whole nation. The asthma threat is for real and our children need help,” he said.

Source – Indian Express

Strategic guidelines for improving water and sanitation services in Nairobi’s informal settlements

April 29, 2009 · 0 comments

Strategic guidelines for improving water and sanitation services in Nairobi’s informal settlements. Water and Sanitation Program, 2009. (pdf, full-text)

Here the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) introduces the work achieved by the Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company (NCWSC) and the Athi Water Services Board (AWSB) and their guidelines for water supply and sanitation interventions in informal settlements.

The document starts with an overview of the situation of Nairobi and its informal settlements. Then, technical options for water supply, sanitation, drainage as well as the development of technical capacity and appropriate standards are suggested, along with financial and management options. Finally guiding principles are presented. These include for instance: social, economic and financial principles, institutional and management arrangements, and working with stakeholders.

Experts Probe Links Between Urban Growth and Climate Change in Africa

April 28, 2009 · 0 comments

urbanafricaA new project has united researchers exploring the connection between rapid urban growth in Africa and climate related emergencies, in an effort to safeguard vulnerable urban populations from the effects of climate change.

The Climate Change and Adaptation in Africa program, or CCAA, aims to increase the capacity of African people and organizations to cope with the effects of climate change.

Sponsored by Canada’s International Development Research Center and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, the project hopes to indentify strategies to help the urban poor in Africa’s largest cities to adapt to challenges posed by the changing environment, says project manager Francois Gasengayire.

“The program supports research that helps reduce poverty by improving the environment. And the goal is to harness the capacity of the poor to reduce environmental degradation as it relates to natural disasters, and enhance the use of natural resources for food, water, and income generation,” he said.

Gasengayire says program organizers sought out proposals from across Africa for research projects exploring the links between urban growth and climate change. The researchers, who have assembled in Dakar, represent a range of institutions working with the diverse climate-related issues facing urban areas throughout Africa.

Gasengayire said that an increase in disasters caused by climate change is likely to be felt most acutely in Africa’s urban centers.

“There is a kind of link, and at the same time a vicious cycle between poverty, urban poverty, and environmental burdens,” he said.

Experts say the effects of climate change are already being felt across the continent, and fear that incidences of flooding and drought, and the frequency and intensity of severe storms, will continue to increase in coming decades. Gasingayire says recent shifts in familiar weather patterns, caused by climate change, have made traditional agriculture across Africa less profitable, and driven Africans from rural areas to cities in unprecedented numbers.

The resulting population growth of urban centers, in turn, places stress on natural resources, such as arable land, natural fuels, and fresh water supplies, according to Liqa Raschid-Sally, program manager in Ghana and Ethiopia for Sri Lanka based International Water Management Institute.

“When you move water from agriculture to cities, you can also have an aggravation of the situation in the rural area, or the suburban area, affecting the city, and so there are a lot of issues around this rural-urban interface which could be aggravated by climate change and therefore also affect the cities,” she said.

Sally says increasing numbers of poor migrants to an urban area also heavily tax infrastructure, placing higher demand on already inadequate water and sanitation systems, and creating a challenge for urban planners. She says her work is aimed at giving policy makers some tools to employ in their planning.

“The approach is to try to have a science-based decision tool to help policy makers and planners, decision makers at the city level essentially, to address these questions,” she added.

Such policy tools are necessary because the urban poor have fewer resources to adapt to climate change, and are extremely vulnerable to natural disasters, says University of Ghana researcher Samuel Nli Andey, describing an urban settlement outside Accra.

“The problem is you have this huge migrant settlement, which is located on a flat plain, these areas experience floods on a normal basis, every year there are floods, and we think this is going to increase. And once it increases it is going to affect the lives of the people there,” he said.

Andey says his research will focus on surveying houses in the effected zones, and studying the anticipated responses to flooding. He says the problems caused by flooding are likely to worsen as new residents move into flood plains around Accra.

In 2008, floods struck several countries in West Africa, including Ghana, Liberia, and Senegal, and caused significant damage in Accra. Ghanaian officials and urban planners blamed overbuilding in low-lying, flood prone areas for exacerbating the damage caused by the disaster.

Source – Cutting Edge News

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