Wastewater Agriculture and Sanitation for Poverty Alleviation (WASPA): what the programme aims to do

Wastewater Agriculture and Sanitation for Poverty Alleviation (WASPA)

Background

The strategic focus of the programme is to bring closer collaboration between the Water for Food and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sectors by showing how to integrate wastewater agriculture development into holistic strategies for waste water management and household-centred sanitation. The programme builds on a growing knowledge base and track record of the key global and regional partners. The programme aims to contribute to poverty alleviation through improved hygiene, environmental sanitation, improving the nutrition status of poor urban dwellers, and income generation for households in peri-urban areas of larger and secondary cities and towns.

Rationale

An increasing number of small and intermediary towns and cities will need to address the combination of livelihoods, water resources management and environmental sanitation as they grow in size. In these towns and in highly populated urbanising rural areas (passive urbanisation) there is and will be a substantial increase in generation of waste water. In these situations, there is a need to contain health and environmental risks through appropriate and decentralised solutions to management of waste water treatment, use and disposal. At the same time there is increasing water scarcity and therefore competition between water for domestic and productive uses. Water can be put to productive use at various stages in the cycle: it makes sense to use waste water and grey water when water is scarce or costly, the more so because of its nutrient value. Moreover, controlled use of waste water can help decrease the pollution of surface water.

Though the benefits of using waste water and human waste can be considerable from an economic point of view, there are also environmental and health risks involved. Mitigating these risks and maximising benefits requires holistic approaches that involve all stakeholders. In such processes the main priorities are knowledge sharing and promotion of realistic measures to improve hygiene and sanitation, to generate income and to produce food for better livelihoods and sustained improvement of water and sanitation services at household and community levels.Such approaches can build on earlier experience gained which has resulted in the adoption of household centred approaches to environmental sanitation by the international expert community and policy makers in the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector. These approaches are adhering to the so-called Bellagio principles.

Bridging the gap between WASH and Water for Food sectors is part of accepted principles of integrated water resources management and is politically recognised as a priority. However, there has been insufficient progress in practical terms. Considering the context of urbanisation and increasing competition for clean water as well as the increasing production costs, there is an urgent need for advocacy on the issues of waste water agriculture and sanitation at the highest political levels.

The key message is that there is a need to institutionalise the use of waste water under the right sanitary conditions with scenarios and strategies with a medium or long term sustainability perspective to take into account dynamic change in local situations (demographic and urbanisation patterns, economic trends, environmental conditions) .

Parallel to this it is important to develop practical cases as experiences on the ground can contribute to development of practical and applicable international guidelines and feasible combinations of technologies. These needs to be reflected in national regulatory frameworks that help develop waste water agriculture in the context of sound sanitation policies and local strategic sanitation action plans based on stakeholder participation. Thus the programme aims to have impact at local, national and international level, thereby showcasing how bridging the gap between the Water for Food and the WASH sectors can result in improved livelihoods and better hygiene in a great number of small and intermediary towns.

Programme Organisation

The programme is led by IWMI, IRC and STREAMS and their networks of regional offices and partners. Collaboration with and linkages to other projects, programmes and organisations are aimed at maximising the WASPA programme’s outputs and impacts.

Each partner has the specific responsibilities listed below which reflect the relative strengths of the partners:

• IWMI: Centre of excellence for knowledge generation through research, and action learning. Provide technical inputs on programme areas. Collaborate with IRC on knowledge management.
• IRC: Centre of excellence for knowledge management. Experience on participatory approaches, information dissemination, facilitating knowledge sharing, publications.
• STREAMS of KNOWLEDGE: advocacy and capacity building through action learning, fundraising for specific projects.