Ecosan in poor urban areas – sustaining sanitation and food security

The majority of people on the planet now live in urban areas which are now the centres of global population growth. The current urban population of 3.3 billion is expected to reach 5 billion by 2030 (60% of the global population), almost completely due to population growth in developing countries. This urbanisation of the global population is also an urbanisation of poverty. By 2035, 50% of the world’s poor will live in urban areas.

From a sanitation point of view, cities concentrate huge volumes of excreta in a limited area. They also concentrate the nutrients from vast areas of farmland into the same limited area. For the urban poor in particular the accumulation of both is a major problem. Living in proximity to excreta as a result of poor or no sanitation is having catastrophic health consequences. Sending nutrients on a one-way trip from fields into cities makes the production and use of increasing volumes of chemical fertiliser necessary leading to higher prices for staple food.

Whilst conventional (disposal-oriented) sanitation systems have improved the public health situation for many in cities that can afford them, they have failed to reach the poorest, drained economies, squandered resources and broken nutrient cycles. Over the last decade sanitation practitioners and researchers have been working on modern sanitation systems that address these problems. The approaches that have been developed are usually considered under the term ecological sanitation (ecosan) and are based on an overall view of material flows as part of a sustainable excreta and wastewater management system tailored to meet the needs of the users and local conditions.

Hundreds of different ecosan systems are now in operation around the world. In recent years ecosan systems have been upscaled to cover thousands of households. Two of the many projects now underway are presented (Allotment garden project in Cagayan de Oro City, the Philippines and urban ecosan project for Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso) to illustrate the benefit to the urban poor offered by affordable ecosan alternatives that bring the double benefits of health protection and improved agricultural production. These examples also highlight the importance of working local authorities in getting these systems applied at city level.

[Paper to be presented at the IRC symposium Sanitation for the Urban Poor, Delft, The Netherlands, 19 - 21 November 2008]