Coupling Sustainable Sanitation and Groundwater Protection

Report

The international symposium aimed at bringing together professionals and decision-makers as well as hydrogeologists and sanitary engineers, discussing common issues, listening to each other and forming new partnerships. Representatives from other disciplines such as water resources management, water supply engineering, planning, health, and agriculture enriched the discussions.

At the beginning of the symposium it was clear to the participants that the costs of environmental and individual damage caused by the lack of sanitation outweigh by far the costs of the recent crisis within the world financial system. During the discussions with keynote speakers Stephen Foster (WorldBank and IAH) and Perry McCarty (Stanford University), it was stated that the successful promotion of sanitation will often at the same time improve groundwater quality, or contribute massively to the protection of vulnerable aquifers.

The failure of past sanitation approaches is often related to a mindset based on colonial urban planning principles. This was considered during a panel discussion with UNEP-representative Patrick Mmayi, Susanne Herbst from WHO Collaborating Centre for Health Promoting Water Management and Risk Communication in Bonn, Germany, and Darren Saywell, a representative of IWA. Large areas within cities have been and still are neglected by mainstream planning. Town planning is dominated by top-down technocratic approaches. Powerful elites hinder changes; procedures to amend plans remain bureaucratic and corruption skews planning approaches blocking lasting investments in infrastructure. Supply driven planning usually benefits high and middle income families, without covering operational and maintenance costs. Innovative planning requires stakeholder participation. The participation of all stakeholders at all levels of planning, implementation and operation is considered to be the key issue for success of any water and sanitation project. Integrated approaches like IWRM and IWM exist and cater for the need for participation and holistic concepts.

One of the main messages from this event is that there is a wide range of sanitation solutions available which need to be adapted to the specific conditions of the regions of concern in order to be sustainable. To fulfil the five sustainability criteria, a sanitation system has to be not only economically viable, socially acceptable, and technically and institutionally appropriate, but it should also protect the environment and natural resources such as groundwater. BGR underlines the latter aspect in its guidelines which state that “Planet Earth is the natural basis of our lives, its resources are limited.”

The aspired dialogue between the disciplines represented at the symposium resulted in the demand of the sanitation sector, especially of the planners, for more information on groundwater vulnerability. The hydrogeologists supported the aim to cooperate more closly, and Thomas Himmelsbach, head of the BGR-section on groundwater protection, emphasized, “we are fighting the same battle.”

The symposium was considered to be very useful and a way forward to further integrate the various disciplines under the common goal of managing the limited resources in a sustainable manner for the benefit of the present and future generations.