International Symposium - Coupling Sustainable Sanitation & Groundwater Protection

Together with international co-convenors (BMZ, UNEP and WHO) and supporting organizations (BORDA, DED, DWA, GTZ, IAH, KfW and TTZ), BGR offered this symposium as the first event dealing with both topics. The symposium served as a forum for exchange between practitioners of development cooperation, technical and scientific specialists and representatives of political institutions who are committed to substantive support for sustainable sanitation. It encouraged the discussion of technical and scientific approaches towards improved sanitation and groundwater protection within a political framework.

• The main objective of a sanitation system is to protect and promote human health by providing a clean environment and breaking the cycle of disease.
  
• In order to be sustainable a sanitation system has to be not only economically viable, socially acceptable and technically and institutionally appropriate, it should also protect the environment and the natural resources. 
  
• Sanitation plays a big role in gender equity: The amount of girls who attend school has increased substantially due to clean and separated sanitation facilities in schools.

Conclusions

• Prevention is better than cure.
  Natural groundwater, unaffected by human activities, is free of pathogenic germs. In cases where drinking water wells are located in direct neighbourhood to a pollution source such as cess pits, the hydraulic short cut between microbiological pollution and drinking water well triggers this vicious faecal oral infection cycle causing severe sickness and countless deaths. Next to reducing health risks appropriate sanitation solutions also reduce most unwanted dissolved organic and inorganic substances in the groundwater body. As natural groundwater is usually of good quality, it can be fed into the local water supply system in most cases without any further treatment. This makes unaffected groundwater an inexpensive and safe drinking water source, available especially to the poor. Protected groundwater resources can be tapped close to human settlements and thus make distance water supply and expensive surface water treatment unnecessary. Thus, every precaution in form of sustainable sanitation and appropriate groundwater protection is much more cost-effective than any subsequent and costly treatment of spoiled water resources or distance water supply.
  
• Groundwater protection needs reliable information about spatial extend, quantity and quality of groundwater bodies.
  Existing data have to be evaluated and made transparent to all stakeholders. Geo-scientific investigations are necessary in order to achieve a better understanding of complex groundwater systems and their dynamics. The process of their natural recharge or, in case of fossil groundwater resources, their expected lifetime must be quantified. The protection of groundwater resources and the appropriate maintenance of water supply and sanitation structures are an essential key to prevent groundwater from contamination, to ensure sustainability of economic investments and to provide groundwater for all conditions, such as flood or drought conditions, also in future.
  
• Investing into sustainable sanitation results in development and pays back economically.
  
• The link between sustainable sanitation and groundwater protection is a substantial factor in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). 

Recommendations

• Both, groundwater protection and sustainable sanitation represent a basic task for every development planning.
  
• Wastewater is considered as a valuable resource; however, its uncontrolled and unregulated utilisation must be prohibited. Because of hygienic and health reasons the WHO multi-barrier approach needs to be followed.
  
• Technical standards for wastewater utilisation and groundwater protection are necessary and serve as a tool for a safe and sustainable planning, contracting and construction of sanitation systems.
  
• New ways of planning including demand driven approaches need to be introduced. Technical solutions need to consider the actual local situation and may offer various entry points for assessments and solution.
  
• Awareness creation and education concerning health, hygiene and sanitation, especially for women, serve as basis for successful participation and involvement of all stakeholders are the key to project ownership. Appropriate incentives and the clear formulation of benefits are the key to changing attitudes and introducing new concepts. 
  
• More capacity development as a multi-level approach is needed, in groundwater protection, planning as well as in construction, monitoring, operation and maintenance of sanitation systems.
  
• Efficient political structures, policies and legal set-ups are necessary. Neglecting the improvement of general sanitation conditions and therefore contaminating groundwater endangers the overall national gross products caused by increased costs in the health, labour and production sector. Therefore sanitation and groundwater issues have to be addressed on the highest political level.
  
• Local and regional groundwater resources and their protection areas have to be considered in development planning: Every new settlement should take groundwater resources into account and the protection of the aquifer should have high priority.
  
• Geo-scientific aspects have to be considered, e.g. climate, hydro-geology, soil characteristics and geomorphology. Groundwater quality and quantity as well as recharge and backflow has to be monitored in order to guarantee safe water supply.

 Chance encounter