Nature Water: Innovative sanitation solutions for more access and equality in water-stressed environments

To reduce water inequalities and injustice, water governance must be transformed at local through to global scales. That is one of the arguments presented by nine experts – including two IHE Delft Professors – in a Viewpoint article published in the first issue of Nature Water.

View the Nature Water article

Damir Brdjanovic, Professor and Head of the Citywide Inclusive Sanitation research group at IHE Delft, noted that the scientific community is increasingly focusing on non-conventional sanitation solutions. The citywide inclusive sanitation approach, which combines sewered and non-sewered sanitation, in particular focusing on faecal sludge management, offers opportunities. The concept considers public services as a whole rather than technical solutions alone. For example, it could be used to introduce technologies such as medical toilets in non-sewered sanitation areas as a means to develop a community-wide system for early detection of epidemics or longitudinal monitoring of users’ health.

“Future research will combine smart sanitation technologies and medical research, resulting in crossover innovations, such as medical toilets, that could revolutionize the public health sector in both high- and low-income countries for preventive cancer detection or pre-diagnosis of tropical diseases”

Damir Brdjanovic

Another article author, Joyeeta Gupta, Professor of Law and Policy in Water Resources and Environment at IHE Delft and Professor of Environment and Development at the University of Amsterdam, argued current water crises all have a common root cause: inequitable, unsustainable and failing governance.

She listed three main issues related to water justice:

Water shortages that raises the price water beyond the reach of the poor. This leads to water being used for activities that offer return on investment rather than meeting the water, sanitation and hygiene. needs of the poor.
Declining water quality due to pollution noting that those causing the pollution are not necessarily the ones suffering its consequences.
Extreme weather events such as floods and droughts that affects lives and redistributes risks in society, especially in the Global South: those who suffer the most from such events are often behind just a fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions.

“If justice is not central to direct and indirect water policy at all levels, it will be impossible to live within the water, climate and nutrient planetary boundaries”

Joyeeta Gupta

“All three issues raise distributive and corrective justice points” she wrote. “Proposed solutions often institutionalize or exacerbate existing inequities.”

With more than 2 billion people living in water-stressed areas, justice is needed, she argued. “Further denying the poor drinking water and sanitation services will only exacerbate health problems with spill over effects on society,” she wrote.

Nature Water, a new journal of the leading multidisciplinary science journal Nature, aims to be a venue for all research on the evolving relationship between water resources and society. It seeks to create a venue where researchers working towards a more equitable and sustainable relationship between water and society can find significant contributions from natural sciences, social sciences and engineering.