Papers to Practice

This episode is part of season that looks at understanding the interrelations between sanitation and climate change. Climate change is real and many people in the world are already getting used to its consequences. Sanitation is affected in multiple ways by climate change. But sanitation is also a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions as we have seen in previous episodes. Unfortunately, the effects of climate change on WASH services are probably going to be worse for the most vulnerable populations. 

How can we empower governments in low- and middle-income countries address climate change? 

The paper we are going to talk about provides some guidance to answer this question. We talked with Juliet Willetts, professor at the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney to better understand how.

The paper outlines a co-production approach to understand sanitation and climate related risks. It suggests a  ‘climate resilient sanitation system’ framework as guidance for governments, also outside Indonesia, to engage in actions of response. The framework structures the actions along seven key domains ranging from planning and decision-making to infrastructure and learning over time as a starting point to address the complexity governments must face when planning for citywide inclusive and resilient sanitation. 

To read the paper: Co-developing evidence-informed adaptation actions for resilient citywide sanitation: Local government response to climate change in Indonesia. www.doi.org/10.1177/23998083221098740. To learn more about this the speaker: https://profiles.uts.edu.au/Juliet.Willetts Related publication: Analysing the capacity to respond to climate change: a framework for community-managed water services. www.doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2018.1562867.

The public health benefits of sanitation are widely recognized. To minimize the disease pathways at the city scale, everyone needs to have access to safely managed sanitation. That said, public health is not the only consideration. Global estimates of greenhouse gas emissions have not taken into account the complex service chain in growing cities, which has led to the underestimation of these emissions and their overall impact on the environment.

This interview unpacks an assessment carried out in Kampala, Uganda to better estimate emissions from all stages of the sanitation service chain, ultimately to be enable decisions where both public and environmental health are protected.

The safety of sanitation workers remains an often-ignored aspect of fecal sludge management. This paper, using an inductive, unbiased approach to highlight a number of safety issues faced by sanitation workers, including exposure of sludge,  even in a mechanized context. The paper identifies three safety concerns: inhalation of harmful gasses, contact with sludge, and physical injury. When it comes to measures to mitigate these risks, the paper looks broadly at elimination, substituting, controlling, and finally personal protective equipment (PPE). The bigger discussion is about who is responsible. Often there are high expectations of these sanitation workers to address all the risks, when in fact the responsibility should fall elsewhere--on households and even at the policy/ standard level.

Based on the uptake of the 3 episodes launched in 2021, we have decided to have a go at it again in 2022! 

The sanitation sector continues to innovate and evolve in order to tackle the persistent and emergent challenges related to delivering inclusive safely managed services globally. To support these efforts and facilitate sharing across the globe, we too have evolved in the knowledge management space. Turns out busy professionals welcomed listening as an alternative to reading when it comes to sanitation research and publications.

In 2022, CAWST & EAWAG have expanded the season to 6 episodes, building off what we heard and learned last year. Each episode we (Laura Kohler & Dorothee Spuhler) will sit with the authors of selected sanitation publications and ask them directly who should know about work and what are the key points so that professionals and practitioners working in the sanitation sector globally can put these papers to practice.

Stay tuned for the season 2 launch in June!

What is Papers to Practice? 

A series that makes sanitation research and other information-dense publications accessible to busy professionals working to deliver inclusive, safely managed sanitation services globally. We sit with authors and ask them who should know about the paper and what are the key points to be able to put these papers to practice.