By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Nov 14 2022 – For those who have it, a toilet is that ‘thing’ in the bathroom, next to the bidet, the hand-washing sink with hot and cold water faucets, and the bathtub.

Given their ‘unprestigious’ function, some billionaires, in particular in the Gulf oil-producer kingdoms, fancy to pose their buttocks on a solid-gold toilet. Once they are there, why not also solid-gold faucets?

Many others prefer a more comfortable use of their toilets, thus endowing them with both automatic heating and flushing. And anyway, being given-for-granted, nobody would give a thought to the high importance of all these ‘things’.

The other side of the coin shows an entirely different picture. A shocking one by the way.

Billions of humans without one

And it is a fact that close to 4 billion people –or about half of the world’s total population of 8 billion– still live without access to a safe toilet and other sanitation facilities.

Nearly a full decade ago, the international community, represented in the United Nations General Assembly, decided to declare 19 November every single year, as a world day to address such a staggering problem.

And year after year, the UN continues to behave ‘politically correct’ by saying that progress and achievements were anyway made, however much would still be to do.

Despite such ‘correctness,’ the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, stated on the Day that the world is “seriously off track to keep our promise of safe toilets for all by 2030 – a crucial indicator in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Investment in sanitation systems is too low and progress remains too slow.”

Photo courtesy: Shelter Associates

The facts

Well, this year’s World Toilet Day (19 November) provides some shocking facts:

Death of the children: Every day, over 800 children under age five years old die from diarrhoea linked to unsafe water, sanitation and poor hygiene.

Poor sanitation is linked to the transmission of diarrhoeal diseases such as cholera and dysentery, as well as typhoid, intestinal worm infections and polio. It exacerbates stunting and contributes to the spread of antimicrobial resistance.

Globally, 1 in 3 schools do not have adequate toilets, and 23% of schools have no toilets at all. Schools without toilets can cause girls to miss out on their education. Without proper sanitation facilities, many are forced to miss school when they are on their period.

Open defecation: about 900 million people worldwide practice open defecation, meaning they go outside – on the side of the road, in bushes or rubbish heaps. It’s often a matter of where they live: 90% of people who practice open defecation live in rural areas.

Of these, 494 million still defecate in the open, for example in street gutters, behind bushes or into open bodies of water.

Moreover, the lack of sanitation services, just in the year 2020, stood behind the fact that 45% of the household wastewater generated globally was discharged without safe treatment.

Consequently, at least 10% of the world’s population is thought to consume food irrigated by wastewater.

Safely managed sanitation protects groundwater from human waste pollution. Credit: Lova Rabary-Rakontondravony/IPS

The impact on underground water

Should all this not be enough, the 2022 World Toilet Day focuses on another invisible fact: the grave impacts of such a sanitation crisis on groundwater, which is the source of up to 99% of the world’s fresh water.

The 2022 campaign ‘Making the invisible visible’ explores how inadequate sanitation systems spread human waste into rivers, lakes and soil, polluting underground water resources.

However, this problem seems to be invisible. Invisible because it happens underground. Invisible because it happens in the poorest and most marginalised communities.

Groundwater is the world’s most abundant source of freshwater. It supports drinking water supplies, sanitation systems, farming, industry and ecosystems. As climate change worsens and populations grow, groundwater is vital for human survival.

The invisible dangers

The central message of World Toilet Day 2022 is that safely managed sanitation protects groundwater from human waste pollution.

See why:

Safe sanitation protects groundwater. Toilets that are properly located and connected to safely managed sanitation systems, collect, treat and dispose of human waste, and help prevent human waste from spreading into groundwater.

Sanitation must withstand climate change. Toilets and sanitation systems must be built or adapted to cope with extreme weather events, so that services always function and groundwater is protected.

The above shows how those ‘things’ in the bathroom can be life-saving.

Moreover, for those who are obsessed with measuring human suffering in purely money-making terms, it should be enough to know that providing adequate sanitation is a good business: each 1 US dollar invested in it means 5 US dollars saved in health services.

By Busani Bafana
SHARM EL SHEIK, Nov 14 2022 – The only thing Taren Chilia remembers about Cyclone Pam was that it flattened his school in Vanuatu, washing away books, equipment, and – well, almost his dreams too.

Cyclone Pam – a category 5 cyclone, was one of the worst to hit the South Pacific Ocean island in 2015, displacing about 45 percent of its 270 000 people. It also left several people dead and destroyed property, houses, and crops. Scientists say human-induced climate change is warming ocean temperatures, fuelling tropical storms driven by warm, moist air.

In Vanuatu, the cyclone tore through the Efate Island in Shefa Province, close to Port Vila’s capital.

Chilia, now 20, from Mele village, recalls fleeing rising water as the storm swept through his village.

“I was at home with mum and dad, and the school was closed, and everyone was in the house. We could not go outside, but we could hear the wind howling and the thunder strike when my neighbour came to fetch us to leave our house, which was not safe from the storm,” Chilia, who was then in his primary school, narrated to IPS on sidelines of the COP27 summit.

On the agenda of the global meeting of the Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the issue of loss and damage and how developing countries can be compensated for the losses as a result of the severe impacts of climate change.

“As we rushed out of our house, I heard a loud roaring wave, and our village was flooded. The school was washed away, just like everything else around,” said Chilia, who was chosen to lay the first brick to rebuild the first block of classrooms in his village after the devastating Cyclone Pam.

With donations by well-wishers in Australia after Cyclone Pam hit, villagers were challenged to rebuild Chilia’s school within three days, and they did.

“We used big white tents donated by UNICEF as classrooms until we built the school. The whole village pitched in to build on day one (which was) on a Friday. On the second day, we painted the school, and on the third day, we celebrated as we opened the school. On Monday, we were back to school,” he said.

Climate Justice Delayed is Justice Denied

Chilia believes that Pacific Islands like Vanuatu need to be compensated to repair and restore infrastructure lost to the impacts of climate change. He says developed countries responsible for high carbon emissions that have led to global warming should take responsibility for their action and pay up.

“I am calling on all countries of the world to step up on climate justice for the Pacific Islands by supporting (the creation of) a loss and damage facility at this COP27,” Chilia told IPS. He explained that the Vanuatu government should seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice in settling the issue of payments for loss and damage caused by climate change.

Developing countries arguing that they have suffered the impacts of climate change to which they have not contributed are pushing for a loss and damage fund to compensate them for climate impacts.

Espen Ronneberg, Senior Adviser, Multilateral Climate Change Agreements for the Pacific Community (SPC), says loss and damage will continue without ambitious mitigation action and reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. He says the impacts of climate change are already being experienced.

“We are also looking into the future and how those impacts will get much worse unless mitigation is ramped up and unless technical assistance, finance, for instance, are also ramped up,” said Ronneberg, who explained that available resources were not fit-for-purpose in addressing the current impacts of climate change in pacific island countries.

“The type of loss and damage that we are seeing now and that we are anticipating given the different scenarios is not really going to address those impacts. We know there is humanitarian assistance available, there is the Green Fund and the Adaptation Fund, but these do not meet the needs we are seeing,” he said.

“The loss and damage facility is a key to the Pacific Islands, but there are a lot of unknowns at the moment. We know what we do not want. This has to be worked out in common with our development partners, and everyone has to be on the same page regarding loss and damage issues. We are not quite there yet.”

For Chilia, the impact of climate change is real.

“Climate change has hit me personally and has impacted human rights,” Chilia said. “My mother used to be a tourism sales lady, but she is back home because the cyclone destroyed her stall.”

Chilia says he now supports his family.

“I am the breadwinner of the house with seven of us in the family, and I work the one job at the restaurant and bar just to feed the family.”

Chilia could not complete his secondary school after he was forced to drop out when his mother lost her tourism business. His father is unable to work after developing a painful back. He used to take on seasonal jobs picking apples in Australia and New Zealand.

He said coming to COP27 was his first opportunity to travel, but the experience left him enriched. He had learnt so much about climate change and could not wait to tell his village about restoring lost coral reefs.

“I love snorkelling, and when I go snorkelling, I do not see any coloured reefs anymore, but we can do a lot to restore our coral reefs that we are losing because of climate change.”

The Island of Vanuatu relies on coral ecosystems for their economic, livelihood, and coastal protection benefits. A rise in ocean temperatures has led to coral bleaching, while acidification has reduced the availability of calcium minerals in the water that corals need to grow and repair themselves.

“I have a dream – even though my dream has been broken because I did not get to finish my year 10 at school and had to get a job to help my family,” said Chilia. “But I want to bring (the world’s) attention to climate change,” said Chilia, who believes that his activism as a member of Greenpeace Australia Pacific will help make a difference.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By External Source
Nov 14 2022 (IPS-Partners)

Adit Adhikary lives in Bangladesh’s southern coast, where land is going underwater, salinity is destroying agriculture and drinking water is scarce. Will conversations at COP27 reflect the needs of his community?

Source: BRAC