Coastal Sewage Contamination Gets International Attention

CAIRNS, Australia, May 17, 2004 (ENS) - Globally, sewage is the largest source of marine contamination by volume, so to address this issue, the United Nations Friday launched a new campaign to clean up the seas by ensuring that people have access to toilets and safe drinking water.

The new campaign was inaugurated in Cairns, by a United Nations organization and a partnership group working collaboratively - the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council.

They are calling the new effort "Wastewater Emission Targets - Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for All," or WET-WASH.

Divers measure ocean contamination at the Sand Island sewage outfall, Oahu, Hawaii. (Photo courtesy NOAA)

The WET-WASH campaign was launched at the end of the Global H20 - Hilltops-2-Oceans Partnership Conference in Cairns that took place from May 11 to 14.

The conference and trade fair took place on the doorstep of the world's longest reef - The Great Barrier Reef - which is at risk from poor catchment management, unsustainable fisheries, climate change and oil exploration.

Policy makers, industry representatives, nongovernmental organizations, academics and other experts gathered to share expertise, experience and solutions to the problems of marine pollution, with a view to developing a multistakeholder program of work to protect the marine environment from land based activities. Participants discussed the links between integrated water resources management and integrated coastal area management.

Dr. Veerle Vandeweerd is director of UNEP's Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities (Photo courtesy IISD)

"Achieving this will require alternatives to traditional large scale investment projects," said Vandeweerd. "We need more innovative approaches to technology, infrastructure development, financing and management, including more use of natural sewage filtering systems like ponds, reed beds and mangrove swamps."

Pollution of coastal waters costs the world some $16 billion annually due to ill health, disease, and death, UNEP estimates.

In addition, there is an increasing number of dead zones - areas in the world's oceans and seas that are starved for oxygen UNEP warns that proliferation of dead zones could be a greater threat to fish populations than overfishing.

These dead zones are linked to an excess of nutrients, mainly nitrogen, that originate from agricultural fertilizers, vehicle and factory emissions and domestic wastes.

Seagulls feed on stranded lobsters and surf clams after an oil spill incident at Bristol County, Rhode Island, USA, January 1996. (Photo by Frank Csulak courtesy NOAA)

In South Asia alone, over 800 million people have no access to basic sanitation, putting them at high risk from sewage related diseases and death. The level of untreated domestic wastes being discharged into the region’s coastal waters are likely to be the highest in the world, increasing the risk of shellfish contamination and the chance of toxic, algal blooms poisoning fish and wildlife.

Precious habitats, such as South Asia’s coral reefs, are likely to be under increased stress as a result of the high levels of nutrients and suspended solids linked with the discharges.

The second most vulnerable region is the seas of East Asia. Here, more than 500 million people are without access to proper sanitation.

In the seas of the North-West Pacific, more than 400 million people have no access to basic sanitation services.

Still, the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council says that success stories from Asia, Africa and Latin America have shown that approaches focused on people and led by communities can employ innovative sanitation technologies to reduce poverty, improve health and restore human dignity to the poorest of the poor.

The effluent of 20,000 residents of Zeralda, Algeria runs untreated over the beach into the bay. A biological treatment plant is under construction to handle the waste. (Photo courtesy Organic Farm & Garden Supplies)

The partnership will build multi-stakeholder capacity for integrated water resource and coastal area management. In addition, the use of time bound Wastewater Emission Targets as a tool for managing water from the hilltops to the oceans will be explored.

Next on the agenda is a November conference - Global WASH Forum 2004 - convened by the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council and hosted by the Senegal Ministry for the Environment and Sanitation in Dakar.

With the theme of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for All - Building Coalitions for the Millennium Development Goals conference participants will include representatives from national governments, international organizations and community based organisations as well as the public sector, external support and donor agencies, the private sector, NGOs, grassroots organisations, academia and the media.

The Global WASH Forum 2004 will take place from November 22 to 26 in Dakar. <--#include virtual="bottomhtml.txt"-->