HARARE, 16 April 2012 (IRIN) – Maria Saungweme, 42, an informal trader and single mother from the low-income suburb of Glen Norah in the Zimbabwean capital Harare, uses sewage-infested river water to irrigate her two-acre vegetable plot.

“I am not proud to say this, but I consider the sewage that is offloaded into the river a blessing because it makes my vegetables grow well and fast. I have been selling my vegetables to other vendors for years and am earning enough to take care of my children,” Saungweme told IRIN.

She said she had not received complaints from her customers, but admitted her family did not consume her produce, preferring instead to buy from other vendors.

Scientific research has found that consuming vegetables irrigated with sewage effluent carries health risks. A 2009 study by Jos University in Nigeria, published in the Annals of African Medicine, found that “people consuming vegetables irrigated with raw waste water are exposed to the risk of infection with ascaris, amoeba and tapeworm.”

But Saungweme insisted that she was not the only vendor selling vegetables irrigated with the river water. “A big amount of the vegetables that you see being sold in most of the suburbs are fertilized by sewage flowing into the rivers,” she said.

At an informal settlement about 2km from Saungweme’s vegetable plot, about 10 families depend on the contaminated river for drinking, cooking, bathing and washing.

“What’s wrong with the water? My eyes tell me it’s clean and we have been using it since we started staying here in 2005. Of course, now and then some of the squatters from here die, but I don’t see why their deaths should be blamed on the water,” a teenage resident of the settlement who identified himself as Jeff told IRIN.

I consider the sewage that is offloaded into the river a blessing because it makes my vegetables grow well and fast

The inability to upgrade sewage systems in Harare and Chitungwiza, a dormitory town about 35km southeast of the capital, has resulted in the two municipalities discharging raw human waste into tributaries of the River Manyame which feeds Lake Chivero, the main source of water for Harare and Chitungwiza residents, Harare Municipality town clerk Tendai Mahachi told parliament recently.

Because of the poor reticulation system and inadequate chemicals, the municipality was able to treat only 54 of the 144 megalitres of raw sewage produced daily, meaning that most of the water went untreated, he said.

Harare’s sewage system “was meant for a population that is much less than the current one”, he told parliament. The capital is officially estimated to have a population of 1.5 million people, but independent estimates indicate the figure could be as high as three million.

In a recent report, Harare mayor Muchadeyi Masunda said 60 percent of the capital’s residents did not have access to clean water, and 10 percent relied on boreholes and unprotected wells.

Waterborne diseases

Between January and March this year, Harare was hit by a typhoid outbreak -widely attributed to acute water shortages and poor sanitary conditions and practices – with more than 3,000 people seeking treatment and Health Ministry officials reporting two deaths.

The effects of Zimbabwe’s economic malaise since 2000, which has seen hyperinflation and a rapid decline in social services, left a legacy where “nothing was working”, Mahachi said.

Since an outbreak of cholera in 2008 claimed more than 4,000 lives, the UN Children’s agency (UNICEF) in Zimbabwe and international donors have been helping municipalities purify water by supplying water sanitizing/chlorinating chemicals, refurbishing water reticulation infrastructure and sinking boreholes.

Read more

Growing risk of waterbourne diseases in rural areas

Is another cholera epidemic on the way?

Typhoid spreads amid water shortage

Making the water safer

Peter Salama, UNICEF country representative, told IRIN that the interventions were scheduled to end in June 2011, but that after an appeal from local authorities, they were extended until the end of March 2012. UNICEF is now phasing out the delivery of water treatment chemicals based on assurances from municipal officials that they could now supply their own.

However, doubts still linger whether local councils can go it alone; the government is yet to release a US$50 million grant it approved in February for the rehabilitation of water infrastructure and treatment.

Salama said boreholes sunk during the 2008 cholera outbreak to ease water shortages were breaking down or running dry and needed to be repaired.

“It is, however, not desirable to have boreholes as a long-term solution to water problems; rather piped water is the way to go,” he said, adding that his agency remained committed to promoting access to safe water despite phasing out purification interventions.

William Nduku of the Forum for Environmental Education, a local NGO, told IRIN sewage was not the only pollutant: “Contamination of water meant for human consumption… is not limited to the introduction of raw sewage into rivers but includes refuse dumping and industrial pollution that pose health risks and threaten biodiversity,” he said.

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Photo: Samuel Okiror/IRIN

Refugees arriving at reception centre in Uganda’s Kisoro district (file photo)

KAMPALA,  – Ugandan officials say they are struggling to cope with a continuing influx of civilians fleeing violence in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

“We are struggling to provide the basic needs and facilities. It’s not easy to manage and provide shelter, water, health services and food for them,” Uganda’s commissioner for refugees, David Kazungu, told IRIN. Every day, 50-80 refugees were crossing the border, he said.

Many of the new arrivals are staying at a transit camp at Nyakabande in Kisoro District, which was originally designed to house just 1,000 people and now has 3,500 residents.

Describing conditions at the site as “over-stretched but completely under control”, Kai Nielsen, the UN Refugee Agency’s representative in Uganda, said lack of available land meant no refugees had been transferred from the site to more permanent settlements since late February.

“The new arrivals are accommodated in family tents, and more tents are put up as and when required,” he said.

More recent arrivals from DRC are thought to have fled a government offensive against defected soldiers led by International Criminal Court indictee Bosco Ntaganda.

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Photo: Contributor/IRIN

A villager cuts bamboo from the local forest

VIENTIANE,  – With pressure on natural resources increasing in Laos, the first community land titles granted to five villages in Vientiane Province could provide a national model for environmental protection while safeguarding the livelihoods of villagers.

“It’s very important because the communal land titles can give communities the right to access and harvest natural resources, and overcome land concessions to companies,” Souvanpheng Phommasane, an advisor for SNV Netherlands Development Organization told IRIN.

The title deeds cover an area of 2,189 hectares of bamboo-producing forest. After a two-year process the land was finally handed over to the five villages in Sangthong District, 50km west of the capital, Vientiane, in February.

Hanna Saarinen, coordinator for the Land Issues Working Group, which represents 40 concerned civil society organizations, says the issue of land ownership is becoming more urgent.

“In the last five to 10 years there have been more and more competing interests [seeking control] over natural resources,” she said. Private sector companies as well as communities “have been using the same land, the same forest for years”.

The government’s 2011-2015 development plan sets a target of at least 8 percent annual economic growth, driven primarily by extractive industries, such as mining, hydropower and plantation agriculture. All these activities require significant land allocation, while slash-and-burn agriculture and logging further diminish forested areas.

Trees once spread across 70 percent of Laos, but in 2010 the Department of Forestry estimated that this has now been reduced to just 40 percent. The decline in forest cover not only has wide environmental impacts but also affects rural incomes.

Per capita income stands at just over US$1,000 per year, the World Bank reports, and 75 percent of the country’s workforce earns a livelihood from agriculture.

Government statistics note that non-timber forest products, such as bamboo, contribute about 40 percent of rural income.

A bamboo trade association in Sangthong District, set up in 2007, designs and produces furniture and handicrafts made from local bamboo. The district administration states that households involved in the project can earn an additional 2 million Lao Kip ($250) a month – a significant amount for villagers living in one of the 46 districts designated by the government as the poorest in the country.

Photo: Contributor/IRIN

Villagers practice slash and burn agriculture in northern Laos

Salongsay Mixay, the head of Na Po village, says the local forests were under threat before the land titles were granted.

“There were different cases. A big truck comes from somewhere – no one knows where, maybe the city – and they cut [bamboo] and went away. The second case is the investor who talks to the villagers and says, ‘I want to cut this much [bamboo],’ and pays a little amount of money, and leaves.”

Replicating the land-grant model across this Southeast Asian nation may not be straightforward. “In Sangthong it was a specific case because they had this bamboo project – they were already managing the bamboo areas, they had a forest management plan – but there are no clear guidelines or manuals, so the districts do not know how to do it in practice,” said Saarinen.

Support from a number of development organizations, with funding through the Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme, and implementation by the United Nations Development Programme, helped the Sangthong District administration to tackle the procedures needed to apply for and eventually be granted the title deeds to the land.

Phommasane from SNV Netherlands believes that if other districts receive similar support they could also get communal land titles. The government is carrying out a land policy review that is expected to formalize the procedures for granting communal land titles.

Giving ownership of more of the land to the villagers who earn their living from it could be critical to the government’s stated ambition of restoring forest cover to 65 percent of the country by 2015.

Khamoon Tiengthila, the Sangthong District deputy governor, says he is proud of what his district has achieved. “It’s a small project that contributes to preserving the world’s environment. The forest is important for development and the economy.”

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