Task 7

Sanitation and waste management: Case-Kibera, Nairobi

We are in the group 3, so we had to have found the answer to the question “ who should take the responsibility at various level to solve the sanitation and waste problem in Kibera....?”. Kibera is a informal settlement situated in the Kenya’s capital Nairobi with population around 700,000 who are mostly very poor. The poor slum dwellers do not even have minimum urban facilities likes sanitation, waste disposal systems, water supply etc rather they live in a very unhealthy, risky and bitter conditions. The dwellers even can not use toiletries  freely because as much as 150 people could share only one toilet and  they should pay for using the toilet too.  Many families where there is no toilet nearby, have had to resort to using plastic bags that are then thrown away in alleys and ditches, a practice is called flying toilets.   How the human beings of these densely populated areas are suffering and vulnerable to the health risks can easily be understood. The city government exists but they are mostly busy with the areas dwelling by the rich people. The government, civil society, leaders had a very little motivation to rescue  of these slum populations from the bitter situation.

Some one must take these responsibilities, but who are they? What we discussed in our group, it is the government who should take the full moral responsibility to made them get rid of this inhuman situation.  It is understandable that the government have many limitations nevertheless the government in no way can avoid these misery but to accept the full responsibility and should organize for funds, policies, institutions, regulations by letting involve civil society, political leaders, NGOs, scholars, teachers, businessman etc.  If the government can realize the depth of suffering its citizens facing, and try to formulate clear, impartial policy and institutional frame work, propagate humanitarian motivation then the whole task will be easy to implement and lacking of motivation will be overcome. The strong government will, clear policy regulations, facilitating stakeholders opinion, involving civil society, NGOs are the must doing things to solve this inhumane menace  and the government   are hold liable to these responsibilities. If the government  is seen serious ,  all the other stakeholders must come up with their ability to extend their hands to the government and thus these sanitation and wastage menace can be solved within reasonable time.     

Task 6

Task 6

Solid waste is such a materials which are solid in form and there is no value of it to the person who owns it and freely thrown it away or keep it as a wastage. The term solid waste also synonymous with the words like, garbage, trash, refuse, rubbish etc. The term municipal solid waste refers to solid wastes from houses, streets and public places, shops, hospitals situated in the city area and which are under the responsibility of municipal or other local government bodies to clean. Solid waste management means all the activities that seek to minimize the health, environmental and aesthetic impacts of solid wastes.

The urbanization in the developing countries is growing very rapidly without facilitating proper infrastructure like sanitation, drainage, sewerage etc. In many cities of the developing countries, there is no proper waste storage systems rather the municipal waste thrown in open places and thus it spreads very bad smells, and pollute the environment. The open places where the waste are thrown are usually situated where poor people lived in. The government of the developing countries with very small resources can not take proper actions to manage the wastage in sustainable way. There are many challenges facing for solid waste management in the developing countries like, inadequate service coverage, limitation on recycling facilities, inadequate landfill disposal etc.

As the solid waste in the city is causing the misery for the city dwellers in one hand, on the other hand it has the potential to be used for energy generation purposes. So, the proper solid waste management gives two fold advantages. What are the major things to be implemented for the proper solid waste management ?  These are: Policy setting, developing and enforcing regulations, marketing facility for waste recovered materials, training and public awareness programme, incentives, private participation , reuse-recycling etc.

In conclusion , as in the developing countries, most of the municipal solid wastes are freely dumped in the open places, it not only creates serious health and environmental problems but also losing a good opportunity to use the waste into the valuable energy generation purposes. The government and stake holders of the developing countries should heed into this matter that certainly will be benefiting their people and country.

Task 5

Task 5
In this lecture, global energy situation in respect to technology, sources, efficiency, sustainability, and environmental perspective are discussed in brief. Energy sustainability is, the production and consumption of energy which can meet all the three criteria like, economic sustainable, social sustainable and environmental sustainable. If any one of these three criteria is missing, the energy system not to considered sustainable any more. There is a correlation between power generation and carbon dioxide production in the global perspective. More is the energy generation; the more is the carbon dioxide production. The rich nations, so therefore, are more responsible for GHG emissions.
Electric power generation and consumption must be balanced, if there is mismatching between these two, then instantly power generator release or absorb the inertial energy. For minimizing the mismatch between generation and consumption, storage systems is necessary, but such high energy storage system is not practical to be built though for very small system battery is used for the backing up. The centralized power generation has some advantages and disadvantage over the off grid distributed power generation. As example, the centralized power system has low per unit generation cost than the decentralized one but it needs very high initial cost. The remote areas which are far away form the existing grid may be considered as the sustainable electrification by the distributed generation. Among the renewable energy, the solar energy has the greatest potential than the others, it has potential which is 2850 times much than the current energy demands; and among the fossil energy, the coal has the highest potential i.e.  416000 EJ energy whereas energy consumption is 465 EJ per year.
Among the sustainable technology for generation of power, the most commonly are; biomass, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and oceanic sources. One problem for biomass energy is that, it contains high proportion of moisture and its calorific value is lower. Solar electricity is yet very expensive and hydro power has environmental consequences unless it is very small or micro scale. The wind technology also needs very expensive backup systems.  

task 3

Task 3

Water is a essential thing for living all the living species in the earth. It also believed that the life is originated from the water and therefore the other name of water is “life”. It is a great irony that although 3/4 of the Earth’s surface is covered with water, there is still an acute water crisis in some parts of the world. The problem is due to that 97.5 % of all water is salty ocean water and rest 2.5 % water if fresh water. Among the fresh water, only 30 % is available for use, and consequently only 1 % of all the earth’s water is available for use. Moreover, all the available water is not clean water and it also has competitors.  Roughly one-sixth of the world’s population, about 1 billion people, do not have access to pure drinking water. Some 2.3 million people in developing countries, most of them are children; suffer every year due to the diseases associated with the lack of access to pure water.
In pace with the development, the use of water also increasing very rapidly, at instance the use of water is almost double in 2000 than the water used in 1960. The causes for increasing of water use are population growth, rapid urbanization, change of consumption pattern, climate change etc. The water distribution is not uniform around the globe; some parts suffer more scarcity than others. Particularly, North Africa and Middle East suffer more water crisis due the unavailability of the underground water in the swallow depth. In South Asia on the other hand, though the water is available in comparatively swallow depth but Arsenic contamination in water is causing the water unsafe.
Another regional water  issue is that the countries which are situated in the down stream of the common rivers is suffering from the discrimination by the upstream countries when they build  DAM, Barrage etc for electricity production and irrigation. A real example of this phenomenon is Bangladesh that suffers droughts and floods due to construction of Farakka barrage on Ganga River.

Task 2

It is very good to know in the lecture that United Nations has a resolution for recognition on housing for all and it stated “ right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing, and housing, and to continuous improvement of living conditions ”. UN also takes another resolution in 2000 to set some goals and target which is known as Millennium Development Goals (MDG), one target in MDG is “significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers to achieve by 2020” committing by members nations . In a estimate in 2005 by UNHSP, the number of slum dwellers in the world are still around 1 billion. The 1 billion slum dwellers do not even have the minimum standard of housing what the UN committed. To ensure the sustainable development, the world leaders should wake up in the fact that when they are worried and high sounding about the climate change and do not even sacrifice any luxury, yet one billion people beyond the shelter of minimum standard.

The Ibare informal housing have the same characteristics what most of the slums in the developing and least developing countries carries. The slum dwellers mostly come from the rural part where job opportunities is very few  and expecting employment in the city. They usually built their house in the outskirts of the city where there is a great lack of sanitation, electricity and drinking water. The  slum houses are also built on a very poor structure and vulnerable to storm, rain, flood etc and the dwellers suffers round the year with their kids.

As the slum dwellers income is very little, it is not realistic to advice them to move to the civilized houses and forcibly eviction them from the slums are more than inhuman unless providing them alternating houses. Without creating more work activities and jobs in the rural areas, tell them go back  will seem “crying in the forest”.

What we have understand in the workshop is that, the government should provide the slum dwellers in a better place first with the help of donors, UN bodies etc and thus can improve the housing settlement like Ibare to acceptable standards .

Blog on Task 1 from Md. Mizanur Rahman

Hi

Natural disaster is increasing day by day with the increasing of the climate change. It affects most in the part of the globe where the infrastructures are more vulnerable and developments are relatively less sustainable. In Europe the rate of natural calamity and their consequence disasters are relatively less than the developing worlds. In our group discussion what we find is that the major hazards happen in Europe due to floods and we scored it 35 % and it is followed by storms / cyclones which is given  15 % scores. Tsunami, Storm surge and Earth quack are very uncommon in Europe and their potential risk are very fewer so they have been given score 1%, 2% and 2% respectively and Volcanic eruptions happens only in Italy and carries 5 % weight in our opinion. Other natural hazards like Droughts, Extreme temperature, Forest fires, and Land slides have also potential hazards in Europe and they are all scored 10%. 

My home town is situated in a developing country namely Bangladesh which has a very large population and population density is very high (1100 people per square kilometer). Due to the high pressure from the large population, the natural environment has been destroying very rapidly. For increasing the cultivable land for growing more food for the increased population, the natural forest has been destroying, until now only 8 % areas of Bangladesh have forest. The rivers, lakes, cannels have also been damaging due to rapid urbanization and industrialization in pace with the current development and GDP. When heavy down pour happens, the rain water has very few ways to discharge out to the water bodies and most of the areas in the rainy season keep under water. Floods are the main cause to make hazards in Bangladesh and I believe 50% causalities happen due to this. Cyclones, earth quack, extreme hot are causing natural hazards too. The government are now conscious about the environmental degradation and their resulting hazards but the environmental degradation continues yet. Every year, floods causing many death in the flood prone areas in Bangladesh and the trend is increasing due to increases of the sea water level. The government is trying to improve the adaptability of the natural disaster but it is not proved enough to make save the population and properties.  The people have very little motivation about these environmental hazards and they even not care to further destroy the environment.

BR

Mizanur