Thursday, February 13, 2020

Great Lakes waters at risk from buried contaminants and new threats



(NOAA/Aerial Associates Photography, Inc. by Zachary Haslick/flickr)

Nickle Beach, Copper Harbor, Silver Bay. These places, all situated on the shores of the Laurentian Great Lakes, evoke the legacy of mining connected with the region.
While mining operations for metal ores and their refining have all but ceased here, there are renewed concerns over the safety of our Great Lakes source waters. One only has to think back to the 2014 water crisis in Flint, Mich. that exposed more than 100,000 people to elevated lead levels or to more recent headlines over lead contamination in water distributed from Canadian taps.
The Great Lakes basin is home to more than 35 million people distributed across two nations and numerous First Nations. They all rely on this resource for potable water, employment, sustenance and recreational opportunities.
Yet, environmental concerns are a recurring theme, compromising beneficial uses of the lakes and connecting rivers and posing a threat to a combined GDP of US$5.8 trillion across the region.
Canadians have come to expect access to safe, clean and reliable drinking water, as well as access to lakes and rivers for recreational use. However, a legacy of natural resource extraction and industrial use, together with new pressures on freshwater ecosystems, challenge the integrity and sustainable use of these resources.

An A grade, for now

Clearly, past environmental crises like mercury pollution of Lake St. Clair in the 1970s, the St. Clair River’s blob of perchloroethylene (a dry-cleaning solvent) in 1985, the outbreak of gastroenteritis in Walkerton, Ont. in 2000, the contamination of Michigan’s Huron River with PFAS (a family of persistent chemicals) in 2017, and the Flint water crisis provide compelling evidence of the need to control contaminants at their source and avoid another tipping point.

People gather outside Flint, Mich., city hall in January 2016 to protest the governor’s handling of the city’s water crisis. Sean Proctor/The Flint Journal-MLive.com via AP

Most people who call Ontario home live within the watershed of one of our four Great Lakes: Superior, Huron, Erie and Ontario. Over 80 per cent of Ontarians receive their drinking water from the lakes.
Considering the high dependency within the province on the Great Lakes, we are fortunate that the protection of these source waters is a priority of Ontario’s Clean Water Act. The province, as recently as 2011, received an A grade in Canada’s drinking water report card issued by the environmental law non-profit Ecojustice.
Ontario’s Source Water Protection Plan began in 2004 on the heels of the tragedy in Walkerton. A total of 38 local plans are currently in place, covering 95 per cent of Ontario’s population. Each plan identifies and ranks the risk of land-use patterns, such as locations of waste disposal sites, and effluent threats, such as industrial waste and fertilizers, that could lead to microbial, chemical or radiological contamination.
While the province is doing a good job protecting our Great Lakes source waters to ensure the safety of our drinking water, will these programs continue to protect us into the future and can they address vulnerabilities particular to our Great Lakes?

Heightened threat from climate change?

While the remaining industrial activity on the Great Lakes is regulated, the lakes themselves contain reservoirs of legacy contaminants, mostly in their sediments, that are vulnerable to resuspension. Metals, including mercury, PCBs and other persistent organic compounds top the list of concern. Resuspension is becoming more common under climate change with high water levels, declining ice cover and increased frequency and intensity of major storm events.

A crowd of swimmers and boaters gather at the annual (unsanctioned) Jobbie Nooner boating party in Lake St. Clair, Mich., in June 2015. (U.S. Coast Guard/flickr)

In fact, the manifestations of climate change in the region may be placing our drinking water systems at risk from a myriad of threats. These concerns include antibiotic-resistant bacteria, threats from emerging chemicals, increases in discharge from combined sewer overflows and enhanced agricultural runoff of fertilizers and manure, which are implicated in the massive harmful algal blooms that have plagued Lake Erie’s western basin in recent decades.
While Source Water Protection Plans provide sound tools for managing our watersheds, we must remain vigilant and develop better risk-based tools that consider legacy and emerging chemical threats especially as they relate to changes to high Great Lakes water levels and increasing intensity of storms.
For example, a sediment disturbance triggered by high winds or shipping accidents could be addressed in a manner similar to chemical spills, closing water intakes until the threat has subsided.

Investing in our future

And oversight must go beyond source waters: the renewed concerns in Canada over lead contamination of our drinking water have refocused attention on the need to invest in municipal infrastructure to help ensure a safe and secure water supply.
These investments need to consider old threats, such as replacing lead service lines and antiquated plumbing, coupled with new tools to address growing vulnerabilities related to increased storm-induced discharge events, nutrient remobilization and harmful algal blooms being produced under a changing climate.

The adage holds true — an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!

Authors



Disclosure statement

Robert Michael Lee McKay receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and from Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Joel Edward Gagnon receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Ken G. Drouillard receives funding from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks. He is affiliated with the Detroit River Canadian Clean-Up Steering Committee and Monitoring and Research Committee.
John Hartig and Michael Siu do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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#WATERISLIFE
Wet'suwet'en: Why are Indigenous rights being defined by an energy corporation?

The Wedzin kwa River, an important source of fresh water for the Unist'ot'en and Wet'suwet'en people near Houston, B.C. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito
February 7, 2020 
An unsigned agreement between a Wet’suwet’en First Nation and Coastal GasLink along with financial documents, obtained by Yellowhead Institute, an Indigenous-led research centre, provide reinforcement to Yellowhead’s assessment of the ways these private contracts can dramatically undermine First Nation rights and jurisdiction.
The Impact and Benefit Agreement (IBA) and other documents were drafted in 2016, two years before the first payments were made to the First Nation. Because official agreements are not available to the public due to confidentiality clauses, these documents provide a valuable record of Coastal GasLink’s negotiating objectives.
In light of present RCMP raids, these documents offer important insights that support an emerging analysis around how resource extraction companies work with provinces to limit the scope of the Aboriginal and treaty rights.
One of the most alarming clauses in the document is one that positions the band as paid informers to quell internal dissent within the First Nation against the project at the cost of “financial consideration” or payouts.
The document also introduces the possibility of future negotiations with the band on the pipeline’s conversion to crude oil.

Operating on unceded lands

The pipeline, a natural gas project by Coastal GasLink owned by TC Energy, has been approved by the B.C. government, but it is being opposed by Wet'suwet'en Nation hereditary leadership in the region.
It has been criticized by Amnesty International, B.C.‘s Human Rights Commission and the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination who say all First Nations affected by the pipeline should give free, prior and informed consent before it can proceed.


Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs from left, Rob Alfred, John Ridsdale, centre and Antoinette Austin, who oppose the Coastal GasLink pipeline took part in a rally in Smithers, B.C., on Jan. 10, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson

Provincial and federal governments, industry and the First Nations LNG Alliance have responded to criticism about the contentious project by citing the consent of elected band councils along the route. Coastal GasLink has signed agreements with 20 First Nations, including with each band council in the Wet’suwet’en Nation.
But the terms of consent this unsigned agreement seeks to secure should raise serious concern for those watching the conflict unfold.

Irrevocable consent

According to the unsigned IBA, Coastal GasLink aims to secure “irrevocable consent” for the project from the First Nation.
The First Nation must also act to dissuade band members from engaging in any internal dissent within the First Nation against the project. The unsigned agreement reads:
“[The First Nation] will not take, and will take all reasonable actions to persuade [First Nation] members to not take, any action, legal or otherwise, including any media or social media campaign, that may impede, hinder, frustrate, delay, stop or interfere with the Project’s contractors, any Authorizations or any Approval Processes.”
Experts on IBAs have been warning for years that serious issues can arise when commercial law is used to interpret Aboriginal constitutional rights. With these agreements, we now see how. The draft agreement states:
“[this is the] full and final satisfaction of any present or future claim by [the First Nation] … against Coastal GasLink Pipeline … for any infringement by the Project of [the First Nation’s] Section 35(1) Rights.”


Chelsea Flook holds a protest sign referencing RCMP actions at the Wet'suwet'en Nation in B.C., during a town hall at University of Regina in Saskatchewan on Jan. 10, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Michael Bell

The extent of constitutional Aboriginal rights is being defined here by a private energy corporation, specifically limiting the exercise of Aboriginal rights. A separate provision affirms that the band can take legal action against British Columbia.
Future protection is granted to Coastal GasLink in the case that Aboriginal rights are expanded to the nation through legal or policy means. The draft agreement states:
“If [the First Nation] obtains any interest in land including Aboriginal title or ownership or jurisdiction over lands used by the Project … [the First Nation] affirms the Authorizations … will continue” and that these changes will not affect the Agreement.
Dayna Nadine Scott, a law professor at York University, has recently completed a research project interviewing lawyers who have experience drafting IBAs, due out in the spring. She says this language is highly problematic and is often referred to as “gag orders,” preventing communities from raising concerns when new issues come to light.
Therefore, the unsigned agreement restricts the band from challenging any of the company’s legal rights of development, even in the case of changes to the First Nation’s legal rights, as recognized by courts or governments.

Possibility for natural gas to crude oil conversion?

The unsigned agreement also raises the issue of the possibility of converting the pipeline for other uses. Previously, First Nations in the region were almost unanimously opposed to the Northern Gateway pipeline proposed by Enbridge, because it carried significant environmental risks, such as oil spills in coastal waters. Coastal GasLink garnered significantly more support, in part because of its pipeline would carry natural gas, not bitumen.
The unsigned agreement says: “Coastal GasLink will not convert the pipeline component of the project to use for transportation of crude oil, bitumen or dilbit without the consent of [First Nation].”
That line, “without the consent of First Nation,” means the subject of conversion was very likely raised in negotiations between the parties. The First Nation protected itself by confirming this change would require an amendment or a new agreement altogether to obtain consent for the change.


Supporters of the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs and who oppose the Costal GasLink pipeline, chop wood for a support camp just outside of Gidimt'en checkpoint near Houston, B.C., on Jan. 9, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson.

However, Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs who oppose the project have not consented and signed an agreement. Therefore, it remains to be seen if Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs who oppose the project would be afforded the same opportunity.
Though B.C. introduced a regulation in 2015 against the conversion of LNG pipelines, it has yet to be tested and could be repealed.
A once-shuttered energy corridor could re-emerge if the LNG pipeline is built. Hydrocarbons are Canada’s biggest export commodity, with $129 billion in exports in 2018. Enbridge was unable to secure a corridor through the region previously, but TC Energy, the owner of Coastal GasLink, is aiming to succeed.

Subsidizing dispossession

LNG Canada is already subsidized by the province of B.C. for $5.35 billion. A further $1 billion in estimated subsidies will be provided by the federal government in exemptions from tariffs on steel imports.
The provincial funding arrangement puts B.C. Premier John Horgan in a conflict of interest with Wet’suwet’en hereditary governments opposing the project.
Horgan has expressed concern about First Nations experiencing “systemic poverty” and characterized the Coastal GasLink investment into First Nations as “a pathway to prosperity,” according to recent statements in the press.
But a substantial amount of financial support to First Nations are derived from public coffers. Rather than alleviate “systemic poverty” in communities directly, the B.C. government is channelling these dollars through energy companies. Therefore, making First Nation funding contingent upon support for pipeline deals.
The summary of financial benefits obtained by Yellowhead shows that B.C. will put up $1 million to the band in signing payments, $5 million in construction and in-service payments, and an estimated $40 million total in annual operation payments over 40 years. These numbers confirm amounts committed in a Natural Gas Benefits Agreement signed between the parties.

Raid

As the RCMP descend on Wet'suwet'en territory it is worthwhile to reflect on how social license is achieved by industry to access Indigenous territories.
The provincial government has downloaded its constitutional obligations to energy companies to determine the scope and assertion of Aboriginal rights.
A hand-in-glove system, the B.C. government has supported the current raids through financial incentives that have forced communities apart.
With upwards of $7 billion on the line in government subsidies, the interests of Coastal GasLink’s viability appears to have been put far ahead of Wet'suwet'en rights, title and justice.  

Author

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How Iran’s millennials are grappling with crippling US sanctions

Within Iran’s lower classes, there is a highly conformist youth culture.
 Farzin Mahmoudzadeh, Author provided

February 10, 2020 

In early January, after tensions between Iran and the United States escalated to the brink of war, President Donald Trump announced a detente of sorts, stating, “The United States is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.”

It may have sounded like a conciliatory gesture, but the Trump administration went on to levy additional economic sanctions against the country only two days later.

As someone who has studied the lives of Iran’s working classes, I know just how damaging economic warfare has been. It’s hit young Iranians, who comprise a large portion of the population, particularly hard. High rates of inflation – on the order of 38.6% over the past 12 months – and a youth unemployment rate of 28.6% have drastically reduced their ability to purchase basic goods and feel any semblance of financial security.

Over the past 12 years, I’ve studied various groups of lower-class young people and their families in their homes, neighborhoods and workplaces, in shops, and in parks. I’ve also interviewed 44 youth between the ages of 15 and 29 who have been sidelined to the socioeconomic margins.

I wanted to know how they cope with prolonged insecurity and the constant threat of crisis.

Interestingly – and despite what you might see on the news – many don’t react by rebelling against authority or by regularly taking to the streets.

A central observation from my research and forthcoming book has been that, when faced with conditions of uncertainty, the young people I spoke with simply sought respect, acceptance and support from their communities. Life becomes a quest not for revolution, riches or vengeance, but for dignity.
A highly conformist culture

The desire for status and dignity is an integral part of Iranian society.

Most of the poor, younger city dwellers I studied try to achieve this through both their conduct and their dress. They want to be seen as classy, diligent and moral. In communities that value prestige and look down on poverty, this becomes their ticket to a better life.

So in an attempt to conceal their poverty, they’ll spend their limited income on the latest trends so they can attain a “modern” appearance, from having the latest smartphones to wearing brand-name shoes and shirts – or at least knockoffs.

In order to avoid being seen as lazy or delinquent, the young people I interviewed work diligently and avoid being associated with petty criminals, like drug dealers. Even though there’s rarely enough work to go around, they get creative. They work in the informal economy as shop apprentices, street vendors and seamstresses. Those who can’t find work take up unpaid work babysitting for family members or helping with a family business in an effort to appear hardworking. By doing this, they can assume a moral high ground – regardless of how little money they’re actually making.

As one local, middle-aged woman told me, “There’s something wrong with a kid who doesn’t work.”

These young men and women are adhering to a set of values prized by their communities and promoted by society through billboards, national television and official speeches.

The result is a relatively stable social order – and a youth culture that’s highly conformist.

This might come as a surprise to some, since some Western media outlets sometimes fixate on acts of rebellion.

In reality, deviance – especially among the lower classes – is rare. Many simply can’t afford the consequences of being shunned by those around them.
Rewards don’t need to be material

The quest for dignity is only part of the story. Like many young people around the world, most youth in Iran have dreams of a better future. But for those dealing with daily economic hardship, there’s a chasm between their goals and what’s possible.

“I wanted to get my bachelor’s degree and have a job where I sat behind a desk,” said Babak, a street vendor, “but I had to drop out of ninth grade in order to meet my family’s expenses.”

That gap may never be fully breached. But many young Iranians I met still feel as if it’s possible to – in the words of a mechanic’s apprentice – “bring themselves up.”

The young people I interviewed do this not by trying to game the system, but by following the rules: diligence, self-sufficiency, a smart appearance, and moral and sexual cleanliness. For this, communities reward them with jobs, small promotions, or even just more deference. The material benefits might be minimal, but people nonetheless feel validated and included in the broader fabric of the nation.

In other contexts, researchers have found that “looking the part” – performing what’s deemed to be attractive to society – matters to people’s life prospects. The youth I knew in Iran do the same. They might not fully escape poverty, but they can escape stigma.

To them, that matters.
The limits of virtue

Of course, not everyone in Iran can maintain an appearance of industry, class and virtue.

There are young people who are desperately poor, who can’t even scrape together enough money for a new pair of shoes. There are drug addicts. There are young women who have been outed as prostitutes.

Focused on only helping those they deem “deserving,” communities do little to lift up people who have fallen through the cracks. Friends and acquaintances are unwilling to recommend them for jobs, neighbors avoid connecting with them, families view them with shame.

It can all seem a bit Darwinian, with those deemed unfit becoming social pariahs.

And yet, there are many youth who persevere, who believe that living by the rules, day in and day out, is the right way to live. As Ibrahim, a laborer, emphasized, “I try to live in a good way. If people remember you as good, this is reason to be proud.” To youth like Ibrahim, living a worthy life means not simply accumulating material goods, but staying true to a moral code.

In the face of rising prices, dwindling jobs, and few prospects for socioeconomic change, the routines of daily life create space for those who have suffered most under the weight of suffocating sanctions to breathe – and, in many cases, grow.

Author


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Three things historical literature can teach us about the climate crisis


Albert Bierstadt, Rocky Mountain Landscape, 1870. SUPERNATURAL
New novels about climate change – climate fiction, or cli-fi – are being published all the time. The nature of the climate crisis is a difficult thing to get across, and so imagining the future – a drowned New York City, say; or a world in which water is a precious commodity – can help us understand what’s at stake.
This is unsurprising in these times of crisis: fiction allows us to imagine possible futures, good and bad. When faced with such an urgent problem, it might seem like a waste of time to read earlier texts. But don’t be so sure. The climate emergency may be unprecedented, but there are a few key ways in which past literature offers a valuable perspective on the present crisis.

1. Climate histories

Historical texts reflect the changing climatic conditions that produced them. When Byron and the Shelleys stayed on the shores of Lake Geneva in 1816, the literature that they wrote responded to the wild weather of the “year without a summer”.
This was caused largely by the massive eruption of the Indonesian volcano Mount Tambora the previous year, which lowered global temperatures and led to harvest failures and famine. Literary works such as as Byron’s “Darkness”, Percy Shelley’s “Mont Blanc”, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein reveal anxieties about human vulnerability to environmental change even as they address our power to manipulate our environments.
Many older texts also bear indirect traces of historical climate change. In Paradise Lost (1667), Milton complains that a “cold climate” may “damp my intended wing” and prevent him from completing his masterpiece. This may well reflect the fact that he lived through the coldest period of the “Little Ice Age”.

Hendrick Avercamp, Winter Landscape with Skaters, c. 1608. Rijks Museum

Even literature’s oldest epic poem, The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 1800 BC), contains traces of climate change. It tells of a huge flood which, like the later story of Noah in the Old Testament, is probably a cultural memory of sea level rise following the melting of glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age.
These historical climatic shifts were not man made, but they still provide important analogues for our own age. Indeed, many cultures have seen human activity and climate as intertwined, often through a religious framework. One of the ironies of modernity is that the development of the global climate as an object of study, apparently separate from human life, coincides with the development of the carbon capitalism that has linked them more closely than ever.

2. How we view nature

Reading historical literature also allows us to trace the development of modern constructions of the natural world. For example, the Romantic ideal of “sublime” nature, which celebrated vast, dramatic landscapes like mountains and chasms, has influenced the kinds of places that we value and protect today in the form of national parks.
When we understand that such landscapes are not purely natural, but are produced by cultural discourses and practices over time – we protect these landscapes above others for a reason – we can start to debate whether they can be better managed for the benefit of humans and non-humans alike.

Past ideas of ‘sublime’ nature have bled into the landscapes we protect today. Hendrik Cornelissen/Unsplash, FAL

Or consider how in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the work of nature writers such as Thomas Bewick, Charlotte Smith and Gilbert White played a powerful role in promoting natural theology: the theory that evidence for God’s existence can be found in the complex structures of the natural world. Past literature has also been crucial in disseminating new scientific ideas such as evolutionary theory, which understood natural phenomena as entirely secular. Literature does not just reflect changing views of the natural world; it shapes them.
Studying historical texts helps us to understand how modern cultural attitudes towards the environment developed, which in turn allows us to perceive that these attitudes are not as “natural” or inevitable as they may seem. This insight allows for the possibility that today, in a time in which our attitude towards the environment could certainly improve, they can change for the better.

3. Ways of thinking

Some of the attitudes towards the natural world that we discover in historical literature are contentious, even horrifying: for example, the normalisation of animal cruelty portrayed in books such as Black Beauty.
But we can find more promising models too. Voltaire’s poem on the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, for example, has been used to think about the ethics of blame and optimism in responses to modern disasters, like the 1995 Kobe earthquake and the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake.
Reading past literature can also help us to appreciate the natural world for its own sake. Samuel Johnson commented of the natural descriptions in James Thomson’s poems The Seasons (1730) that the reader “wonders that he never saw before what Thomson shows him and that he never yet has felt what Thomson impresses”. Amid the frenzied distractions of modern life, the work of authors like Thomson, Dorothy Wordsworth and John Clare can help us to slow down, notice and love nature.
Historical literature can remind us of our own vulnerability to elemental forces. The famous depiction of a storm in King Lear, for example, mocks Lear’s attempt:
In his little world of man to out-scorn
The two-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain.
Shakespeare might appear to aestheticise dangerous weather, but the play reminds us that the storm is far bigger and messier than any human attempt to represent and interpret it.

Lear and the Fool in the storm, Ary Scheffer, 1834. Folger Shakespeare Library, CC BY-SA

At the same time, literature can remind us of the need to take responsibility for our own impacts upon the environment. We may not want to follow pre-modern and early modern literature in viewing climate change as divine punishment for bad behaviour. But when Milton suggests that it was the fall of man that brought in “pinching cold and scorching heat” to replace the eternal spring of Eden, his narrative has clear figurative resonance with our present crisis.
Historical literature can show us how writers responded to climate change, trace how they influenced modern ideas about nature, and reveal valuable ways of relating to and thinking about nature. The climate crisis cannot be addressed only through technological solutions. It also requires profound cultural shifts. To make those shifts requires an understanding of past ideas and representations: both those that led to our current predicament and those that might help us address it.

Authors
David Higgins
Associate Professor in English Literature, University of Leeds
Tess Somervell
British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in English, University of Leeds
Disclosure statement
David Higgins has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Tess Somervell receives funding from the British Academy, and has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
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Why it’s easier for India to get to Mars than to tackle its toilet challenge

Public toilets in the city of Varanasi in India. Jorge Royan, CC BY-SA

In 2013, India became the fourth country in the world (after Russia, the United States and the European Union) and the only emerging nation to launch a Mars probe into space. But it remains part of the group of 45 developing countries with less than 50% sanitation coverage, with many citizens practising open defecation, either due to lack of access to a toilet or because of personal preference.

According to the Indian census of 2011, only 46.9% of the 246.6 million households in India had their own toilet facilities, while 3.2% had access to public toilets. In this context, the remaining 49.8% households had no option but to defecate in the open. As a point of comparison, in 2011 53.2% of households had a mobile phone. In rural areas, where nearly 69% of India’s population lives, 69.3% of households lack toilets; in urban areas that number falls to 18.6%.

At first glance, such statistics and technological capabilities alongside large-scale open defecation is a puzzle. On the supply side, it does not seem difficult for a country that can construct sophisticated and complex cell phone technology to develop the capacity to build simple low-cost toilets. And for users, a toilet evidently offers more social benefits in terms of health and human dignity than a telephone.

Yet the citizenry has not enthusiastically adopted low-cost toilets, especially rural households. Why? Let us explore the reasons for this paradoxical outcome.
Half of Indian households has access to a mobile phone despite lacking other infrastructure. Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters

At a systemic level, economists have pointed out that technical and commercial availability and consumer acceptability of an innovation are the two main drivers of its diffusion. Evidently both are a problem in India.

For firms, it makes business sense to provide mobile phones in a variety of quality-price ranges as the network infrastructure is well developed and demand for this communication tool is assured. However, they are not interested in selling low-cost toilets to the poor, as the need for that product is not supported by a willingness or capacity to pay for it.
State programmes for sanitation coverage

Because companies are disinclined to market a product that requires investment in awareness and demand creation, the state must step in.

From the mid-1980s till the late 1990s, when India adopted economic reform, toilets were distributed free via the top-down state-funded Central Rural Sanitation Programme. But the programme, which assumed that availability would automatically lead to usage, failed because most beneficiaries did not see the need or have the desire for sanitation.

Consequently, in the new millennium, the Indian government switched to demand-focused interventions. Today, the state is a financier for public-private partnerships involving NGOs, micro-finance companies and other social enterprises that interact closely with the targeted beneficiaries to provide accompaniment and education for sanitation literacy and use.

The Total Sanitation Campaign launched in April 1999, emphasised that “Information, Education and Communication” should precede sanitation construction to ensure sustained demand and behavioural change. 
Open defecation spot in rural Chhattisgarh, central India. Adnan Abidi/Reuters

State investment in sanitation thereafter received another fillip under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He is the first politician since Mahatma Gandhi to emphatically underscore, through major media campaigns, that a “clean India” is necessary for the well-being of its citizens.
Modi during a cleanliness drive in Assi Ghat Varanasi. Narendra Modi Official/Flickr, CC BY-SA

On October 2 2014, to commemorate Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary, Modi inaugurated the Swachh Bharath Mission, or the Clean India Mission. Unlike the earlier state programmes, it recognises that “availability” does not guarantee “acceptability”. The central objective of the mission is to eliminate open defecation in India by 2019, not just to ensure universal sanitation coverage.

The target is to transform villages and cities into “open defecation-free” communities, meaning they demonstrate: toilet access, toilet use and toilet technology that keeps both people and the environment safe. The programme invests in capacity building in the form of trained personnel, financial incentives and systems for planning and monitoring to ensure behavioural change. States are given flexibility in terms of implementation. Today, a variety of experiments, from the national to village level, are underway to achieve Modi’s Clean India mission.
It’s not just about building toilets

But for India, providing access to some form of a toilet is the easy part. What’s harder is getting people to use them. In rural areas, toilet-rejection varies by gender.

An ongoing study based on 300 focus groups with men across the country revealed that they prefer open defecation to a toilet because it: saves water; provides access to fresh water and a breezy environment; lowers the wear and tear of the toilet; protects women from getting embarrassed by the sight of men; and offers a handy excuse to escape importunate wives and mothers.

Public agencies try to persuade families to invest in toilets for the safety of their young girls. But in Tamil Nadu villages, another focus group-based study – this one with female teachers and girls – revealed that a central advantage of open defecation is that it offers opportunities for same-sex social interactions for females.

Girls and women in many regions are not allowed to gather in public places to debate issues, exchange ideas or simply relax together. Adolescents face even greater restrictions, because older women often sanction free discussion among youngsters. In this regard, open defecation rendezvous offer an excuse to talk and spend time together free, from other constraints.

In the isolated villages we visited with largely Dalit and fisherfolk populations in Tamil Nadu, the risk of sexual harassment is not perceived to be high enough to make toilets a safe haven. Thus, to eliminate open defecation in such villages, alternative safe gendered spaces for social interactions are needed first.
Cooperation between the players

India’s additional challenge is to diffuse not just any toilet but a high-quality, long-lasting, non-contaminating product that minimises water and soil pollution and promotes sustained use. This will require that the sanitation subsystem (i.e. the part under the toilet seat/slab), and its waste-processing technology design to be adapted to the geo-physical features of the targeted zone, taking into account soil type, rainfall, water table, water availability, wind velocity and slope.

Thousands of toilets lie abandoned in India either never used or abandoned after short use, due to poor construction quality or inappropriate technology design.

When a toilet’s superstructure begins to deteriorate or the toilets stop working well, problems can emerge. For example, if the family can’t afford or doesn’t want to invest in repairs, or if there isn’t a local agency to repair toilets (which is often the case), foul odours and leaks may begin. This, in turn, creates negative perceptions about toilets, which may trigger a bandwagon effect such that whole the community ultimately returns to open defecation.

Thus, it is imperative to ensure quality construction in sanitation drives and trained rural masons for individual construction initiatives.
A Tamil woman and her mother-in-law in front of their toilet whose roof caved in - hence the thatch. FAL

To address this need, various institutions are teaching masonry to youth with little formal education. But there is no common standardised programme that focuses on sanitation systems. Moreover, illiterate rural masons may be intimidated by formal courses and thus fail to attend.

At the same time, since masons learn their craft by doing, or through apprenticeships, their learning is slow, shaky and tacit – meaning that two people with the same skill set may execute a project differently. There is a need to address these issues while promoting skills building.

For an emerging country like India, it is easier to take part in exploratory missions to Mars than to tackle its sanitation challenge. The former can be addressed through a linear process spearheaded by the advanced, well-resourced Indian Space Research Organisation, while the latter calls for systemic change encompassing thousands of towns and villages.

For India to meet its goal of eliminating open defecation, it will need cooperation and coordination between a diverse variety of systemic actors, generation of knowledge products in the form of accessible curriculum for masons, and community engagement to build only safe toilets – and to use them well.

November 18, 2016 
Author
Shyama V. Ramani
Professorial fellow, United Nations University
Disclosure statement
Shyama V. Ramani has received research grants from ICSSR (India), Department of Science and Technology (India), NWO (The Netherlands) and the European Commission. She is also the founder-director of Friend In Need India.
United Nations University provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.
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