That’s the kind of information that Sridevi Govindaraj, an Indian agriculture expert, had in mind when she proposed that dousing fields with urine could improve sanitation and boost farmers’ incomes.

“Human urine is indeed not an unwanted waste, but it is a useful resource,” Sridevi wrote to E4C.

Urine, it turns out, is a huge and mostly untapped reserve of crop fertilizer. If Indians collected and applied 40 percent of their urine, the country could save $26.7 million (1.2 billion rupees) in fertilizer costs, Sridevi calculates.

A unique field
Those figures are from her doctoral thesis at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore in 2009, with research funded by the Arghym foundation. Sridevi may be the only person in India with a doctorate in ecological sanitation.

The urine proposal
She proposes using urine in conjunction with regular fertilizers. People would collect it in specially rigged toilets, like EcoSan latrines. Or, in lieu of a commercial product, DIY attachments to toilets in the men’s room are cheap and easy to make.

The experiment
Sridevi tested urine on maize, bananas, radishes, tomatoes, millet and French beans, all with encouraging results. In nearly all cases, urine outperformed chemical fertilizers, she says.

“Now many farmers adopted our technology and implemented it in their own field,” Sridevi says.

More tips and fun facts
Application to the fields works best with a diluted mixture of five parts water to one part urine. A drip irrigation system can help avoid health hazards. And Sridevi suggests using airtight containers to store the urine and gloves to transport and apply it.

Urine is packed with the nutrients plants need. In 22 gallons (100 liters), there are more than 10oz (300gm) of nitrogen, 6oz (170gm) of phosphorous, and 5.6oz (160gm) of potassium. Plus, it has almost every other essential and secondary nutrient that plants can use, Sridevi says.

“Human urine can be effectively used in agriculture for food production will lessen our dependency on commercial fertilizer,” Sridevi says.”

Rob Goodier, E4C, May 22, 2011

Source: https://www.engineeringforchange.org/news/2011/05/22/urine_is_fertilizing_crops_and_saving_money_in_india.html

A key development goal to halve the number of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015 will be missed by a long way because donor countries have diverted aid money away from “unsexy” water projects, according to the World Bank and a report from the charity WaterAid.

Financial aid to provide people in developing countries with access to clean water and decent sanitation has been shrinking sharply as a proportion of global aid budgets, the new research has shown, with the result that more than 1 billion people will not get the assistance they were promised by rich countries under the millennium development goals.

The key development goal on sanitation is likely to be missed by a wide margin, as donors restrict their aid to “sexier” projects such as schools and hospitals – even though the benefits of those projects are much diminished if their recipients have no clean water or toilets.

“When you think that 2% of GDP is the difference between growth and recession, we are having the equivalent of three recessions every year in these places. But no one is taking any notice,” said Julia Bucknall, the World Bank’s water chief. “It’s astounding.”

She predicted that the millennium development goal target on sanitation – to halve by 2015 the number of people without access to basic sanitary facilities – would be missed by a long way. If the target were reached, of the 2.6 billion people without access to sanitation today, at least 1.7 billion would be equipped with decent facilities. But on current trends, only about 700 million will gain such access in the time frame.

“It shows how far water and sanitation have slipped down the list of donor priorities,” said John Garrett, senior policy analyst at the charity WaterAid, which compiled the research using information from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “Yet the global sanitation crisis is so massive – this is totally insufficient to tackle the problem.”…”

…read the full article here

source: www.guardian.co.uk

The Doorway to Dignity charity auction was a great success, auctioning off unique pieces of artwork from UK artists, musicians, celebrities, fashion designers and politicians; we had contributions from Annie Lennox, Kenneth Branagh, Ralph Steadman, Maggie Hambling and world-renowned shoe designer Manolo Blahnik, to name but a few.

Visit the project page and see more pictures

MCD launched its Facebook page earlier this month to ensure effective monitoring of garbage lifting at areas under its jurisdiction. The civic agency has started off on the surest of footing, Goyal feels.

“When I heard about this initiative, I thought I should also post pictures of unclean dhalao (standalone garbage warehouse) in my area. I was expecting the action but never thought it will be so quick,” he says.

On January 8, he clicked pictures of the seven dirty ones in South Delhi’s R K Puram area and posted them on Facebook. And the next day, he says, he saw the pictures of clean dhalaos uploaded by the MCD.

“There is lot of transparency through this way. The man who actually cleans it asked me why I uploaded the pictures. So the information is going from top to the bottom,” says Goyal.

It’s a not even a month, and the civic agency has already received close to three thousand complaints. The agency says that it is mostly the youth that has shown interest and participated…”

Read the full article: http://www.gov2.in/stories/cleaning-delhi-through-facebook

Water ink _ BDDP Unlimited and Solidarités International – UK from BDDP Unlimited on Vimeo.

Yet there is good news: increasing numbers of scientists, policy panels and experts (not hippies!) are suggesting that agricultural practices pretty close to organic — perhaps best called “sustainable” — can feed more poor people sooner, begin to repair the damage caused by industrial production and, in the long term, become the norm.

On Tuesday, Olivier de Schutter, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the Right to Food, presented a report entitled “Agro-ecology and the Right to Food.” (Agro-ecology, he said in a telephone interview last Friday, has “lots” in common with both “sustainable” and “organic.”) Chief among de Schutter’s recommendations is this: “Agriculture should be fundamentally redirected towards modes of production that are more environmentally sustainable and socially just.”…”

Read the full article: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/sustainable-farming/

Ganesh Krupa Society is part of Golibar, Mumbai’s second largest slum, spanning 140 acres. The site is at the centre of a fierce battle between its residents and a developer that wants to raze the area to make way for a commercial project.

Already concrete homes across this narrow maze of more than 300 dwellings have been demolished.

In January, violence erupted when the developer tried to evict 45 families following a high court order. None of the families moved, claiming their signatures consenting to the project had been forged. Devasandhan Nair, 47, a resident, says: “The basis of redevelopment is consent but our consent was forged. Even a dead woman’s signature was forged. How can the court instruct the builder to evict us when a forgery case has been lodged by us with the police?”

Conflicts between developers and slum dwellers have been unfolding across the city for more than a decade, stalling slum redevelopment projects designed to pull 60% of Mumbai’s population out of harsh living conditions. Under a controversial slum rehabilitation policy, developers can snap up land for commercial development in exchange for building free houses for slum dwellers.

However, slum residents are only entitled to free housing if they have lived in the area to be cleared since before 1995, or, in some cases before 2000, which is a huge stumbling block for state government officials who say they want to make Mumbai slum free. This caveat means almost 70% of slum dwellers in the city are ineligible for a free home and would probably end up in slums elsewhere. Simpreet Singh, an activist, says high levels of migration to the city due to a lack of rural jobs combined with a shortage of affordable housing means people have no choice but to flock to the city and live in slums…”

Read the full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/mar/11/mumbai-slums-developers-profits-residents

In a report recently submitted to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the State government mentioned that about 3,456 manual scavengers could not be rehabilitated due to their death and migration and many were not interested in receiving the benefits.

According to the last survey, as many as 16,386 manual scavengers and their dependants were identified for rehabilitation and subsequently 1,147 were identified which took the total number of manual scavengers in the State to 17,533.

The State government claimed that the number of scavengers in Orissa came down from 35,049 in 1997-98 to 17,533 in 2008…”

Read the full article: http://www.hindu.com/2011/02/01/stories/2011020157200300.htm