Document(s) 5 of 19

Abstract

The dearth of holistic studies that use a combination of technical and socio-economic, quantitative and qualitative methodologies impedes advances in the formulation of recommendations that could enhance the benefits and mitigate the harmful effects of wastewater use for both producers and consumers of wastewater-irrigated crops. New research based on a sustainable livelihoods framework can integrate multiple perspectives. Sustainable livelihoods analyses are actor-centred and can be used for studies on the socio-economic and biophysical context surrounding wastewater use and users in a given area. This chapter draws on case study material from Hyderabad, India and Irapuato and Chihuahua, Mexico.

A multi-disciplinary approach is imperative in studies of wastewater use so that both the public and private sectors, farmers and consumers can be informed about: 1. the livelihood activities of different stakeholder groups that are sustained by wastewater, 2. the benefits and risks of its use, and 3. the options available to manage such use more effectively. Currently, there is a dearth of holistic studies that include both technical and non-technical research on a particular wastewater use area. This impedes advances in the formulation of recommendations for the use and management of wastewater. Such studies could enhance the benefits and mitigate the harmful effects for wastewater-dependent people and for consumers of wastewater-irrigated produce. New research on wastewater use that utilises a sustainable livelihoods (SL) framework of analysis, can address issues hitherto neglected in social scientific studies. The SL approach can also, it is argued here, begin to be used to bridge the divide between technical and non-technical studies.

The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach

A livelihood is comprised of the capabilities, assets (including both material and social resources) and activities required to make a living (Chambers and Conway, 1992). Livelihoods are based on income (in cash, kind, or services) obtained from employment, and from remuneration through assets and entitlements. In 1987, a report by an advisory panel of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) stressed the need for a new concept to address both equity and sustainability and termed it ‘sustainable livelihood security’. Robert Chambers, Gordon Conway and others working with the Institute

of Development Studies (IDS) and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) developed the Sustainable Livelihoods (SL) approach from the mid-1980s onwards to bridge initiatives centred on the environment, development and livelihoods. The SL approach builds on the Integrated Rural Development (IRD) model, participatory development and basic needs approaches, food security studies, and sector-wide approaches (DFID, 2003) and incorporates other types of analyses related to households, gender, governance and farming systems to arrive at a more holistic understanding of poverty (Farrington et al., 1999). Chambers noted that:

‘Professions and the Government Ministries and Departments which preserve and accentuate their specialisation, focus quite narrowly, overlooking linkages which are often important for resource-poor farmers. Agroforestry, meaning the interaction of trees and crops and/or livestock is a classic example where agronomists are concerned with crops, not trees or livestock; animal specialists are concerned with animals, not trees or crops; and foresters are concerned with trees, not crops or animals, and moreover trees in forests and not trees on farmers’ lands’. Chambers (1987).

The SL approach shifted the focus to poor people to overcome this overly narrow type of analysis. The focus on people rather than on resources, structures, or physical areas entails a bottom-up approach that encompasses both the macro- (policy) and micro- (users, field) levels. Chambers (1987) argued that the emphasis placed on physical problems rather than on people hindered research as well as development projects that aimed at achieving sustainability.

Chambers and Conway’s work focused on how rural households and members within households diversify their activities to increase income, reduce vulnerability and improve the quality of their lives. They argued that a livelihood is sustainable if it:

‘. . . can cope with and recover from stress and shocks, maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets, and provide sustainable livelihood opportunities for the next generation; and . . . contributes net benefits to other livelihoods at the local and global levels and in the short and long-term’ (Chambers and Conway, 1992).

Livelihood activities of the poor are dynamic and context-specific. The SL approach includes an analysis of the vulnerability of the poor which results from ‘sudden shocks, long-term trends or seasonal cycles’ as discussed by Moser (1996) and can be studied by examining such assets as labour, social and human capital, productive assets, and household relations (Moser and Holland, 1997).

One of the main reasons why the SL approach was developed was to foster the incorporation of the poor, women, and those in rural areas into research and into development programmes (Chambers, 1987). Livelihood strategies often remained invisible to both researchers and development specialists. This stemmed partly from the fact that different members of a household engage in different types of livelihood activities. Each household member above a certain age attempts to procure different sources of food, fuel, animal fodder and cash; these sources are likely to vary according to the month of the year. Therefore, researchers need to ask each household member about these activities, and to include the changes incurred by season and by household life cycle stage.

The scale of analysis can be at the micro- and meso-levels of the individual, household, kin networks, village, or region, or at the macro-level of the nation (Scoones, 1998). A livelihoods framework of analysis is unusual in that it fosters the study of macro–meso–micro linkages. These linkages include how macro-level policies affect the livelihood options of poor individuals and communities as well as how the poor affect policies and institutions. Such research can provide policymakers and planners with critical information that can improve the efficacy of poverty alleviation programme and policies. This chapter will address how the approach can be used to study macro-, meso- and micro-level issues pertaining to wastewater use.

In the late 1990s, Scoones at IDS centred his work on the institutional processes (formal and informal institutions and organisations) which enable or act as a barrier to achieving positive livelihood outcomes (Scoones, 1998). The SL approach was adapted for the study of urban areas by Caroline Moser (1998) and John Farrington et al. (2002) by shifting the focus from natural assets and environmental sustainability for the study of rural areas to households, housing and financial assets for the study of urban areas (Farrington et al., 2002). The interconnectedness of urban, peri-urban and rural livelihood systems incurred through remittances, short-term migration and daily or seasonal labour was also illuminated (Sharma, 1986; Barret and Beardmor, 2000; Satterthwaite and Tacoli, 2002 in Farrington et al., 2002).

Fig. 3.1. Sustainable Livelihoods Framework.

Source: DFID, 2003

Livelihoods, Water Availability and Wastewater Use

Most livelihood activities depend on the availability of water. However, in many semi-arid and arid regions of the world, freshwater is a scarce resource. Fresh surface water is usually also only available in sufficient quantities during the rainy season. But, the rainy season may only last for 4 months during which rainfall can be erratic, necessitating irrigation. Water for irrigation is also required for the long dry season. Groundwater may be expensive to access because of low water tables that translate into the high costs associated with drilling wells and pumping the water. Seeking other sources of water to support livelihoods therefore becomes critical to the question of poverty reduction. Near urban centres wastewater is often available year-round in sufficient quantities. It is in this context that wastewater needs to be studied as natural capital required to sustain the means of living in arid and semi-arid, drought-prone areas.

In many arid and semi-arid regions, wastewater use may either be the only option, or the only economically viable option available to many groups of people. Livelihood activities directly dependent on wastewater are practised by different social groups on different scales and include (but are not limited to) agriculture, agro-forestry, livestock rearing, aquaculture, floriculture, and the washing of clothes¹. Activities indirectly dependent on wastewater include the sale of seeds, pesticides and other inputs to wastewater farmers, rental of harvest machinery or equipment, agricultural labour, services related to the transportation of produce to markets, marketing produce, animal husbandry with purchased wastewater-irrigated fodder and the provision of fish seedlings for pisciculture.

¹ Washing clothes in wastewater, e.g. in Hyderabad and Madurai, India, tends to occur only in the rural areas downstream of urban centres where wastewater quality is better. It tends to be practised by hired clothes-washers rather than by individual households who prefer to use groundwater.

The amount of wastewater produced depends on the population of a city or town. Industrial and domestic liquid wastes are frequently channelled either into the same sewerage system (if a sewerage system exists) or into the same open drains. Wastewater quality is affected by the volume and types of industrial effluent released into the sewerage system or drains, and the degree of dilution with domestic water and natural sources of flow where these exist. The wastewater is either released untreated, after partial treatment, or after more complete treatment (to the secondary or tertiary levels), into drains, into channels, and then frequently into rivers.

There is no simple solution to wastewater use or how to minimise its negative consequences. What seems transparent and evident is that the wastewater must be treated. However, building, operating and maintaining treatment plants is very costly and can drain a government’s financial resources. Even if growing cities were able to afford to treat all of the domestic and industrial wastewater they produce (about 80% of the water delivered to an urban area comes out of the city as wastewater), urban water authorities often want to use the treated water within the city for watering public parks and other urban areas in order to save the costs of drilling wells and pumping groundwater for such uses. Urban water authorities also often wish to recover costs by providing treated wastewater to users who can pay a fee for it, such as golf course operators and upper-class residents who use it to water their gardens. Thus smallholders or landless people, who rent land to cultivate crops, can lose access to a resource critical to their livelihoods, and consumers can be deprived of cheap, fresh produce. This is happening in the arid city of Chihuahua, Mexico (Horacio Almazán Galache, 2003, personal communication).

Current Approaches to Social Scientific and Biophysical Studies

Socio-economic studies on wastewater irrigation that address livelihood issues have just begun to gain currency. Some of the economic benefits accruing to farmers from wastewater-irrigated crops have been documented by Keraita et al. (2002), Niang et al. (2002), Cornish and Aidoo (2000) and others. Socio-economic analyses of groundwater users in wastewater-irrigated areas and the political and institutional arena in which wastewater production, treatment and use occurs, for example, are just beginning to appear in the literature (Cirelli, 2000; Peña, 2000; Abderrahman, 2001; Buechler, 2001; Keraita et al., 2002; Ouedraogo, 2002; Buechler and Devi, 2003a; Chandran et al., 2003; Parkinson and Tayler, 2003; Shetty, Chapter 15 this volume). The socio-cultural acceptability of wastewater use in Palestine was addressed by Khateeb (2001). The health effects of wastewater production and the social and economic consequences of these effects for wastewater farmers, agricultural labourers and their household members and consumers of wastewater-irrigated produce have also been studied in some areas (Shuval et al., 1986; Blumenthal et al., 2000; Feenstra et al., 2000; van der Hoek et al., 2002; Ensink, 2003). Many of the health studies, however, lack what Mara and Cairncross called for in their well-known Guidelines for the Safe Use of Wastewater in Agriculture and Aquaculture (WHO, 1989), that is, ‘a thorough assessment of the local socio-cultural context’.

Social scientific studies on wastewater to date report basic background information on climate and average rainfall, together with data on the various sources, quality and quantity of industrial and domestic sources of wastewater. Such studies foster an understanding of the risks associated with this use for a particular user group. However, they rarely integrate more-advanced information on the spatial distribution of precipitation and wastewater availability, yet social groups dependent on wastewater for their various livelihood activities are deeply affected by these complex interactions. Therefore, a more holistic picture is necessary. The types of crops, livestock, and fish that farmers can raise are affected by the quality of the wastewater and the characteristics of the natural environment. In hot climates with a long dry season high rates of evaporation cause wastewater to be more saline with high total dissolved solids (TDS) concentration that may restrict the variety of crops that can be cultivated. Since many types of grass fodder can be grown with saline wastewater, this water is more likely to be used in urban and peri-urban areas for fodder production, particularly where there is an urban demand for dairy products as is the case in India and Mexico.

The impacts of such imposed choices, though, are not limited to a change in cropping practices. With deteriorating wastewater quality, the health of the livestock may be seriously impaired as is currently the case near Hyderabad, India and the quality of their milk may be affected which may transfer the danger to humans. The dairy producers’ income may decrease if there are reductions in milk production per animal. Similarly, many varieties of fish are sensitive to changes in water quality and the varieties of fish raised by fisherfolk in a sewage pond would need to be changed if the water quality deteriorated (Buechler and Devi, 2002a). The SL approach offers a way in which to assess the vulnerability context of those who depend on wastewater. Shocks, trends and seasonality all define the context of vulnerability in this approach and can be applied to sudden, gradual or seasonal deterioration in the quality of wastewater.

Biophysical studies on wastewater often focus on industrial and domestic wastewater treatment technologies (van Lier and Lettinga, 1999; Jindal et al., 2003; Mullai and Sabarathinam, 2003; Environline, 2003) or on wastewater quality (Goewie and Duqqah, 2002), groundwater quality in wastewater-irrigated areas (Farid et al., 1993; Haruvy, 1997; Chilton et al., 1998; Gallegos et al., 1999), soil contamination and remediation in wastewater-irrigated areas (Jeyabaskaran and Sree Ramulu, 1996; Mendoza et al., 1996; Gupta et al., 1998), heavy metal uptake in wastewater-irrigated crops (Chino, 1981; Mitra and Gupta, 1999; Rattan et al., 2002), bacteriological analyses (Sinton et al., 1997), helminth infection in wastewater users (Srivastava and Pandey, 1986; Blumenthal et al., 2000; Peasey, 2000) and GIS analyses of wastewater-irrigated areas (Palacio-Prieto, et al., 1994; Buechler and Scott, 2000; Nobel and Allen, 2000; Aramaki, 2001).

Assessing the social, political, economic and technical applicability of technical and management solutions for particular wastewater-related practices becomes difficult, if not impossible, with purely biophysical analyses. Essential data, for example, on the capacity of varied social groups or communities and of individual women or men within these to invest labour, capital and time in certain management techniques and technologies is invariably lacking. Similarly, information on the organisations and institutions that govern wastewater use is required, particularly on whether or not they have the necessary financial and institutional capacities, willingness and political clout to implement new management strategies in a sustainable manner.

Research conducted in urban, peri-urban and rural areas near Hyderabad city, India, shows that such socio-economic characteristics as caste, class, ethnicity, gender and land tenure influence the type of wastewater-dependent livelihood activities in which each person engages (Buechler and Devi, 2002a; Buechler et al., 2002; Buechler and Devi, 2003b, c). At present, the barter and sale of vegetables in the wastewater-irrigated urban and peri-urban areas is controlled by women and improves their ability to gain access to a wider variety of vegetables for themselves and for their household members. Recommendations based on biophysical studies that include a switch in crops from leafy vegetables to tree crops might have ramifications for women’s income-generating capabilities and food-security status. Toddy (fermented palm juice) production and fishing are practised currently only in rural areas downstream of Hyderabad and are controlled by men of particular caste groups. Therefore, it would be difficult to promote these as alternative income-generating schemes for other social groups. Technical studies critical of profligate water use for paddy rice production near Hyderabad must take into consideration that the food security of smallholders, of landless people who rent land for paddy rice production, and of landless labourers is dependent upon paddy rice production in the rural areas. Farming families are often already innovating by changing cropping patterns (Buechler and Devi, 2002b) or are mixing groundwater with wastewater to improve the overall quality of the water (Buechler and Devi, 2003a).

Sustainable wastewater use means that this resource will serve as a reliable asset for livelihoods now and in the future. This would require wastewater to be of a sufficiently high quality, so that it will not damage the natural environment or the agriculture practised using this resource. The interplay between wastewater users, agriculture, agroforestry, animal husbandry and aquaculture on the one hand, and soil, plant and wastewater quality on the other, needs to be elucidated through an integrated, holistic conceptual framework.

SL Approach for Integrating Problem Identification and Management Recommendations

In seeking pragmatic solutions to sustainable wastewater use, the need for holistic studies incorporating the missing dimensions cited above becomes clear. Using a livelihoods approach for wastewater use studies would centre research on the actors² who directly or indirectly benefit or are put at risk from wastewater. Of particular importance are decisionmaking processes pertaining to wastewater management and livelihood choices. A livelihoods approach views livelihoods as dynamic rather than static. Actors decide how best to adapt wastewater-dependent livelihood activities to changing external conditions. These include changes in wastewater availability, improvements in or deterioration of wastewater quality, and new government incentives or disincentives related to crop production. Changes in wastewater-dependent livelihood activities in turn require new decisions on how best to manage wastewater. These decisions will be influenced by social, economic, political, institutional, legal, and health-related factors as well as by environmental and technical factors. Livelihood analyses that include a study of the reasons behind actors’ decisions to initiate changes in wastewater-dependent livelihoods over time will produce a more integrated understanding of wastewater management at different levels (individual, household, village, city, and potentially, even region and nation) leading to more appropriate policy recommendations for the present and future (see Box 3.1).

² I use the term ‘actor-centred’ rather than ‘people-centred’ approach in this chapter because I believe that this is a more comprehensive term that more clearly connotes the inclusion of individuals and institutions and organisations as the units of analysis, enabling both micro- and macro-level analyses.

Methods Used in Livelihoods Analysis

In order to procure rich data that is actor-centred and interdisciplinary, research methodologies must be diverse. Both socio-economic and biophysical data can be collected through field observations, water, soil and plant sampling and analysis, rapid appraisal techniques, geographic information systems, various mapping techniques including vulnerability analysis and mapping tools, focus group discussions, surveys with closed and open-ended questions and in-depth interviews with different categories of representatives and users responsible for wastewater management at different levels in intra-urban, peri-urban, and rural areas. As part of the surveys and interviews, some key questions eliciting the users’ perceptions on wastewater dependency for livelihoods need to be recorded, transcribed and used as integral parts of written text and audiovisual media (video, radio, and television) so that use patterns can be better understood. Interviews must be conducted with more than one household member of different genders and ages.

Box 3.1. Critical Questions for the Analysis of Wastewater Management using an SL Approach

• Who is earning or saving income through direct wastewater use or through secondary activities that are dependent on wastewater-derived products? (Gender, caste, class, ethnicity, religion, land-tenure characteristics of the direct users and others who gain an income or save money from wastewater-dependent activities).
• Why does each social group depend on the wastewater? (Lack of other water sources, drought, lack of financial resources to use other water, and need for: dependable, year-round water, nutrients in wastewater to reduce fertilizer costs, more fertile soil, etc.).
• For which activities are varied groups using this water and what types of secondary activities are generated that create a chain of economic beneficiaries? (Primary activities include agriculture on rented or family land, agroforestry, aquaculture, domestic use and recreation. Secondary activities include livestock rearing and dairy production, agricultural labour [casual, migrant and permanent], transportation to and sale of products in markets, etc.).
• What are the positive and negative implications of this wastewater use now and for the future? (For socio-economically distinct women, men, and children and their livelihoods, for agricultural workers’ health and the health of their household members, for consumers’ health and for the quality of water, soil and plant resources in the downstream area).
• What management measures at the community, local, regional and national levels by individuals or by those acting within institutions (informal and formal) mitigate risks and ensure sustainability of this use? Who are the most vocal actors in these organisations?
• What alternatives to current management practices could be proposed at different levels? (Improve identification and wider dissemination of farming households’ innovations; work with industry to decrease amount of water used, to treat effluent and to reuse chemicals; improve water retention rates such as in storage tanks/ponds before irrigation, change irrigation and harvesting methods and promote decentralized, affordable treatment systems).

The next sections identify the main units of analysis and some major issues in the study of wastewater users using an SL approach.

Macro-level

SL analyses at the macro-level focuses on wastewater use in a basin context. By studying the river from its source to its confluence with other rivers, or its outlet to the sea, use patterns by different actors that affect wastewater quantity and quality downstream can be discerned. If significant amounts of the water are abstracted for livelihood activities (and industrial use) upstream, there may be less water available for the city and therefore less wastewater generated by the city. Industrial contamination upstream of, within, and downstream of the city can affect wastewater users since it will place limitations on the types of livelihood activities in which they can engage. Inter-basin transfers must be considered when urban areas that can obtain water even from other basins grow rapidly, and release increasing volumes of wastewater. By including institutions and organisations regulating intra- and inter-basin water abstraction and use in basin-level analyses, light can be shed on how actors within them mediate the use of natural capital in the basin.

Livelihood activities near cities sometimes consume the entire amount of wastewater being discharged by the urban area as is the case with the Musi river in Andhra Pradesh, India. All of the wastewater in the Musi is used before its confluence with the Krishna, a major river that flows into the Bay of Bengal (Buechler and Devi, 2002a). Studies employing a SL approach would complement other types of studies that set the macro-level context in which wastewater use is inserted from a historical, macro-economic, political, institutional or socio-cultural perspective or a hydrological (water balance, water quality), agronomic or animal husbandry perspective.

Meso-level

At the meso-level, an important unit of analysis for SL studies on wastewater is the wastewater delivery system. The delivery system can be composed of the river itself and/or man-made infrastructure, such as pipes and culverts, open or closed sewer canals, storm drains, canals, earthen channels, diversion weirs, ponds and wells, that delivers or stores the water in each area. Technical and institutional perspectives should be incorporated into this level of analysis. The delivery system may extend beyond the peri-urban areas, therefore it is important that the urban to peri-urban to rural transect be investigated. Large cities like Hyderabad, or even medium-sized cities such as Irapuato in Mexico frequently produce enough wastewater to sustain livelihoods in the rural areas (Buechler, 2001; Buechler and Devi, 2003b). The infrastructure is likely to be different at each location and tailored to suit such local livelihood needs as labour costs and availability, cropping patterns and crop water requirements and such environmental conditions as the availability and topography of the land, flow rates and soil types together with micro-climatic conditions such as temperature and rainfall patterns. The delivery system constitutes a crucial component of the physical assets to which people have or do not have access; this access is influenced by their access to other assets.

In order to understand the manner in which this infrastructure is built, operated and maintained, the meso-level organisations (and micro-level institutions and organisations, see below) surrounding these structures for channelling the water must be identified and researched. The SL approach is a useful tool to analyse the ways in which policies, institutions and processes help shape livelihood outcomes. Formal and informal institutions at various levels are both shaped by and help mould the natural, social, economic and political environment in which wastewater users and their livelihoods are inserted. Institutions should be studied as ‘complexes of norms and behaviours at the village (and higher) level that persist over time by serving some collectively valued purpose’ (Uphoff, 1992). The various wastewater-dependent actors who follow these ‘norms and behaviours’ or, what North (1990) has termed the ‘rules of the game’, group together into organisations that influence wastewater management in different, and at times, conflicting ways.

At the meso-level, the roles of actors within governmental, non-governmental and private-sector organisations in controlling water pollution and regulating wastewater use (by either encouraging, passively allowing, or actively discouraging it) need to be studied. Pollution control boards, metropolitan water and sanitation boards and irrigation departments may all play important roles in waste and wastewater management but some of these roles may not be immediately obvious. The de jure and de facto functioning of various actors with positions in governmental agencies responsible for wastewater management requires attention because the two may be very different. What is legally sanctioned may differ widely from the everyday practices of the actors within the organisations. These practices will affect how the wastewater is actually managed. The work of researchers and practitioners in non-governmental organisations that operate at a regional level should also be included in analyses especially those that have programmes addressing infrastructure development, land and water access, agricultural extension, occupational training, public health, etc. Non-governmental programmes targeting issues concerning gender, religion, occupation/caste/class and income may also serve wastewater-dependent people and aid them in wastewater management for livelihoods in specific ways that are to date not well understood and therefore not replicated.

Employing a SL approach which combines technical and institutional analysis at the meso-level ensures that infrastructure will be viewed as a dynamic tool that can influence livelihood outcomes. Changing such conditions as wastewater quantity and/or quality will change the ways in which people make use of the existing infrastructure and may even create demand for physical changes to it. For example, near Irapuato, Mexico, farmers pressured the government to build an additional canal branch from the city wastewater drainage channel to their peri-urban fields when wastewater volumes became substantial (Buechler, 2001). It must be understood that infrastructure related to wastewater delivery is continuously adapted by actors to serve livelihood needs. Those in certain positions of power (with greater political and often financial capital) or those who are connected to people in powerful positions (with greater social capital) have greater opportunities to adapt this infrastructure to their own or to their supporters’ specific and current livelihood needs (Cirelli, 2000; Peña, 2000).

Micro-level

At the micro-level, the following units of analysis help reveal and interpret livelihood activities present in a given area:

1. The chain of economic beneficiaries that are dependent on wastewater
2. Households
3. Infrastructure from which the wastewater is extracted (drainage culvert, pipe, river, canal, pond, etc.) and channelling methods used
4. The local institutions that shape local wastewater use.

The chain of economic beneficiaries

A chain of economic beneficiaries from wastewater-dependent activities is formed by those who benefit directly or indirectly from the production, use and/or sale of wastewater-irrigated products. As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, those directly dependent on wastewater include farmers involved in agriculture and agroforestry together with fisherfolk, and those who depend indirectly are dairy producers who use wastewater-irrigated fodder, migrant and non-migrant agricultural labourers who work in wastewater fields, vegetable and fodder market vendors who sell wastewater-irrigated produce, and transporters of this produce. Some of these actors have fewer overall assets than others and some have more diversified income sources than others. In analysing this chain, the point of departure is the wastewater-derived product that is traced from its origins to the marketplace and then to the consumer. However, using an agricultural commodity chain analysis is not sufficient because it may not capture non-market benefits of wastewater production such as the use of wastewater-irrigated fodder for the farmer’s own livestock or household consumption of the food produced. It is also unlikely to capture that one household member may derive benefits from multiple wastewater-produced commodities. Development programmes and policies need to be able to identify the separate links in this chain and to understand the nature of the connections between the links.

Household-level analysis that examines the role of each constitutive member

At the micro-level, the household is the key unit of analysis. The SL approach uses the household as an important unit of analysis but also stresses the importance of disaggregating the household in order to be able to understand the role of each member in livelihood creation. The composition of the class, caste, gender, age, ethnicity and religious affiliations of its members are likely to affect the household’s principal activity related to wastewater. The location of the parcel of land in terms of its elevation with respect to the wastewater channel(s), i.e. the value of the land which is an indicator of the household’s class position, will determine whether pumping from the channel is necessary influencing the profitability of the agriculture. The landholding status of the adults in a household as landowners, land leasers, landless labourers or a combination of these also affects the types of crops they grow, the profitability of agriculture or other income-generating activities, and the diversification of livelihood strategies by household member. The number and types of livestock the household owns (part of their physical capital) will influence the types of wastewater-related activities in which they engage (such as fodder production) (Buechler and Devi, 2002a). Caste still plays an important role in India in shaping each person’s type of employment. From birth, for example, boys from the Gouda community, considered to be a low caste, learn toddy³ tapping from their fathers (girls cannot become toddy tappers). However, educational opportunities and affirmative action programmes are expanding the types of employment that the young can obtain. Gender is likely to shape the power of each member to negotiate which wastewater-related activities to engage in and which person will retain the earnings from those activities. One example is vegetable production, which is mainly done by women in some areas, e.g. the peri-urban area of Hyderabad city (Buechler and Devi, 2002a) and by men in other areas, e.g. Kumasi, Ghana (Cornish and Kielen, Chapter 6, this volume). Ethnicity also shapes the types of wastewater-related activities in which people are engaged, e.g. the Lambadis, a nomadic tribal group in India, often work as landless agricultural labourers in wastewater-irrigated fields. Religion frequently plays a role especially influencing the type of animals raised and whether or not people engage in agriculture or the trading of agricultural commodities. One of the main reasons the SL approach was developed was to draw attention to the role of women and the poor in livelihood creation.

Frequently, the different types of labour necessary to perform each particular activity vary by gender and age of the constitutive household members (e.g. women and children mainly provide water for domestic use, while men tend to be more involved than women in irrigation; men tend to predominate in fodder grass production and women and children in feeding the fodder to buffaloes and cows). The type of remuneration for each of these activities varies across different categories of people and different types of activities. Women tend to be remunerated at a lower rate than men for the same or more labour-intensive activities. Household food security may be enhanced if payment is made in kind. In the wastewater-irrigated paddy rice fields near Hyderabad, in-kind payment in rice helps ensure that male labourers from drought-prone and other areas contribute to household dietary requirements rather than spending their wages on alcohol (Buechler and Devi, 2003c). The stage in the household life cycle⁴ and the total number of members able to undertake income-generating and income-saving activities also determines whether or not the household as a unit can afford to engage in labour-intensive activities. Low-income households cannot afford to hire all of the labour needed for such activities. The amount of labour available to the household is its human capital. A livelihoods analysis by household member will contribute to wastewater research through improved understanding by gender, age and household characteristics of how much time is dedicated to each particular wastewater-related activity, how much wastewater-derived income is earned (or saved) and in which other types of wastewater and non-wastewater related activities the household is engaged.

³ Toddy is a beverage tapped from a toddy palm tree that is often drunk fermented.

⁴ If a household is at an early stage in its life cycle, most of the children are very young and cannot yet make economic contributions. If a household is at a late stage in its life cycle, many members will be too elderly to contribute economically and in some cultures the adult sons and/or daughters may already have set up their own households elsewhere.

A livelihoods approach specifically stresses the importance of studying the different access to resources within a household between men and women. The degree of involvement of each household member provides insight into the poverty dimensions of who would be the most vulnerable if changes in the quantity and quality of the resource occurred due to external factors. Some examples from case studies are, diversion to other, perhaps more powerful, interests in the event of the construction of a new treatment plant (see Silva-Ochoa and Scott on Guanajuato, Mexico, Chapter 13, this volume), the upstream diversion of large amounts of wastewater by large landholders or other users depriving downstream users of sufficient water (Buechler, 2001), or the construction of a pipeline from the urban area to transport the wastewater to another river basin as is planned in Hyderabad.

Research must be conducted on the degree of involvement in fieldwork to determine individual and group risks to health. Wastewater irrigation and such activities as transplanting or weeding in flooded areas like paddy fields often require the closest and most prolonged contact with the wastewater. In many areas of the world, these tasks are affected by gender divisions of labour that make it culturally more acceptable, for example, for men in Latin America and most of South Asia to irrigate, and women to weed and transplant. These agricultural operations are practiced mainly by lower-income groups (farmers with few assets or labourers hired by farmers with more assets). To take the case of wastewater-irrigated paddy rice in the rural areas near Hyderabad, it is men who usually irrigate the rice and women who transplant and weed it. During all of these operations, the person must stand in the wastewater, increasing their risk of skin diseases and possibly other health problems, but for weeding and transplanting women are in the water for about 8 hours per day compared to 1 hour per day for the men, because for most of the time they are irrigating they do not stand in the water. In one year, therefore, with two paddy rice crops in wastewater-irrigated areas, women could be in the water for 100 days for 8 hours per day for a total of 800 hours whereas the number of hours for men is far less at about 240 days for about 1 hour per day or 240 hours. Women spend more time weeding wastewater-irrigated vegetable fields in urban and peri-urban Hyderabad than men (Buechler and Devi, 2002a), therefore their risk of helminth infections from contact with the soil may also be higher. So risks, are also likely to be gender-related. Class/caste issues play a role in risk since those from lower- income categories generally have more contact with the wastewater than richer social groups, who can afford to hire others to perform the work that requires the most contact with the wastewater.

Infrastructure at the micro-level

Infrastructure at the micro-level, similar to that at the meso-level, affects livelihoods. For example, health risks at the micro-level are influenced by the types of infrastructure available to a community to store and to channel the wastewater to the field. Retaining water in a pond could make it safer to use by reducing the number of helminth eggs and microorganisms such as Escherichia coli it contains through oxidation, radiation, and settling. Varying degrees of contact by irrigators with the soil and with the wastewater are necessary to channel the water to the field (e.g. watering cans versus earthen field channels), with greater contact meaning greater risk to irrigators.

Institutions and organisations at the local level

Participation and/or membership in organisations and institutions related to wastewater use at the micro-level (for example, at the level of the municipality, or the local level of the town, village, urban or peri-urban neighbourhood) may be based upon such affiliations as landholding and water-access status, and the overlapping affiliations of class, caste, religion, gender and ethnicity. For example, in Hyderabad, an urban farmers’ association exists that is primarily composed of wastewater farmers who own land; in the peri-urban and rural areas water-user associations are composed of landed farmers with access to wastewater for irrigation; and caste groups in urban, peri-urban and rural wastewater-irrigated areas have their own organisations and meet in the caste community centre.

Similarly, at the local level a de facto situation exists in relation to rules and regulations governing water pollution and wastewater use. The interactions between user groups, industry and governmental agencies are both locally specific and dynamic in nature. In practice, the application of national-level or even state-level laws is renegotiated at the local level, but often not on a level playing field. Large industries and commercial establishments are often able to dominate. This affects livelihoods in the area. An example of this is found in Patancheru, Andhra Pradesh, India, 20 km from Hyderabad city. Here industries were able to pressure the Government of Andhra Pradesh to create a pipeline to Hyderabad so that they are able to release industrial effluents into the sewage treatment plant (STP) there that is currently equipped only for primary treatment of domestic sewage which is subsequently released into a system of irrigation canals and into the Musi river. However, farmers’ associations, environmental groups and citizen action groups in and near Hyderabad were able to apply pressure and challenge this Supreme Court decision forcing the Court to declare a Stay Order on the proposed pipeline. The pipeline is still under construction, however, and farmers fear that the effluents may be piped in even before the mandatory upgrade of the STP has been completed (Buechler, fieldwork 2003).

Conclusions

There is a critical need to utilise an SL approach for the study of wastewater. This approach must be actor-centred, can be multi-disciplinary, and should be oriented towards the study of change. A focus on actors involved in wastewater management at all levels generates knowledge that is tailored to the needs of the varied groups of people and institutions who use and manage wastewater and to the complex contexts in which wastewater use occurs. This will lead to solutions that are appropriate for the present with a view to preserving natural resources and income-generating activities based on those resources for future generations. Wastewater-dependent people have a rich knowledge base stemming from their daily experience in wastewater management and can provide information on where interventions might be necessary and on which types of interventions would address their particular problems. The livelihood security of these individual women, men and children and of their households is invariably linked to benefits derived from and problems related to wastewater dependence. The various assets (in the form of social, financial, natural, physical, human and political capital) that wastewater-dependent people have at their disposal are affected by social, economic, political and environmental factors.

For a complete understanding of issues related to wastewater use at a basin level, the macro-, meso- and micro-levels need to be studied from a multi-disciplinary perspective addressing socio-economic, health and technical issues. Macro-level analyses should include river basin issues focusing particularly on upstream and downstream tradeoffs.

Meso-level analyses need to focus on the wastewater delivery system from both technical and organisational perspectives to ensure that infrastructure will be viewed as a dynamic tool for livelihood creation and sustenance. Pollution control boards, metropolitan water and sanitation boards and irrigation departments may all play important but different roles than expected in waste and wastewater management. The de jure and de facto functioning of various actors with positions in governmental agencies responsible for wastewater management requires attention. What is legally sanctioned may be very different from the everyday practices of the actors within the organisations.

By highlighting users and their perceptions about changes in wastewater quality and quantity, micro-level analyses can lead to improved planning and management surrounding wastewater issues at the level of the nation, region, district, municipality, peri-urban area or village. The gender, caste, class, ethnic, religious and economic characteristics of the users in urban, peri-urban and rural areas affect the types of wastewater-related activities in which they engage. When studying the micro-level of the user, it is important to analyse the interconnections between users. There is a chain of economic beneficiaries from wastewater whose livelihoods depend indirectly and directly on it. Household-level analysis of the contributions of wastewater to livelihoods examines the effects of household composition and stage in the household life cycle on, for example, the contributions of each member to wastewater and non-wastewater dependent income-generating and income-saving activities.

Using a SL framework of analysis to study infrastructure use at the local level will reveal that this infrastructure is altered according to the separate needs of the different users at distinct and localised areas. The infrastructure needs of the users will depend on the area’s economic conditions, formal and informal educational facilities, and geophysical characteristics together with the hydrology and hydraulics of the wastewater system.

Institutions and organisations at the level of the village or neighbourhood shape the ways in which wastewater is managed through members active in these organisations. Organisations may be composed of members with similar socio-economic characteristics. Similar to those at higher levels, at the local level a de jure and de facto distinction exists in relation to rules and regulations governing water pollution and the use of wastewater.

Integrated analyses for action research are imperative when attempting to ensure the sustainability of livelihoods based on wastewater. A SL approach to data collection and analysis helps ensure the social acceptability, economic viability and technical feasibility of the recommendations derived from action research on wastewater. Long-term studies on particular wastewater use areas using the SL approach are also vitally important because the growing volumes of wastewater produced as cities grow often changes the location and expands farming activities. Long-term SL analyses will show the dynamism inherent in wastewater use for household sustenance.

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