Dr Seumas Bates, Bangor University,
Invited speaker by the Glasgow Anthropology Network

 

According to WHO data around 159 million people still collect drinking water directly from surface water sources, with 58% of these living in sub-Saharan Africa. This water would usually be considered unsafe for human consumption due to high levels of microbiological contamination, and is often also accessed by livestock and other animals. Rendering such water safe to drink usually involves boiling or chlorination prior to consumption, but such practices can be time consuming or expensive, and as such are not universally deployed by those accessing these sources.

 

While piped, clean water is clearly the ideal solution for this issue the significant cost of such infrastructural investment can be prohibitive and render such solutions to water issues as long-term prospects at best. As such, new processes which are inexpensive, effective in treating water, and which are available immediately are called for. Certain results from one such project which sought to do exactly this via solar disinfection are described below, and while it was somewhat effective in rendering water safe for consumption it is doubtful the techniques will find widespread adoption across target communities.

 

The Water Sustainable Point Of Use Treatment Technologies (or ‘WaterSPOUTT’) project was a large EU H2020 funded trans-disciplinary research project drawing on the expertise from 18 partners from academia and industry. It was a natural science dominated project (mainly engineering and microbiological) aimed to study new methods of providing treated drinking water to communities in Ethiopia, Uganda, and Malawi who rely on unsafe sources whereby a consortium of scholars based in Europe and Africa carried out a technological development programme to advance three applications based on Solar Disinfection (or ‘SODIS’), which can increase water safety after it has been collected.

 

In parallel to this, but slightly detached from it a Maynooth University led social science research stream sought to deeply explore the broader ‘Water Lives’ of these communities both in relation to their interaction with these SODIS technologies and also more broadly. This investigation was conducted in conjunction with African partner universities and centred around a number of semi-structured interviews and focus groups with both users and non-users, as well as several shared dialogue workshops, which afforded local people a voice into the product design process.

 

The Glasgow Anthropology Network presentation to which this blog post is linked primarily considers the former: the direct engagement of these communities with these SODIS technologies, placing pre-eminence to the perspectives and responses of the participants themselves, but also considers this direct engagement within the wider social and economic context of these regions. As such it seeks to offer a window into the lived-experience of the actual day-to-day application of these three SODIS technologies as explained by those actually making use of them in the field.

 

As a general response to the project overall, Ethiopian users described the SODIS 25 litre ‘jerry cans’ very positively. Respondents noted the less labour-intensive nature of the treatment process (compared to the normal method of water treatment which was boiling) and reported either a decrease in rates of diarrhoea amongst children or no change.

 

Similarly, in Malawi, participants were positive about the SODIS 20 litre ‘buckets’. Respondents (both users and health workers) were especially positive about the reported decrease in cases of diarrhoea amongst children, and initial issues surrounding children and livestock damaging the buckets appear to have been resolved via community adaption.

 

The value of the shared dialogue workshop process is also apparently here, especially in Malawi, and the improvements made to the technologies design prior to mass production due to community involvement were substantial. 

 

However, in both Ethiopia and Malawi respondent criticism of the SODIS technologies centred around what they considered a flimsy construction, with reports of the plastic softening and darkening with prolonged use. It is likely that a bucket or jerry can would only be affective as a water treatment device for a limited period, perhaps only a few years, and this would doubtless have a constricting impact on its viability.   

 

By contrast, Uganda respondents were less likely to focus praise of the 200 litre SODIS ‘reactors’ on perceived health benefits (though these benefits were also noted) and rather on convenience and the cost effectiveness of the system for users, as firewood or chemical treatments were not required. However, it should be noted that while operating costs were minimal, the INITIAL installation cost is many hundred Euros, well beyond what most target communities could afford.

 

Overall the WaterSPOUTT project did succeed in achieving its objectives in reducing microbial contamination of water and consequent illness rates amongst user populations (especially children). It is hard to say exactly due to some issues with measurements and reporting, but it is likely participant communities saw a decrease in instances of child diarrhoea by around 30% while using SODIS. This is undoubtedly a very positive result, and the SODIS process has been shown to be effective in quantities of water well above the conventional wisdom of 1-2 litres. However, it is ALSO clearly the case that any hope of a wholesale rollout of one or more of these technologies across larger regions where the consumption of unsafe water is the norm is currently unlikely, and now the project is concluded participant populations will return to using other methods of treatment to provide safe water, at least for the time being. Whether SODIS will go on to replace chlorination and boiling as the ‘default’ water treatment will ultimately be determined by economic and cultural factors beyond the scope of this research, and very much remains to be seen.   

First published: 14 December 2020

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