Solid and liquid wastes are a valuable resource for poor people living around cities.  Informal use of urban wastes in farming and aquaculture is vital to livelihoods and a key component of waste disposal, but is not integrated into official urban waste management strategies.

A report from the Development Planning Unit at University College London in the UK examines the reuse of urban waste in the peri-urban interfaces (PUIs) on the outskirts of cities in Ghana, Nigeria and India.

Many municipal authorities are unable to safely treat and dispose of solid and liquid waste. This provides relatively easy access to sewage and solid organic waste, which enables poor people to engage in agricultural production. Farmers with land alongside sewage-bearing streams use the effluent to irrigate vegetables, field crops, fodder grass and agroforestry areas. Waste-using farmers provide casual employment such as weeding, waste picking and sorting for the most marginalised people, particularly women and children.

Solid waste provides agricultural soil with valuable nutrients, while sewage is an inexpensive way for farmers to irrigate plots during the dry season. However, limited knowledge prevents peri-urban farmers from maximising benefits from urban waste. Most are unaware of how to avoid the risks involved in using water polluted with faecal matter and industrial pollutants and cannot afford protective equipment. Many lack information about composting and the benefits of organic manure.

Officials are generally unsupportive. In India and Nigeria, the state subsidises chemical fertilisers instead of supporting waste re-use schemes. Strategies to deal with increasing amounts of urban waste typically go around small peri-urban farmers and support commercial schemes supplying and benefiting higher-income customers. Planners are not aware of the role of peri-urban fishponds in wastewater management, or just how much urban waste is deposited on fields and how this reduces pressure on dumping sites.

The author reports that:

• Sewage can cause excessive weed growth and encourage pests, forcing farmers to increase the use of pesticides.
• Female labourers are particularly exposed to pathogens and toxins, which they risk transferring to their families when preparing food.
• As urbanisation accelerates and the organic component of urban waste declines, waste products are becoming harder to access. This means urban waste is an unreliable resource.
• The commercialisation of waste is a threat to small farmers.
• The growth of private sector composting schemes produces expensive products which are often transported far away. This creates competition over waste resources with small local farmers.

It is time for PUI farmers to be acknowledged as important stakeholders in urban waste management. Policymakers need to consider all the variables relevant to measuring costs and benefits of using urban waste. They should:

• realise that sustainable resource management systems must be based on knowledge of traditional practices of farmers
• promote associations able to represent the needs of poor farmers and engage in dialogue with the state
• raise awareness and provide financial incentives to overcome reluctance to handle or separate organic waste
• do more research: there are still too many uncertainties about how to handle urban waste safely and productively.

Source(s):
‘The Challenges of Urban Waste Use as a Means to Enhance the Livelihoods of Peri-urban Poor People’, Development Planning Unit, University College London, by Pascale Hofmann, September 2005 Full document.

Funded by: UK Department of International Development

id21 Research Highlight: 20 December 2006

Further Information:
Pascale Hofmann
Peri-Urban Interface Programme
Development Planning Unit
University College London
9 Endsleigh Gardens London WC1H 0ED
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 20 76791111
Fax: +44 (0) 20 76791112
Contact the contributor: p.hofmann@ucl.ac.uk

Development Planning Unit, University College London, UK

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