Reducing health risks arising from irrigation with polluted water
Two Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) Projects on Safeguarding Public Health Concerns, Livelihoods and Productivity in Wastewater Irrigated Urban and Peri-urban Vegetable Farming in Ghana and Burkina Faso
Background
In urban and peri-urban farming, the use of polluted (or waste) water is a common reality of concern to health authorities. While the WHO guidelines can hardly be applied, simply banning the use of wastewater is not an appropriate solution either as long as there are no feasible and /or accessible alternatives for the farmers. Applied research on appropriate measures that tackle actual ad potential health problems of wastewater reuse at different entry points and levels (pollution source, farm, market, household, policy) is required.
Geographical focus: Ghana, Burkina Faso (sub-region through consultancies)
Goals - Specific Objectives
- Study and evaluate current land and water use practices in urban and peri-urban vegetable farming.
- Quantify water pollution and compare vegetable (de)contamination along the contamination pathway (farms to markets to households).
- Identify innovative approaches for health risk reduction on-farm and post-harvest and quantify their impacts on contamination levels, land and water productivity, and livelihoods.
- Develop related guidelines and awareness materials for stakeholders i.e. farmers, sellers, consumers, local authorities, and the WHO.
- Develop local human capacities in integrated research on irrigation, livelihoods and health through joint NARES-CGIAR student training.
Activities
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Stakeholder interviews and workshops
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Monitoring and evaluation of farming and selling practices
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Irrigation water and crop quality analysis
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Risk reduction approaches and assessments
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Guidelines development, training and awareness program
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Capacity building/ Ph.D. students training
A simple flow diagram of these activities is as shown below:
Donors:
Challenge Program (CP) on Water & Food projects no. 38 and no. 51
Supported by the CP, DANIDA, IDRC-Agropolis, Urban Harvest, RUAF and the IWMI PhD program
References: (see Publications for full list) |
- Balancing Health and Livelihood, RUAF Urban Agricultural Magazine December 2002 [pdf.file]
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- Amoah, P., P. Drechsel, R.C Abaidoo and E. Obuobie. 2004. Vegetable irrigation with low-quality water in West Africa: Risk factors and risk elimination. International Workshop on Management of Poor Quality Waters for Irrigation: Institutional, Health & Environmental Aspects. ICID, Moscow, September 9-10, 2004.
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- Drechsel, P., U.J. Blumenthal and B. Keraita. 2002. Balancing health and livelihoods: Adjusting wastewater irrigation guidelines for resource-poor countries. Urban Agriculture Magazine 8: 7-9 [pdf file]
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- Keraita, B., Drechsel, P. and Amoah, P. 2003. Influence of urban wastewater on stream water quality and agriculture in and around Kumasi, Ghana. Environment & Urbanization 15 (2) 171-178. [pdf file]
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- Keraita, B., P. Drechsel, F. Huibers, and L. Raschid-Sally. 2002. Wastewater use in informal irrigation in Urban and Peri-urban areas of Kumasi, Ghana. Urban Agriculture Magazine 8: 11-13.
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