Emergency Environmental Health Forum 2023

 [International]

10-11 of May, 2023

Budapest & Online

The Emergency Environmental Health Forum is an international research and learning event.

We bring together WASH implementers, researchers, donors and policymakers together to discuss the latest research, evaluations and learning on humanitarian WASH programmes.

Our objectives are to:

Share new research and learning from humanitarian WASH programmes

Discuss new approaches and innovations that would benefit populations affected by or at-risk of humanitarian crises

Identify research gaps and generate research questions at a practice, policy and research level for humanitarian WASH

Build new partnerships with donors, practitioners and researchers

Submission of abstracts is now closed.

Participation is now open for both in-person or hybrid.

Agenda: 

Split over two days, 

24 Plenary Presentations,

24 Espresso Slot presenters, 

2 Panel discussions, and

60+ in person and 100+ online attendees

to network with!

COVID-19:Cleaning and Disinfection for Community Facilities

Interim Recommendations for U.S. Community Facilities with Suspected/Confirmed Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

There is much to learn about the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Based on what is currently known about the virus and about similar coronaviruses that cause SARS and MERS, spread from person-to-person happens most frequently among close contacts (within about 6 feet). This type of transmission occurs via respiratory droplets, but disease transmission via infectious aerosols is currently uncertain. Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 to persons from surfaces contaminated with the virus has not been documented. Transmission of coronavirus in general occurs much more commonly through respiratory droplets than through fomites. Current evidence suggests that SARS-CoV-2 may remain viable for hours to days on surfaces made from a variety of materials. Cleaning of visibly dirty surfaces followed by disinfection is a best practice measure for prevention of COVID-19 and other viral respiratory illnesses in community settings.

It is unknown how long the air inside a room occupied by someone with confirmed COVID-19 remains potentially infectious. Facilities will need to consider factors such as the size of the room and the ventilation system design (including flowrate [air changes per hour] and location of supply and exhaust vents) when deciding how long to close off rooms or areas used by ill persons before beginning disinfection. Taking measures to improve ventilation in an area or room where someone was ill or suspected to be ill with COVID-19 will help shorten the time it takes respiratory droplets to be removed from the air.

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Electric vehicles are the future of mobility, but is Nepal ready?

By: Tsering Ngodup Lama
It was 2010 when Bijaya Sagar Pradhan bought his first electric car. Electric cars then were a rare sight on Kathmandu’s streets, making Pradhan one of the earliest adopters of private electric vehicles in the country.

“I was tired of waiting in long queues at fuel stations and I wanted to lessen my reliance on fossil fuels,” said Pradhan.

There has long been a plethora of choices when it comes to petrol and diesel-powered cars but Pradhan, in 2010, didn’t have that luxury. The only private electric vehicle--or EV, as they’re colloquially called--available then was the REVA, manufactured by a Bangalore-based company that has since been acquired by Mahindra. It was a small-sized car that could only seat two adults and two children.

“The car cost me around Rs1.2 million and it ran 80kms on a full charge. Since private EVs were a new concept for people in the city, many questioned my decision. Some even suggested that I should have added Rs200,000 and bought a Hyundai Santro instead. The less forgiving ones made fun of the size and design of the car,” said Pradhan.

For ECO Vision, the company that acquired the Nepal dealership for REVA vehicles in 2010, customers like Pradhan were rare.

“EVs were a novelty. Many didn’t know about EVs, and many who did, didn’t trust the technology,” said Pramod Bhandari, manager of the dealership. “Convincing people to opt for electric cars over conventional petrol and diesel cars was tough.”

During its initial years, the company, Bhandari said, considered one unit sale a month as a significant achievement.

Since Pradhan’s REVA purchase, Nepal’s EV landscape has undergone major shifts. The number of EVs in the country, including private two- and four-wheelers and public vehicles, reached 21,000 in 2017, according to the Electric Vehicle Association of Nepal (EVAN). In 2018, that number crossed 45,000. Today, around 10 percent of vehicles sold in the country are EVs.

This significant rise in the number of EVs follows a global pattern where more and more countries are pursuing policies that promote the adoption of EVs in private life and for public transport in order to combat pollution and climate change. In 2018, the number of electric cars in the world crossed 5.1 million, an increase of two million from 2017, according to the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based intergovernmental organisation.

To cater to the growing demand for EVs, a slew of dedicated international manufacturers--Tesla, Rivian, LUCID Motors, NIO and Byton--have sprung up. Even traditional combustion engine automakers have started focusing heavily on EVs. The German auto behemoth Volkswagen plans to produce 50 EV models by 2025 and sell one million electric cars every year between 2025 and 2030, half in China alone. In 2018, Ford announced plans for at least $11 billion of investment into EV production by 2022.

“The future of mobility is electric,” said Umesh Raj Shrestha, chairperson of EVAN. But for Nepal to transition fully to EVs, the country needs robust infrastructure to support these vehicles. And the time is here for Nepal to start laying the groundwork for what is certain to become the next grand transition in transport.

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Can I Recycle This? A Guide for Do-Gooders

By: Jason Woods

If you’re paying attention even a little bit, it’s easy to find some alarming news about human consumption and how it affects the Earth. If we want to prevent a future where we all live on a Wall-E-style trash planet, an easy place to start is recycling at home.

Make the Planet a Better Place

While you're becoming a better recycler, also consider donating to our work to end hunger and poverty while caring for the Earth.

But is it that easy, though?

On a daily basis, I try to get some quick Good Place points by recycling. But an irritatingly high percentage of the time, a more seasoned do-gooder hits me with an “Actually, you can’t recycle that” before I can get to the bin. Apparently, I’ve been an “aspirational recycler”all this time, which does more harm than good.

So it’s time to reform. Here’s a simple guide for what goes in your home recycling bin to make sure you and I are recycle-shamed no more. (And, you know, actually helping the environment).

Before we dive in, keep in mind that it never hurts to check with your local recycler to see what can and can’t be recycled — some recycling facilities can handle more types of materials than others. And whatever you're recycling, make sure to rinse all food residue before putting it in the bin.

Can you recycle plastic?

This is probably the most complicated question on the list. And it’s arguably the most important—after food, plastics take up the most space in municipal landfills. So let’s break it down.

YES: Bottles, jars, jugs......

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The systems imperative for SDG WASH success

Patrick Moriarty, CEO of IRC (credit IRC)
There has been growing recognition in recent years that improvements in water, sanitation and hygiene provision are best secured by using a systems-based approach. Patrick Moriarty makes the case for wider progress.

It is clear that making sure every man, woman and child on the planet has a safe source of water and a safely managed toilet by 2030 will require a monumental global effort. This is the case despite the international community’s support for water and sanitation over many years achieving mixed results. In recent years, this has fed a growing belief in the need for a new approach – an approach known as WASH systems strengthening.

The acronym WASH – water, sanitation and hygiene – encapsulates a main element of good hygiene practice. Broadly speaking, the group of people and organisations most comfortable with using WASH to describe their ‘sector’ and work are those focused outside of the more formal, mainstream public utility provision of drinking water and sanitation services. Typically, these organisations work in rural areas, smaller towns and informal settlements. The WASH systems agenda does have things to say to the utility end of service provision, but it has much more to say to the informal world of WASH.

The WASH systems agenda has grown out of concern that, despite reasonable progress under the Millennium Development Goals, something is not really working in WASH. Headline figures for coverage are largely moving in the right direction, but they are doing so too slowly – and the quality and sustainability of the services delivered are too often inadequate. A widely shared guesstimate has around a third of water supply infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa not working at any given time. More detailed research paints a bleaker picture still, with norms for reliability, ease of access and, especially, quality at point of use too often missed. This means that, in practice, the majority of people living in rural areas and informal settlements do not have access to safe or adequate water or sanitation, and so are deprived of their human rights.

In practice, the majority of people living in rural areas and informal settlements do not have access to safe or adequate water or sanitation

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Pakistan could run out of water by 2025. Here's how

Western headlines would suggest that the potential for nuclear warfare on the Indian Subcontinent or terrorism in Islamabad present the greatest challenges to Pakistan's national security, but another, lesser-known risk threatens Pakistan in ways that India and al-Qaeda never could: water scarcity.

"Water scarcity represents a major threat to Pakistan's future stability, both in domestic and regional contexts," said Michael Kugelman, senior associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and an editor of Running on Empty: Pakistan's Water Crisis.

As a country with a population of over two hundred million, Pakistan consumes significant amounts of water. In fact, the South Asian country has the fourth-largest water footprint in the world. The Indus River, one of the longest in Asia, fulfills much of that need for Pakistanis, but the river can only do so much before Pakistanis find themselves on the brink of a humanitarian crisis.

"Given that the majority of the country continues to depend on agriculture and irrigation for its economic stability, an unstable water supply could pose a significant threat to millions," Dr Haider Warraich, a fellow at Duke University Medical Center, told The New Arab. 

"The supply of clean drinking water is also very important, given how essential it is to the control of infectious disease."

In June 2015, the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, issued the landmark report Issues in Managing Water Challenges: Regional Perspectives and Case Studies. The IMF observed that population growth had far outpaced water supply in Pakistan, contributing to water scarcity in a country with what the authors called "the world's largest irrigation system."

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पूर्ण सरसफाइ उन्मुख गाउँपालिका घोषणा गर्न जल कचहरी, १० बुँदे प्रतिबद्धता

कालिकोट : पलाँता गाउँपालिकालाई पूर्ण सरसफाइ उन्मुख गाउँपालिका घोषणा गर्न दोस्रो पटक १० बुँदे प्रतिबद्धता सहित जलकचहरी कार्यक्रम सम्पन्न भएको छ । गाउँपालिकाले खानेपानी सरसफाइ र स्वच्छताका क्षेत्रमा रहेका समस्याहरुको खोजी गरी समाधान गर्ने उद्देश्यले बर्षमा दुई पटक जलकचहरी कार्यक्रम गर्दै आएको छ ।

जनप्रतिनिधि, कर्मचारी, खानेपानी सरसफाइ र स्वच्छता क्षेत्रमा कार्यरत संघ संस्था र स्थानीयको सहभागितामा जलकचहरी गरेको हो । पलाँता गाउँपालिकाले २०७४ को चैत्र ४ गते खानेपानी सरसफाइ र स्वच्छता क्षेत्रमा सुधार गर्न ७ बुँदे प्रतिबद्धता जाहेर गरेको थियो ।

के छ त प्रतिबद्धतामा ?

१. खानेपानी तथा सरसफाइ प्रबर्द्धनका सवालमा गाउँपालिकाले कम्तीमा बर्षमा २ पटक जलकचहरी गर्न प्रतिबद्ध छौं ।

२. किर्डाक नेपाल/वाटर एडको सहयोग एवं सहजीकरणमा पलाँता गाउँपालिकाको एकीकृत उत्थानशील खानेपानी सरसफाइ तथा स्वच्छता रणनैतिक योजना २०७५ भित्र निर्माण गरी कार्यान्वयन गर्ने गाउँपालिका प्रतिवद्ध छ ।

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दिल्लीको वायु प्रदूषण मापदण्डभन्दा २० गुणा बढी

नयाँदिल्ली  : भारतको नयाँदिल्लीमा विश्व स्वास्थ्य संगठनले तोकेभन्दा प्रदूषणको स्तर २० गुणा बढेपछि अधिकारीले स्थानीय बासिन्दालाई सकेसम्म केही दिन घरभित्रै रहन र प्रदूषणका स्रोत मानिने गतिविधिलाई कम गर्न सहयोगी भूमिका खेल्न आग्रह गरेका छन् ।

दीपावलीअघि नै शहरमा बाक्लो तुँवालोले ढाकिएपछि यहाँका बासिन्दामा त्रास फैलिएको छ । दीपावली मनाउँदा पटाका पड्काइने भएकाले वायुको गुणस्तर झनै खस्किने ठानिएको भन्दै विज्ञहरूले पूर्वचेतावनी दिएका छन् । प्रदूषण कम गर्न शहरभित्र भइरहेका निमार्णकार्यलाई नियन्त्रण गरिएको छ । सबै विद्यालयहरूमा तीन दिन बिदा दिइएको छ ।

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