Changing mindsets
In many cases of river pollution, solutions dawn easily once communities become concerned about its effects to their health and the environment.
In Nantai Island, at the heart of Fuzhou City in the People's Republic of China (PRC), the inland river system served as the garbage and wastewater collector for ever-growing urban communities for years. Now, Nantai Island's inland rivers are getting the much needed cleanup they deserve - all because village residents began to care.
"Before, people used to just dump their trash in the rivers, unmindful of its harmful effects", said a local community leader.
The realization began in 2006 when the Fuzhou Municipal Government, with support from ADB, launched the Nantai Island Clean River Program, which aimed to raise communities' awareness on how better sanitation and hygienic practices can help them and their rivers reach the pink of health.
The change in people's mindsets was remarkable. In a matter of months, people's attitudes towards the river have made a 180-degree turn.
"From randomly throwing garbage and discharging wastewater into the rivers, communities have become more proactive in the project's awareness-raising and river cleanup activities", another village leader proudly said. "Some people even openly criticize those who still carelessly dump trash in the rivers".
Rivers of Trash
Rivers are usually the first to suffer from people's apathy about where they throw their trash. In many river communities in highly urbanized areas, people are often unmindful of what dumping waste into rivers do to their health and the environment.
Nantai Island's rivers have suffered the same fate. With more than 40 inland rivers, a population of 480,000 packed in only 142 square kilometers of land, and with no centralized wastewater treatment facilities, it is of little wonder that the Island's river system became the dumping site of all domestic and industrial wastewaters, and households' solid waste. The rivers that ran through urban communities naturally carried urban waste along before emptying into the Min River that surrounds the island - until the rivers reeked, turned black, and no longer flowed.
The deterioration of the rivers' water quality, and the potential threat to public health prompted the Fuzhou Municipal Government to seek ADB assistance. The Clean River Program is only one of the many components of the larger ADB-financed Fuzhou Environmental Improvement Project launched in 2005 to improve the living conditions and public health of about 1.4 million people through constructing and rehabilitating the city's water supply, sanitation, and wastewater management systems.
Driven communities
The Nantai Island Clean River Program set out to do a grand task: that of changing community mindsets. The project used the Community Driven Development (CDD) approach as key to improving communities' sanitation and hygiene practices.
CDD involves complementary activities directly involving communities that lead to improvements in people's knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. The activities included
- Training workshops for community leaders to become hygiene promoters. About 75 community leaders that comprise the Village Committees of 29 villages participated in the training programs with the express aim of leading the various awareness-raising and river cleanup activities, generally passing on the knowledge they have learned to their constituents.
- Community awareness campaigns through various media, bazaars, household visitations, audio-visual materials, and surveys, including the conduct of the campaign in primary and middle schools. The campaign covered 42 villages along the 13 selected inland rivers.
Through the CDD approach, villagers' attitudes and behavior towards sanitation began to change. They realized that better sanitation and hygienic practices can help them and their rivers become healthier. They now monitor and report their own community initiatives, and are proactively partnering with local government in implementing environmental programs.
Overall, communities have now cultivated better hygiene practices. They stopped dumping solid waste or discharging wastewater randomly, and now take the initiative to maintain a hygienic environment. By partnering with the local government and becoming positively involved in Clean River Program, communities now have concrete roles in maintaining the water quality of Nantai Island's rivers.
The CDD approach has been replicated in ADB's Shandong Hai Pollution Control Project and is now being mainstreamed into the design of the Small Cities and Towns Development Demonstration Sector Project in Hebei, Liaoning, and Shanxi provinces.
Flushing Fuzhou
The Fuzhou Environmental Improvement Project covers the construction of sewer networks in Yanglai and Lianban districts, the rehabilitation of Nantai Island's inland creeks, and empowerment of communities to oversee project-related activities. About 12 interconnected inland creeks with a combined length of about 47.85 kilometers were rehabilitated. This involved dredging and excavating 2.2 million tons of earthworks and constructing stone-lined rectangular channels. About 8 existing flood gates were also repaired.
A city master planning study commissioned by the Fuzhou Municipal Government in 2008, however, covered a large portion of Nantai Island and affected the river rehabilitation process to some degree. Rehabilitation of some 6 rivers unaffected by the city master plan revisions have begun, while rehabilitation of the rest is scheduled in 2009, targeted to be completed by 2010. To date, some 180 meters of newly lined rivers have been substantially completed and now exhibiting marked visual improvements.
These infrastructural changes and communities' new outlook towards their environment can prove to be just the right combination that will save Nantai Island's rivers. ADB Project Officer Maria Theresa Villareal said, "The Fuzhou experience shows that the benefits from river cleanup can be sustained by making the community an active partner, not just a mere project beneficiary".
Caring for rivers
With mindsets changed, Nantai's urban communities launched into a flurry of clean-up activities. They have established a specialized cleaning group responsible for each village's cleanliness. Community-based rubbish disposal points have been set up, catering to over 21,000 households in 30 villages. Solid wastes are now transported regularly to landfills.
Nantai's communities also established a hygiene monitoring group, conducted village sweeping events, and trained more villagers. While the local government provide half the necessary funds for these activities, each village raised the other half of the finances required. With the communities' self-determination, no obstacle will be too difficult to overcome because they now care for their rivers and are working towards restoring them to the clean, clear, flowing rivers they once were.
The Country Water Action series was developed to showcase reforms and good practices in the water sector undertaken by ADB's member countries. It offers a mix of experience and insights from projects funded by ADB and those undertaken directly by civil society, local governments, the private sector, media, and the academe. The Country Water Actions are regularly featured in ADB's Water for All News, which covers water sector developments in the Asia and Pacific region.
