informal settlements have a significant impact on the water quality of the river. • Most noticeable is the difference in both COD and BOD values in the samples collected. The COD levels increased by 220 mg/l, while the BOD value rose by 148 mg/l. • Turbidity also increased beyond the maximum allowed levels, further indicating pollution
Full Answer
What are the effects of informal settlements on Environment?
These communities lack basic services and as a result, resort to environmental degradation where the removal of vegetative cover, waste disposal and water pollution are evident. Furthermore, many of the informal settlements are situated in close proximity to water source, especially rivers.
What are the problems faced by Dunoon informal settlement?
The mushrooming of informal settlements along the bank of the Diep River due to population growth in Dunoon compromises the quality of water. Inadequate sanitation and waste disposal practices in the Dunoon informal settlement are a major problem, leading to the contamination of water resources.
How does informal settlement affect the Jukskei River?
In the same way as Dunoon, the residents of Alexandra informal settlement litter and dump waste into the Jukskei River due to the lack of urban drainage infrastructure and inadequate waste removal. This has an impact on water quality and the environment. In wet seasons, contaminants are also regularly washed into the Jukskei River (Fitchett 2017 ).
Does Dunoon informal settlement affect water quality in Diep River?
Based on the findings, the water quality in Diep River is poor and the Dunoon informal settlement has contributed to this to some extent. The pollution of the river may be linked to health problems and environmental degradation.
How do informal settlements contribute to water pollution?
Furthermore, many of the informal settlements are situated in close proximity to water source, especially rivers. In the absence of sanitation, these communities make use of shallow pit latrines, river banks, etc. The potential for pollution is therefore very high in these communities.
What are the impact of informal settlement?
Informal settlements are characterized by a lack of basic services, pollution, overcrowding and poor waste management. These characteristics impact negatively on the environment posing risk and susceptibility to health problems associated with informal settlements.
How do informal settlements threaten environmentally sensitive areas?
Informal settlements threaten environmentally sensitive areas (aquifers, forests, wetlands and other bodies of water). Settlements built on steep slopes greatly increase the costs of infrastructure provision and sometimes threaten residents' safety because of mud and land slides.
How does settlement affect the environment?
An example of the impact of human settlements on the environment can be found in the water cycle. Human settlements reduce evaporation from 40% to 30%, reduce infiltration of water to underground aquifers from 50% to 15%, and increase run-off from 10% to 55%.
What are the negative effects of informal sector?
While offering the advantage of employment flexibility in some economies, a large informal sector is associated with low productivity, reduced tax revenues, poor governance, excessive regulations, and poverty and income inequality.
Why are squatter settlements bad for the environment?
In terms of environmental challenges in the squatter settlements and slums, air and water pollution, lack of personal hygiene and poor environmental sanitation, and health, noise, and cultural pollution are among the most visible ones. Sprawling, litter, and polluted waterways are most prevalent in most urban slums.
How do informal settlements affect urban areas?
Moreover, informal settlements are space where the neighborhood effects related to poor sanitation, overcrowding, poor housing, physical hazard, pollution, and poverty exposed the dwellers to everyday health risks and keep them in a “risk trap”.
What are the causes of informal settlement and problems associated with it?
According to UN-Habitat (2015:2), informal settlements are caused by a range of interrelated factors, including population growth and rural-urban migration, lack of affordable housing for the urban poor, weak governance (particularly in the areas of policy, planning, land and urban management resulting in land ...
What are some impacts of slums and squatter settlements on the environment?
Poor people living in slum are often forced to live in environmentally unsafe areas, steep hillsides and flood plains or polluted sites near solid waste dumps, open drains and sewers, and polluting industries.
What are the environmental factors that affect human settlement?
Some of the factors that have positive influence on developing a human settlement are water supply, flat and arable land, protection, shelter from weather, bridging point, crossroad – intersection of roads, while land that floods, marshy or steep land, no protection, no building or water supply, may be considered to be ...
What are the four environmental factors that influence settlement?
In order to better categorize which factors ultimately affect settlement, geographers have generally accepted four umbrella terms to describe these elements: climatic, economic, physical, and traditional.
How have human settlement and human activities affect the environment?
Humans impact the physical environment in many ways: overpopulation, pollution, burning fossil fuels, and deforestation. Changes like these have triggered climate change, soil erosion, poor air quality, and undrinkable water.
What are the advantages of informal settlement?
It offers choice, it gives people what they want, it enables individual creativity and it is affordable. It is also simple to build and easy to use. So, a powerful brand — the informal settlement — is in town. And it's reshaping the city.
What are the causes of informal settlement?
According to UN-Habitat (2015:2), informal settlements are caused by a range of interrelated factors, including population growth and rural-urban migration, lack of affordable housing for the urban poor, weak governance (particularly in the areas of policy, planning, land and urban management resulting in land ...
How do informal settlements affect urban areas?
Moreover, informal settlements are space where the neighborhood effects related to poor sanitation, overcrowding, poor housing, physical hazard, pollution, and poverty exposed the dwellers to everyday health risks and keep them in a “risk trap”.
What are the effects of illegal settlement?
The development of the illegal settlement is impacting negatively on the economic development of Chirundu as the council has to divert resources which could have been used in economic development towards health, water and sanitation, entertainment and a large security personnel base to combat widespread crime.
What is the Monwabisi Park stormwater system?
Stormwater Management (2010): Created a stormwater management system in Monwabisi Park to address flooding damages and ensure community dynamics were no longer influenced by previous redirecting or preventative techniques.
What are the solutions for future sustainability of water and sanitation?
Solutions for Future Sustainability of Water and Sanitation (2008): Improved living conditions in Monwabisi Park by developing a communal water facility with amenities, gardens, and a plan to stop crime and vandalism in the toilet facility.
What is innovative upgrading in Langrug?
Innovative Upgrading in the Informal Settlement of Langrug (2012): Designed and completed beginning stages of construction of the first WaSH-UP facility in Langrug, while also addressing issues of greywater management, reblocking, and communication between partners.
What is the Cape Town Project Centre?
One goal of the Cape Town Project Centre is to upgrade informal settlements throughout South Africa by addressing water, sanitation, and hygiene issues.
What are the problems of sanitation and water?
Due to a lack of support, education, and resources, these problems go untreated, creating disease and unsafe living conditions. Grey water channels, streams of waste water excluding sewage waste, run through communities breeding bacteria and different illnesses. Toilet facilities are poorly managed, if at all, and unclean, creating an unsafe and unsanitary living environment.
What is a savings group?
Many informal settlements have Savings Groups, a group of people that collectively save money for personal and community purposes. These documents were designed to help students work with Savings Groups in different communities to establish structure and purpose.
What are the scenes in Wonderbags?
Scene 1: First Introductions . Scene 2: Getting to know Wonderbags and Building Networks. Scene 3: Sharing Ideas and Findings. Scene 4: Cooking with the Wonderbag. Act 2: Finding Distribution Centers. Scene 1: Creating Interest in Wonderbags. Scene 2: First Trip to an Informal Settlement.
Why are informal settlements not recognized by policy or municipal authorities?
Often these settlements “are not even recognized by policy or municipal authorities because of land tenure issues ,” said Timeyin Uwejamomere, urban technical support manager at WaterAid.
How can we combat water and sanitation shortages?
Local solutions, in some contexts, are providing useful ways to combat water and sanitation service shortages, but ultimately the aim should be to ensure that universal access is provided through stronger urban planning that places emphasis on universal access to water and sanitation in the form of a networked system.
Why do local utilities drive up prices?
Local services typically operate at a financial loss due to illegal taps into the systems and poorly maintained pipes. Utilities drive up prices to try to offset losses, and the hardest hit are the poorest people.
Is there a lack of access to water and sanitation in rural areas?
Though much progress has been made in terms of tackling lack of access to water and sanitation in rural areas, the global community must now focus on a world that is becoming more urban . As this number increases, pressures on already struggling water and sanitation services also increases.
Do donors build infrastructure without building capacity?
In such projects, donors often build the infrastructure without also building the capacity for local communities to run these services. Uwejamomore, speaking on how community members should participate in the governance of water, adds affirmatively that “no development should take place in any country without the citizens being part of the process.”
Is water kiosk ineffective?
Like water kiosks, system improvements are ineffective unless the political will, the financial mechanisms and the community capacity are there to operate, maintain and upgrade these systems and technologies, these services cannot meet current demand, let alone be upscaled. Until these different forms of scarcities are addressed, the probability of services meeting the pace of urbanization is a far off reality.
Is physical scarcity the only issue?
All of this highlights that, depending on the context, physical scarcity is not the only issue. Lack of political will also makes reaching the urban poor more difficult, but this also then reflects onto the international level where donors are often only working with governments at the policy level and not the communities they are tasked with helping. Often these types of projects that are supported by donors such as the World Bank tend to focus on the installation of infrastructure without really focusing the ability to run and maintain the service. This could be best framed as capacity scarcity where communities do not have the ability to manage and maintain services, as Hofmann describes:
Where are informal settlements in South Africa?
This study was conducted from October 2017 to June 2018 in five informal settlements in three municipal jurisdictional areas in the Western Cape Province, South Africa, where there are high levels of unemployment, poor levels of education and income, and lack of, or poor, sanitation facilities. These settlements have high population densities and a mixed population of various racial and ethnic groups ( Table 1 ). Dwellings are located either on private or state-owned land. The municipalities have provided different sanitation technologies in each area.
What are the factors that influence sanitation practices?
Respondents concurred that their sanitation practices have been informed by a range of context-dependent factors ( Figure 2 ). Safety concerns (fear of being robbed, raped or killed) emerge in all study settlements as a prime factor for the adoption of particular sanitation practices. The lack of lighting in and outside the facility and night walking to the facility is a safety concern:
What is the sanitation problem in South Africa?
Access to safe sanitation is a growing challenge in informal settlements where over 65.0% of the residents have inadequate sanitation ( UN-Habitat 2014 ), and this has been identified as one of the biggest social issues of post-apartheid South Africa ( DWS 2016 ). Since access to sanitation (understood in this paper as the ability – and the right – to enter and to use the toilets at the time of need) is recognized as a human right in South Africa, all informal settlements are to be provided with basic infrastructure including water and sanitation facilities free of charge. Municipalities are responsible for the operation and maintenance of the facilities. Available sanitation facilities include communal flush toilets, MobiSan (a mobile communal urine diversion toilet), Kayaloo (a mobile communal full flush toilet) and porta-potties (individual portable toilet). However, most of these facilities are not fully accessible due to various operational issues (e.g. blockage and lack of water for flushing). Recognizing that sanitation is dignity, the Free Basic Sanitation (FBSan) policy that provides the right to limited water and sanitation services at no cost to low-income households ( Mosdell 2006) was introduced in 2001. The FBSan policy is a supply-driven approach with the focus on infrastructure delivery ( Tissington 2011 ), especially in rural and informal settlements. Although being acclaimed worldwide as one of the most progressive policies, the FBSan did not provide specifications regarding the nature of the services to be provided ( Mjoli et al. 2009 ). Municipalities (as service providers) were mandated to decide on the level of service and related allocations based upon their available resources and local circumstances ( DWAF 2008; Mjoli 2010 ). Municipalities focused on the supply of facilities based on either the availability of funds or the availability of the technology without considering site conditions, residents' socio-cultural preferences or sanitation practices and needs ( Lagardien & Muanda 2014 ). Through the FBSan policy, municipalities supplied sanitation facilities to various areas with the greatest need including informal settlements across South Africa. As a result, sanitation backlogs were reduced from 52% in 1994 to 21% in 2010 ( Mjoli et al. 2009; Mjoli 2010; DPME DWA & DHS 2012 ). To date, 76% of South African population living in urban and peri-urban areas has access to basic sanitation ( WHO & UNICEF 2019 ).
What are the two sections of the sanitation report?
Results are presented in two sections: (i) sanitation practices and their extent and (ii) factors informing sanitation practices and impact of residents' practices on the sanitation facilities and sustainability of the service.
What are the safety concerns of sanitation facilities?
Safety concerns (fear of being robbed, raped or even killed) emerge as the most common factor associated with the adoption of alternative and often undesirable, sanitation practices. The poor condition of the facility is being associated with users' fear of contamination. Taing (2015) and Garn et al. (2015) have found that the sustainable use of a sanitation facility is determined by its cleanliness. In our own study, the filthy conditions of many facilities deterred residents from using the facilities. As the WHO (2009) shows, unhygienic sanitation practices lead to disease. There is a vicious cycle as not using the facilities results in unhygienic practices which are being triggered by perceptions of users, in particular by the fear of contamination when accessing a filthy toilet. Safety and health concerns inform user practice most specifically in South Africa where there are high levels of poverty, unemployment and crime ( Stats SA 2019 ). While there were a large number of facilities in each of the settlements, many of these were dysfunctional and unusable. Where facilities are being used, there are particular problems that lead to the damaging of these facilities such as misuse, vandalism, lack of understanding, compliance, or disregard of use patterns or requirements.
What are the most used sanitation facilities in the world?
The most used facility was the communal flush toilet (37.9% n = 145), Kayaloo (20.0% n = 77), MobiSan (12.0% n = 46), porta-potties (3.4% n = 13) and other facilities including those within or outside the settlements (14.4% n = 55). Some respondents (12.3% n = 47) reported not using any of the facilities. In all these settlements, the use of existing facilities (either to dispose the bucket content or defecate) is combined with a variety of alternative practices including open defecation, use of plastic bags (commonly known as flying toilet), night pails, porta-potties ( Figure 1) and use of own self-made facilities such as pit latrines and flush toilets illegally connected to stormwater drains.
What is the recommended ratio for toilets per household?
The demand for sanitation facilities exceeded supply at peak times (5h00 and 9h00) as there were few facilities available to use. The recommended ratio for use is 1:5 toilets per household ( CoCT 2014 ), but this is not the case: