Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene May-June 2016 Vol. 11 No.3 | Page 12

NEWS in brief

Global Highlights

use of nature. In 2016 and 2017, the German Commission
for UNESCO and Volvic will again promote projects to
secure water resources in biosphere reserves.
‘By 2050, the demand for water from agriculture,
households and industry will increase by over 50 per cent
worldwide. Already many places are suffering from water
shortages. One of the biggest challenges in the coming
decades is to protect this valuable resource, because
without water there is no life. UNESCO biosphere
reserves in Germany are a model for sustainable water use
and long-term conservation of this resource. Thanks to
the support of Volvic we can support UNESCO biosphere
reserves in their work until 2017’, says Dr Lutz Möller,
Deputy Secretary-General of the German Commission for
UNESCO.
Corinna Ortner, Managing Director of Danone Waters
Germany, adds: ‘Our goal is to combine economic growth,
social development and sustainability. We not only protect
our mineral resources and the catchment area in the place
of origin, but we also want to make a contribution to water
protection throughout the country.’
The German Commission for UNESCO and Volvic have
promoted water protection projects in German Biosphere
Reserves since 2008. Eighteen projects have been already
supported.
There are currently 15 UNESCO biosphere reserves in
Germany which promote sustainable living of humans
and nature. Worldwide, 669 UNESCO biosphere reserves
operate together in 120 countries.

© Flusslandschaft Elbe BR

The meeting on 21 March 2016 gathered the authoring
team on Sanitation Technologies to help completing
the chapter on this subject. It also collected preliminary
feedback from the GWPP user community (i.e. identified
water specialists outside the GWPP authorship) who
shall benefit from the resource. The workshop enabled
UNESCO-IHP and MSU to obtain additional data
required for GWPP, the help needed for interpreting the
data, and to identify the most user-friendly means of
presenting information and interacting with the resource.
Source: Big News Network
Stunning Mural In Cairo’s ‘Garbage City’ Stretches
Across 50 Buildings
In Egypt’s Garbage City, global street artist eL Seed is honoring the
people who help keep Cairo clean

Sanitation Technology Experts gather in Leeds to
Address Water-related Diseases
UNESCO’s International Hydrological Programme (IHP)
and Michigan State University (MSU) brought together
more than twenty sanitation technology experts on 21
March 2016 at the School of Civil Engineering of the
University of Leeds, United Kingdom, to address the risk
factors constituted by water pathogens.
Two events took place as part of the Global Water
Pathogen Project (GWPP): a meeting of experts and a user
requirement workshop. GWPP prepares a substantially
updated successor to the current benchmark reference
book on water-related disease risks and intervention
measures, ‘Sanitation and Disease Health Aspects of
Excreta and Wastewater Management‘ by Richard G.
Feachem, David J. Bradley, Hemda Garelick and D.
Duncan Mara (1983), and develops an innovative online
platform serving as a knowledge resource for sustainable
access to safe water and sanitation. Implemented by
UNESCO in partnership with MSU, GWPP consists of
a network of 113 authors and editors from 41 countries,
close to half of them women.
10

Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene • May - June 2016

Nestled in Cairo’s Manshiyat Naser neighborhood sits
Garbage City, the crassly nicknamed settlement which
houses the Coptic community known as the Zabaleen.
For decades, the Zabaleen have worked as unofficial
sanitation experts, privately traveling door to door to
collect the capital’s trash, return to their homes to sort
through it and identify the salvaged materials that could
be sold to factories and wholesalers. Most organic waste
would be fed to the community’s pigs.
Informally, the Zabaleen developed one of the most