Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

The study concentrating on the cleansing services by Nature, was published in the journal ‘One Earth’.

It estimates that more than 2 million cubic meters of the cities’ human waste is processed each year without engineered infrastructure i.e. processed and cleaned by the Nature including filters through the soil—a natural process that cleans it before it reaches groundwater.

Soils are vital for producing nutritious crops and they filter tens of thousands of cubic kilometres of water each year rendering benefits to the needy.

Undoubtedly To walk in Nature is to witness a thousand miracles.

While more than 25% of the world’s population have no access to basic sanitation facilities in 2017 and another 14% used toilets in which waste was disposed of onsite, it is exhilarating to know that Nature provides at least 18% of sanitation services in 48 cities worldwide, according to researchers in the United Kingdom and India.

This approximately covers about 82 million people in the area.

A classic example of cleaning services:
Uganda’s Navikubo wetland provides sanitisation services to more than 100,000 households, protecting the Murchison Bay and Lake Victoria from harmful contaminants. United States’ coastal wetlands in the Gulf of Mexico remove nitrogen from the Mississippi River.

Till now the role for nature was largely unrecognised.

The study was a collaborative work by from Bangor University, Cranfield University, Durham University, University of Gloucestershire, University of Hyderabad (India) and the Fresh Water Action Network, South Asia.

The team illustrated the findings through Excreta flow diagrams, driven by a combination of in-person interviews, informal and formal observations, and direct field measurements to document how human fecal matter flows through a city or town.

Wastewater treatment infrastructure serves as an important promoter of human health by converting human feces into harmless products.

Upon estimation, it came to light that nature sanitizes about 41.7 million tons of human waste per year before the liquid enters the groundwater—a service that is worth nearly $4.4 billion per year (excluding the other forms of wastewater processing).

“We would like to promote a better collaboration between ecologists, sanitation practitioners and city planners to help nature and infrastructure work better in harmony, and to protect nature where it is providing sanitation services,” said one of the proponents of the study.

  1. On similar lines of the above study, there may be many more unexplored and untethered services that Nature may be providing through million years.

Ever wonder how the Earth balances itself without losing the cool, amidst the dangers and harms inflicted on it by Humans.

A previous study suggested the role of wetlands and other transition ecosystems, even the grasslands and wastelands have recorded their own significance.

Wetlands are areas with presence of water that inherently determines or influences most, if not all, of an area’s biogeochemistry—that is, the biological, physical, and chemical characteristics of a particular site including the biodiversity it harbours.

They have countless benefits with limited liabilities:

  • Pollution filter
  • Flood control
  • Defence against disaster like tsunamis
  • Storm and wind buffer
  • Huge Carbon sink
  • Tourism promoting and fertile land that gets loaded with minerals deposited by the incoming rivers.

These researches can help us rever these valuable resources and protect them from indiscriminate use.

We cannot afford to take these gifts for granted when we know that we are vulnerable beings. All that protects our souls is the very cradle we burn each time.

References: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/mec.14414

By Alaina Ali Beg

I am a lover of all arts and therefore can dream myself in all places where the World takes me. I am an avid animal lover and firmly believes that Nature is the true sorcerer.