Raw sewage from 3,500 people in Sydney’s affluent eastern suburbs is discharged directly into the ocean. Will Turner/Unsplash
June 16, 2019 3.59pm EDT
Australians love our iconic coastal lifestyle. So many of our settlements are spread along our huge coastline. Real estate prices soar where we can catch a view of the water.
But where there are crowded communities, there is sewage. And along the coast it brings a suite of problems associated with managing waste, keeping the marine environment healthy, and keeping recreational swimmers safe.
Sewage is not a sexy topic. People often have an “out of sight, out of mind” attitude. But where does sewage go, and is it treated and disposed of in the waters that we Australians love?
The bigger the coastal community, the bigger the volume of sewage. Disposal of human waste into the ocean might solve one problem, but we now realise that the “waste” is as precious as the ocean it pollutes.
We should be treating and recycling sewage to a drinkable level.shutterstock
Understanding the problem from a national perspective
Such problems play out continuously along our coastline. Each isolated community and catchment issue arises and is resolved, often in ignorance of and isolation from similar issues somewhere else.
At present, places where sewage impacts are generating community concern include Merimbula, Warrnambool and, perhaps most bizarrely, Vaucluse and Diamond Bay in Sydney’s affluent eastern suburbs.
It’s hard to believe this location has raw and untreated sewage from 3,500 people discharged directly into the Tasman Sea. Sydney Water pledged in 2018 to fix this unsightly pollution by transferring the flow to the nearby Bondi sewage treatment plant.
Community group Clean Ocean Foundation has worked with the Marine Biodiversity Hub to start the process of viewing outfall pollution – where a drain or sewer empties into the sea – as part of a bigger picture. It’s a first step towards understanding from a national perspective.
Together they have produced the National Outfall Database to provide the first Australia-wide comparison.
The best and worst offenders
Previously the information available to the public was sketchy and often not easily accessed. The database shows how differently Australia manages coastal sewage with information on the outfalls.
Clean Ocean Foundation CEO John Gemmill said:
Water authorities in the main do a great job with severe funding constraints. But they can be reticent to divulge information publicly.
One authority, suspicious of the research project, initially refused to give the location of the outfall, claiming it would be vandalised by enraged “surfies and fishermen”.
Sydney has Australia’s biggest outfall. It provides primary treatment at Malabar, New South Wales, and serves about 1.7 million people. The outfall releases about 499 megalitres (ML) per day of treated sewage, called “effluent”.
That’s about eight Olympic-sized swimming pools of effluent an hour. It is discharged to the Pacific Ocean 3.6 kilometres from the shoreline at a depth of 82 metres.
The cleanest outfall (after sustained advocacy over decades from the Clean Ocean Foundation) is Boags Rock, in southern Melbourne. It releases tertiary-treated sewage with Class A+ water. This means the quality is very suitable for reuse and has no faecal bacteria detected (Enterococci or E.coli).
Recycling sewage
Treated sewage is 99% water. The last 1% is what determines if the water will harm human and environmental health. Are we wasting a precious resource by disposing of it in the ocean?
As desalination plants are cranking up in Sydney and Melbourne to extract pure water from salty ocean, why shouldn’t we also recycle sewage?
Clean Ocean Foundation has released a report showing it would pay to treat sewage more thoroughly and reuse it. This report finds upgrading coastal sewage outfalls to a higher level of treatment will provide tens of billions of dollars in benefits.
Industry analysis suggests that, for a cost outlay of between A$7.3 billion and A$10 billion, sewage treatment upgrades can deliver between A$12 billion and A$28 billion in net benefits – that is, the financial benefits above and beyond what it cost to put new infrastructure in place.
Then there are non-economic benefits such as improved ecological and human health, and improved recreational and tourism opportunities by use of suitable recycling processes.
What the rest of Australia can learn from WA
Clean Ocean Foundation president Peter Smith said Australia’s key decision-makers now, more than before, have a “golden opportunity” to adopt a sea change in water reform around coastal Australia based on good science and sound economic analysis.
In the context of the drought of southeast Australia, recycling water from ocean outfalls is an option that demands further debate.
As expensive desalination plants are switched on, Sydney proposes to double the size of its desalination plant – just a few kilometres from massive ocean outfalls that could provide so much recycled water. And to our shame, NSW ocean outfalls are among the lowest in standards of treatment.
Western Australia, on the other hand, leads the push to recycle wastewater as it continues to struggle with diminishing surface water from climate change.
In fact, in 2017 the Water Corporation announced massive investment in highly treated sewage being used to replenish groundwater supplies. Perth now sources 20% of its drinking water from groundwater, reducing its reliance on two desalination plants. A key factor was successful engagement with affected communities.
The discharge of poorly treated sewage to rivers, estuaries and oceans is a matter of national environmental significance and the Commonwealth should take a coordinating role.
Our oceans do not respect state boundaries. The time is ripe for a deliberate national approach to recycling sewage and improved systems to manage outfalls.
Oregon's most common litter includes cigarette butts, plastic bottles and caps, food wrappers, and plastic bags.
Jun-18-2019
(SALEM, Ore.) - On June 11th, the Oregon Senate passed the most comprehensive plastic bag ban in the U.S.
Starting on January 1, 2020, single-use plastic bags will be eliminated from local retail stores and restaurants, preventing billions of non-biodegradable plastic bags from entering landfills, waterways and the environment.
As the first state in the nation to successfully include restaurants in the legislation, Oregon is leading the way in reducing plastic pollution for the future.
Under Oregon’s Sustainable Shopping Initiative, HB 2509, a 5-cent fee will be added to paper bags in addition to the ban on single-use plastic bags in retail stores and restaurants.
This legislation built off of the 17 existing local ordinances – covering nearly 40% of Oregonians – already in place in Oregon to address plastic pollution and recycling contamination due to plastic bags.
Retailers can offer 40% post-consumer content recycled paper bags and reusable bags with a minimum 5-cent pass-through charge that offsets the cost of providing those alternative bags. Participants in food assistance programs are exempt from the pass-through charge.
Customers who bring their own reusable bags will also not pay any charge.
Smaller plastic bags like produce, deli and meat bags can still be provided in-store for protecting consumer health. Newspaper bags, dry cleaning bags, and bags sold in bulk for garbage lining and pet waste are exempt.
“With 17 separate city ordinances currently in place, we heard overwhelmingly that uniformity and predictability for businesses across this state was critical,” said the bill's chief sponsor Representative Janeen Sollman.
"We carried this policy forward to address the environmental and economic impacts as well. We brought together a variety of stakeholders, including Hillsboro Youth Advisory Council members, who developed a successful, collaborative policy in Hillsboro, one we can all be proud of.”
Single-use plastics are polluting our environment and harming wildlife in the ocean, in rivers, and on our surrounding lands. Plastic bags are one of the top items found on beach and highway cleanups in Oregon, and fewer than 8% of them get recycled.
“Oregon’s bill is the strongest statewide legislation in the nation for addressing all of the problems associated with plastic film bags,” said Charlie Plybon, Oregon Policy Manager with the Surfrider Foundation.
“Beyond eliminating plastic bags and reducing associated litter and pollution, the bill will further an Oregon ethos for shopping with reusable bags.”
Regulations in the bill will take effect on January 1, 2020. The bill will now go to the Governor’s office for Governor Kate Brown’s signature.
For more info about Surfrider’s efforts to reduce plastic pollution, visit oregon.surfrider.org.
Baroness Worthington is executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund and worked on the last Labour government’s Climate Change Act. Baroness Worthington is executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund and worked on the last Labour government’s Climate Change Act.
PARIS (Reuters Breakingviews) - Central bankers are professional worriers. So it’s hardly surprising that they are increasingly fretting about climate change. When it comes to changing behaviour, they can at best nudge rather than shove.
The boss of the Bank of France, François Villeroy de Galhau, warned last week that climate change was probably in the long run going to be a stagflationary shock – one that would dent economic output and lift prices. The Frenchman told asset manager Amundi’s annual investment forum in Paris how dry weather last year caused water levels to fall in the Rhine river, an important shipping route for commodities. That led to supply bottlenecks and production problems for German companies. The French central bank is part of a network of monetary authorities and financial regulators which is looking at how to better assess climate risks for financial institutions.
In terms of actively preventing climate change, however, policymakers have less scope to intervene. Stress-testing bank loans for the effects of a warmer planet would give lenders more incentive to focus on such exposure. Villeroy also suggested central banks might take climate risks into account when assessing the financial risks of collateral that lenders post to obtain liquidity. Both measures would, at the margin, lower the cost of borrowing for companies that emit less carbon.
However, Villeroy was wary of central banks prioritising purchases of green bonds – an idea that is sometimes dubbed “green quantitative easing”. Not only is the pool of such assets small, there are no uniform standards.
Taxes are a more effective way of changing the public and corporate behaviour that contributes to carbon emissions. In many countries, especially in Europe, fiscal policy did less than monetary policy to combat recession and deflation after the financial crisis a decade ago. It can play a bigger role in fighting climate change.
Trying to do too much could also see central banks venture too far from their core purpose of safeguarding price, economic and financial stability. That would jeopardise their independence, which is already under attack from politicians from the United States to India.
Central banks are perfectly capable of multitasking. And there’s little point sticking to a narrow inflation objective while ignoring a potential climate catastrophe. Even so, there are limits to how much policymakers can – or should – intervene.
After several high profile cases, the government has launched a campaign to bring the issue into the open As a child, Thao (name changed) was abused by her maths teacher in Vietnam for two years Zoe Osborne in Ho Chi Minh- It was morning at a Hanoi school when a teenage student stumbled into class. As she sat at her desk, blood began to pool under her chair; just that morning she had been sexually abused. When her teacher’s response was that she should sit on some tissues until the bleeding stopped, the young girl began to cry.
The incident, recounted by a Huynh Mai, a school psychologist, made headlines in Vietnam last month. Yet it was reflective of a culture of ignorance, indifference and stigma that has surrounded child sex abuse in the country for generations, according to teachers, victims and NGOs.
However, after several high-profile abuse cases, many involving the abuse of pupils by their teachers, the government has launched several initiatives to finally bring the issue out into the open.
The move has included the creation of an “Ending physical violence against children at home and in school” initiative by the ministry of education and introducing mandatory sexual assault-prevention classes for those in first grade, as well as textbooks teaching children how to deal with assault and what parts of their bodies are private.
Self-defence classes organised by She Will Be Strong social enterprise. Children as young as six have signed up Photograph: THANH NGUYEN/Thanh Nguyen
For victims such as Thao*, schools are crucial starting place for the campaign. She was 13 when her maths teacher began his two years of abuse. Due to the stigma and a damaging culture of secrecy, her abuser has never been named or taken to court. “He used to beat me up … I was so scared but I didn’t dare to tell my parents because he threatened me that he would kill me,” said Thao. “He manipulated me, he made me feel worse about myself.”
The abuse, first violent, became sexual when Thao was 14. Terrified, she eventually went to her mother but they chose not to report it. “We knew the police wouldn’t solve it and my mum didn’t want everyone to hurt me by judging me, saying mean things, spreading rumours,” she said.
It took her years to recover. “I had so many breakdowns that I couldn’t count, I hurt myself and it broke my parents’ hearts … I put up with it for 735 days, I suffered it for 735 days and it felt like 10 years.”
In Vietnam, the law on child sexual violence is ambiguous, making convictions difficult. Some forms of sexual violence aren’t even considered a criminal offence – sexual assault remains an administrative violation and the maximum fine is just $13.
In April, an ex-government official was fined just 200,000 VND ($10) for assaulting a minor in a Ho Chi Minh city apartment elevator. The incident caused nationwide uproar and residents of the apartment block started a petition calling for an amendment to the law, and while the people’s supreme court responded, they are still debating whether or not “touches to the neck and belly” can be classified as sexual harassment.
It is not just teachers being targeted by the government campaign. The police force are also being educated to recognise signs of sexual assault in both women an children that go beyond evidence of victims being “forced”, “tied up”, “beatings” and “torn clothing” to substantiate claims of rape or assault.
Vietnamese police recorded 1,547 child abuse cases in 2018 but due to the culture of secrecy around abuse, the real numbers are suspected to be much higher.
Rana Flowers, Unicef representative in Vietnam, said the figures were likely to be the “tip of the iceberg”.
She welcomed the government’s initiative but said much more needed to be done, especially in the realm of online abuse.
“The fast growth of the internet in Vietnam poses a new risk for children with cases of abuse and exploitation on the internet and social networks also increasing,” she said.
“Vietnam still lacks a strong legal framework to protect children from all forms of violence, especially sexual abuse. This also extends to the lack of care and support services for victims.”
The campaign for awareness is slowly seeping into society, with people beginning to speak out about child abuse, calling for more effective laws and enforcement, spreading awareness over social media and even designing a game to teach children about how to protect themselves. Children as young as six have signed up to charity-run self-defence classes in Ho Chi Minh.
Yet the focus remains mainly on how children can prevent themselves from assault, rather than on preventing the abuse to begin with.
Queenie* is among those who chose to keep her assault private out of fear of being dismissed. As a child she was assaulted twice – first by a family friend and then by her cousin’s boyfriend – but she was nervous that people would tell her “nothing bad happened so just stay away from him and move on”.
“Society has a lack of support for this problem. Everybody keeps quiet – shame and pain.” *Names have been changed to protect identities
Everyday drugs, like painkillers and contraceptives, cost a lot more in poorer countries
18 June 2019
African countries with small to medium-sized economies pay far more money for less effective drugs, a leading health expert has told BBC Newsday.
In countries such as Zambia, Senegal and Tunisia, everyday drugs like paracetamol can cost up to 30 times more than in the UK and USA.
Drug markets in poorer countries "just don't work", said Kalipso Chalkidou from the Centre for Global Development.
She said "competition is broken" due to a "concentrated supply chain".
Ms Chalkidou, director of global health policy at the organisation, co-authored a report on drug procurement that concluded that small to middling economy countries buy a smaller range of medicines, leading to weaker competition, regulation and quality.
It says richer countries, thanks to public money and strong processes for buying drugs, are able to procure cheaper medicines.
Poorer countries, however, tend to buy the most expensive medicines, rather than cheaper unbranded pharmaceuticals which make up 85% of the market in the UK and US.
The very poorest countries are not affected when foreign donors purchase medicine on their behalf, meaning their over-the-counter medicines remain at low cost.
"In the middle it's very problematic," Ms Chalkidou said.
Low- to middle-income countries "have little ability to negotiate prices down and quality assure products" and there are lots of mark-ups, often due to taxes and corruption.
She said less stringent regulation meant the quality of the drugs was also not as high.
"Without regulation, people perceive the products don't work, so pay extra money for things they think will work and won't work either," Ms Chalkidou explained.
The report recommends greater global co-operation and reforming World Health Organisation policy as well as policy in targeted countries to improve procurement practices.
The BBC recently uncovered evidence that life-saving drugs meant for the sick have been stolen and sold on illegally in Uganda
Household indebtedness is now a critical factor in disrupting social life. Furthermore, rising and unsustainable household indebtedness has also contributed to national economic crises, including the global economic crisis of 2008. The global crisis was triggered by financial instability linked to subprime mortgage lending in the US, particularly to low-income communities that drastically increased household debt and defaults. High levels of global household debt are linked to falling real incomes – wages adjusted for inflation and cost of living – and increasing lack of job security, characterised by precarious employment practices including contract work.
Furthermore, cuts to social welfare services, such as in healthcare and education, have led to higher social burdens, and thrown people into indebtedness. While high levels of global household debt are a consequence of Neoliberal policies over the last four decades, the Neoliberal project itself emerged with the dominance of finance capital—massive profits accrue to the financial sector with high financial and interest earnings. In Sri Lanka, as in many other developing countries, predatory lending including through microfinance schemes have led to tremendous levels of rural indebtedness. In the war-torn regions of Sri Lanka in particular, these loan sharks called microfinance companies have targeted women, leading to tremendous hardship. Debt collectors, who are in effect thugs are abusive towards rural women, and the devastating debt trap has led to a number of suicides by debtors. In this column, I address some of the recent initiatives that are relieving the rural indebtedness situation and point to some emerging alternatives for sustainable rural credit and livelihoods by the northern co-operative movement.
Devastating microfinance
Microfinance programs initiated in the 1990s by well-meaning NGOs providing low-interest credit to women was a flawed concept, to begin with as rural economies and livelihoods cannot be built on credit alone. Rather than the State providing the necessary social welfare services and investment in the rural sectors to expand livelihoods and employment, Neoliberal policies seek to address the rural economic crisis through microfinance schemes. Hence the State was relieved of its responsibilities to its economically deprived citizenry, and the do-gooder NGOs were called to step in with their meagre targeted programs. This approach was masked for some time by a global Neoliberal campaign promoting microfinance and self-employment as the solution for rural women. The Nobel Prize for Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh was part of that campaign, but the recent struggles and the movement against microfinance in Bangladesh itself reflects the failure of the microfinance model.
"Household indebtedness is now a critical factor in disrupting social life"
In the war-torn regions of Sri Lanka, microfinance schemes for rural women initiated by NGOs eventually became a broad profit-making strategy of ruthless finance companies over the last six years. During the early years after the war, the war-torn people lost much of their assets, including their emergency asset in the form of gold jewellery through pawning as livelihood problems mounted without a viable reconstruction strategy by the state. With banks refusing to lend, the number of finance companies providing credit without collateral mushroomed. These microfinance companies, many of them registered under the Central Bank and a whole range of other companies merely registered under the Companies Act, provided microfinance loans for weekly and even daily instalment payments, with effective annual interest rates ranging from 40% to 220%. The proliferation of such predatory loan schemes created a debt trap, where rural women had to take one loan or borrow from informal sources to pay previous loans. While such predatory lending by microfinance schemes was prevalent in all parts of the country, the war-torn communities were particularly vulnerable as their rural livelihoods had not been rebuilt and women traumatised by the war took desperate steps to make loan payments when intimidated and abused by debt collectors.
As the indebtedness crisis mounted – characterised by families being torn apart, women going into hiding and even suicides – women’s groups in the North and the East took the lead in the fight against this social menace. They demanded that government officials intervene and spoke out in the media and other forums about the horrendous practices of microfinance companies. As national attention focused on the struggles of these women, the culture of blaming the victims propagated by the finance companies, NGOs and many economists – claiming it is luxurious consumption and lack of financial literacy that led to this crisis – began to crumble. The exorbitant interest rates, the mounting and unsustainable levels of rural debt, and the cases of abuse documented by the District Secretariats clearly pointed to the flaw in the microfinance model and the culpability of the exploitative finance companies.
Official turn
With the continuing struggles, research and campaigns by women’s groups and activists, the break came in 2017 when the Central Bank finally took notice of the indebtedness crisis. During the latter half of 2017, the Central Bank Governor and former President Chandrika Kumaratunga travelled to the North and consulted various actors including women’s groups, local officials and the co-operatives. The President and the Finance Minister expressed their deep concern, and further fact-finding visits to the North and the East by political leaders and senior officials took place.
"Predatory lending have led to tremendous levels of rural indebtedness"
In 2018, massive protests by the co-operative movement in Jaffna and women’s groups in the Vanni Districts and Batticaloa District, coupled with the political leadership of the country openly advocating against the rural onslaught of microfinance, led to a national consensus on the need for a solution. A multi-pronged initiative by the Finance Ministry consisting of relief measures and broad advocacy against predatory lending was undertaken. The Prime Minister and Finance Minister announced a one-time write off of microfinance loans of up to Rs. 100,000 by women who had defaulted on three payments by June 2018 in the twelve drought-affected districts; 45,000 women were to be given relief with an allocation of Rs. 1.4 billion. The Central Bank announced an interest rate cap on microfinance of 35%, which is now flushing out many of the unscrupulous lenders. In the North, credit co-operatives placed their funds along with a government grant of Rs. 500 million towards a broad rural credit scheme of reaching distressed households to keep them away from predatory lenders. A rapid assessment in recent weeks by co-operative researchers in the North is now pointing to a significant improvement in the situation of rural credit. Most district officials who found the indebtedness problem to be the most significant challenge have much fewer complaints of abusive lending practices. Rural women are avoiding microfinance companies where possible and are increasingly conscious of their high-interest rates. Microfinance companies themselves are withdrawing due to the implementation of the interest rate cap. Finally, the new co-operative credit scheme during its first nine months itself has reached 8% of the households in the Northern Province and is likely to reach 25% to 30% of the households over the next year.
Co-operative alternatives
In the North, the slow and promising shift in the indebtedness situation is a glimmer of hope for the people who have suffered from a decade of crippling economic life after the war. Indeed, the struggles of the people, the commitment of the co-operative movement and the political will on the part of the national leadership, in this case, are reflective of the possibilities for addressing national problems. Even though this shift may be tentative and the post-war economic situation in the North remains precarious, I register this shift and the contribution of various actors because I believe it is important to recognise every small victory and build on such successes. However, the continuation of this positive change depends on the commitment of the various actors within the State and society.
The work over the last two years to address rural indebtedness has put forward the possibility of a promising alternative in the form of a revived co-operative movement in the North. The credit co-operatives have reached tens of thousands of new members and provided over 19,000 small loans of Rs. 20,000 each at the interest rate of 14%, with excellent recovery rates on the range of 98%. This year the co-operative movement will be providing Rs. 50,000 loans; the amount needed to cultivate an acre of paddy, or grow a quarter acre of vegetables or purchase fishing nets for a season. However, indebtedness cannot be solved by credit alone and requires investment to expand livelihoods and increase incomes, and much of the success of credit co-operatives will depend on a broader strategy of investment to increase rural production. I would like to end by drawing from a recent visit to the Madhu region in Mannar District.
"High levels of global household debt are a consequence of Neoliberal policies"
While many of us have heard of the famous Madhu Church drawing massive crowds of pilgrims, the other side of the Madhu region is its isolated villages, war-time devastation and lack of economic opportunities. There is not even one small industry, it has only one State bank branch, it is educationally lagging and is characterised by crippling poverty. In the Madhu Divisional Secretariat of the close to 4,000 households, over twelve percent of the population have got loans over the last nine months from the two Co-operative Rural Bank branches and few village level Thrift and Credit Co-operative Societies. The Multi-Purpose Co-operative Society (MPCS) in Madhu is about to initiate the first small industry for fruit processing of juices and jams, built with a Rs. 14 million grant as part of the Finance Ministry’s Fifty Co-operative Industries Scheme in the Northern Province.
This small factory is expected to create demand and purchase the abundantly available fruits in the Madhu region. With plans underway to build a third co-operative rural bank branch, the co-operatives are hoping to provide credit for example to farmers who produce gingelly (Sesame). Such gingelly can be sold to another MPCS about to produce gingelly oil in a co-operative factory in the Manthai region of Mannar District. As with these small initiatives in Madhu, the advantage of the co-operative movement is that they are present in isolated regions where private actors are unwilling to invest and even State institutions are marginal. Furthermore, any accumulation by the co-operatives will remains with the local communities and will be reinvested in the region, as opposed to being siphoned off by external investors. Even though the Tamil political leadership and the Tamil elite have paid little attention to the indebtedness crisis and for that matter, the emerging initiatives by the co-operative movement, the rural communities in the North are turning to the co-operatives for relief from indebtedness and economic rejuvenation. Are you ready to bet on such co-operative alternatives?
As a child, Thao (name changed) was abused by her maths teacher in Vietnam for two years
Self-defence classes organised by She Will Be Strong social enterprise. Children as young as six have signed up Photograph: THANH NGUYEN/Thanh Nguyen
