Search

Access to sanitation has become an important element for improving the health of populations in developing countries. In Burkina Faso, 12% of the population in rural areas has access to latrine and 65% practice open defecation (OD). In a bid to eliminate this unsanitary practice and enhance sanitation access in rural areas, the government embraced community-led total sanitation (CLTS) as a national strategy in 2014. However, more than 6 years later, a notable observation is the high abandonment rate, with only a small fraction of rural communities successfully eradicating OD. Out of the 8892 villages in the country, 3546 underwent a CLTS triggering from 2014 to 2020. Nevertheless, in 787 of these villages, the implementation of the CLTS approach was abandoned, indicating a substantial abandonment rate of 22.19%. Until now, most studies on CLTS have focused on the post-ODF phase, emphasizing the question of the sustainability of the results generated by the approach, as if the process from triggering to obtaining ODF certification was not subject to any problems. However, cases of abandonment of the CLTS process after triggering do exist, although poorly documented in the literature, and there are no studies that clearly assign responsibilities to the actors when CLTS implementation comes to be abandoned. This research aims to bridge these gaps by identifying the root causes of these abandonment cases while delineating the distinct responsibilities associated with these instances. To achieve this, the study was conducted in the Central-Western region of Burkina Faso, where all stakeholders involved in CLTS implementation, including target communities, were identified, their different roles in the process defined, and data collected through household surveys, interviews, and focus groups. The content analysis method was used to analyze the data. The research findings indicate that the abandonment of the CLTS implementation process is due to four categories of factors: sociocultural and economic aspects (39.78%), physical conditions (17.52%), governance aspects (26.28%), and the quality of approach implementation (16.42%). Moreover, these factors highlight a shared accountability for abandonment involving the government, implementing organizations, and target communities. These findings have significant implications for the future design of sanitation programs using the CLTS approach. To mitigate abandonment rates in the CLTS implementation process across rural communities, it is imperative for policymakers to attentively consider these factors and integrate the recommendations delineated in this study., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The Swachh Bharat Mission undertaken by the Government of India (GoI) has been successful in accomplishing this objective within a short period thereby catalyzing governance following Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is the responsibility of any democratic nation to ensure that its citizens have universal access to adequate and equitable sanitation. The key approach adapted to igniting a change in sanitation behavior rather than constructing toilets. An effort has been made in the study to affirm that even the marginalized sections of the society residing in tribal communities of West Bengal and Chhattisgarh have benefitted from this Government of India Mission and derived the required benefits. There is enough literature available to support the justification that civil participation holds the key for successful implementation of CLTS thereby making the communities open defecation free (ODF). It is therefore imperative to understand the behavioral transformation that takes place during the CLTS implementation. A hybrid model has been proposed in the study making use of the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and theory of planned behavior (TPB) to understand the pre-adoption and post-adoption behavior of residents. In present study, used model was empirically tested for several hypotheses. The finding reflects towards subjective norms and facilitating conditions as major determinants that ensure the continuation of intention for CLTS. They play a pivotal role in improving the health and hygiene conditions in the region and thus decrease the risk of spread of epidemic diseases., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The ecology and environment of the Yellow River Basin is threatened by fluoride and nitrate contamination induced by anthropogenic activity and geogenic factors. As a result, deciphering the spatio-temporal variability of fluoride and nitrate contamination in this area remains a challenge. Three hundred eighty-six samples of surface water and groundwater from the Inner Mongolia Reaches of the Yellow River Basin were taken for this investigation. According to the results of the multivariate statistical and geostatistical analyses, the fluoride pollution was primarily discovered in the middle and lower reaches of the study area and was determined to be more severe during the dry season. In contrast, nitrate contamination was found to be more severe during the wet season while being widely distributed in groundwater and concentrated in areas with intensive agricultural activities. The primary mechanisms governing the spatial-seasonal patterns of NO 3 - and F - pollution were shown by the principal component analysis, isotopic, and hydrochemical diagrams. The water-rock interaction or evaporation was crucial in the enrichment of F - . The human inputs (e.g., fertilizer or sewage) dominated fluoride and nitrate contamination. Additionally, the alkaline environment played a role in the generation of NO 3 - and F - . The health risk assessment concluded that the threat of fluoride contamination was greater than that of nitrate contamination. Children faced the greatest health risks, followed by females and males. These findings would serve as a guide for water management and pollution control in the Yellow River Basin., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

This study attempts to examine how urban agglomerations establish sustainable environmental collaborative governance. To achieve this goal, the qualitative comparative analysis method is used to explore the conditions and models for urban agglomerations to establish environmental collaborative governance, with 12 urban agglomerations approved by the Chinese authorities as examples. Based on the collaborative governance framework, this paper proposes six starting conditions that affect the establishment of urban agglomeration collaboration: vertical intervention, horizontal cooperation, leadership attention, governance capacity, initial pollution, and economic governance. The interaction of these conditions was tested in the practice of environmental cooperation in urban agglomerations. The results show that horizontal cooperation, leadership attention, and economic governance are necessary conditions for the establishment of urban agglomeration cooperation. The authority-driven mode, capability-driven mode, and pressure-driven mode can promote cooperation. Vertical intervention, governance capacity, and initial pollution constitute the external and internal driving forces of urban agglomeration cooperation. These findings supplement the literature on urban agglomeration collaboration and provide policy makers with insight into sustainable urban agglomeration collaborative environmental governance., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

A minimum of basic water supply service is pertinent to improving living standards and water-dependent quality of life indices. In Nigeria, 14% have access to safely managed drinking water services, though approximately 30% of water pumps and schemes are likely to fail within 12 months of construction. This study aims to determine household water security and its predictors in Osun State, Nigeria. The cross-sectional study recruited 548 households through a five-stage sampling technique and used a semi-structured questionnaire for data collection. Results were presented by descriptive and inferential statistics, while binary logistic regression identified water-security predictors at P ά 0.05. Hand-dug wells (27.7%) and motorized boreholes (21.2%) were the predominant household drinking water sources. A total of 43.7% of households were water-secured while 35.2% of water sources were within residential settlements. A total of 25.1% of households experienced water scarcity, and 27.2% of households treat drinking water mainly by chlorination (56.7%) and boiling (14.7%). A total of 21.2%, 64.2%, and 9% of households, respectively, have safely managed basic and limited water supply services. Drinking water sources were associated with house ownership (p = 0.001) and residence period (p = 0.025) while water treatment was associated with gender (p = 0.010) and wealth (p = 0.0001). Age (p = 0.002) and wealth (p = 0.0001) are predictors of household water security. Two-fifths of households were water-secured, highlighting the dearth of potable water supply services and the need to incorporate strategic predictors of household water security in the existing national and state-level water resources regulations., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)

An inimitable adsorbent "FI-TM-BWCC," emanated from meta-phase-selective thermochemical modulation of excavation-squander (mine waste)-derived terra-firma (blackish white china clay, i.e., BWCC), is explored in the present work for fluoride (F - ) adsorption purpose. FI-TM-BWCC portrayed an excellent adsorption efficiency (95% removal capacity and Q e : 99 mg/g, at initial adsorbate dose: 10 mg/L, pH: 7±0.5, adsorbent dosage: ~600 mg, exposure time: 60 min). At identical experimental conditions, the F - scavenging phenomenon was superior than two analogous adsorbents: (i) biopolymer chitosan and glutaraldehyde cross-linked BWCC (CG@BWCC, wherein F - removal efficiency: 74%) and (ii) meta-phase-selective thermally moduled BWCC (TM-BWCC, removal efficiency: 75%). BWCC predominantly comprises kaolinite and a trace amount of anatase along with prime elemental compositions: 41.71% Al 2 O 3 , 49.80 % SiO 2 , 4.25% Fe 2 O 3 , and 3.93% TiO 2 , as revealed by PXRD and XRF analyses. The thermochemical modulation pathway significantly escalated the BET surface area of BWCC (~11.92 m 2 /g, avg. pore radius: 23.64 Å, i.e., mesoporous in nature) to FI-TM-BWCC (216.95 m 2 /g, avg. pore radius: 31.41 Å). The fluoride-adsorbed F - •••FI-TM-BWCC species revealed a reduced surface area of 21.5 m 2 /g, which was explained in the light of ion exchange pathway on FI-TM-BWCC's non-uniform surface (surface roughness/S A of 1597 nm, reduced to 1179 nm after F - uptake). The spontaneous F - •••FI-TM-BWCC interaction (ΔG 0 = -6.25 kJ) occurred following chemisorption-controlled ion exchange (CCIE) pathway as appearance of a F1s band at 685.5 eV was rationalized for Si-F bond formation; corroborating pseudo second-order (PSO) kinetics and resembling Freundlich isotherm. The usefulness of FI-TM-BWCC was diversified through field validation with natural groundwater specimens and proposition of a gravity-fed defluoridation unit. The flow rate was documented to be ~11 liters per hour (LPH) by implementing viscous turbulence fluent model. The experimental findings certainly followed the premise conventions of sustainability metrics upholding socio-economic equipoise., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Simultaneous management of chemical and biological contaminants in drinking water has been presented through modification in conventional electrocoagulation (EC) process. Traditional EC process using iron and aluminum electrodes removed metals but did not affect microbiological contaminants to a greater extent. Iron anode composition was amended by addition of zinc for desired antimicrobial output. To evaluate the efficiency of this system, samples were spiked with multiple element standard and microbial cultures to human unsafe contamination level. Modified EC process removed both types of contaminants making water safe for human consumption within the prescribed regulatory guidelines set by WHO/NSDWQ within 4 min. This setup removed chemical contaminants up to 100% including nitrates, fluoride, arsenic, beryllium, chromium, copper, mercury, vanadium, zinc, nickel, phosphorus, and lead. A substantial removal in cadmium (89.8%), cobalt (75.7%), and selenium (46.7%) was computed. The treatment could not prove good results for removal of boron, barium, lithium, and strontium from the spiked sample. The compositional analysis of flocs screened after spiked sample treatment confirmed the physical adsorption of metals at floc surface. Treatment technique comprehensively proved equally efficient for disinfection of most common microbiological contaminations including E. Coli, fecal coliforms, total coliforms, total plate count, Staphylococcus auseous, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa within 5 min. In EC process 220V voltage was applied through rectifier at electrodes having 15.6 cm 2 surface area and 15 mm apart in 1-L water sample batches, where current varied from 0.8 to 1.6 ampere. The outcomes of the current experiment are of novel significance regarding simultaneous removal of metals and microbiological contaminants from drinking water which is not reported in previous treatment studies., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Rivers in Malaysia are classified based on water quality index (WQI) that comprises of six parameters, namely, ammoniacal nitrogen (AN), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), dissolved oxygen (DO), pH, and suspended solids (SS). Due to its tropical climate, the impact of seasonal monsoons on river quality is significant, with the increased occurrence of extreme precipitation events; however, there has been little discussion on the application of artificial intelligence models for monsoonal river classification. In light of these, this study had applied artificial neural network (ANN) and support vector machine (SVM) models for monsoonal (dry and wet seasons) river classification using three of the water quality parameters to minimise the cost of river monitoring and associated errors in WQI computation. A structured trial-and-error approach was applied on input parameter selection and hyperparameter optimisation for both models. Accuracy, sensitivity, and precision were selected as the performance criteria. For dry season, BOD-DO-pH was selected as the optimum input combination by both ANN and SVM models, with testing accuracy of 88.7% and 82.1%, respectively. As for wet season, the optimum input combinations of ANN and SVM models were BOD-pH-SS and BOD-DO-pH with testing accuracy of 89.5% and 88.0%, respectively. As a result, both optimised ANN and SVM models have proven their prediction capacities for river classification, which may be deployed as effective and reliable tools in tropical regions. Notably, better learning and higher capacity of the ANN model for dataset characteristics extraction generated better predictability and generalisability than SVM model under imbalanced dataset.

Drinking water is of paramount importance for people's health. Many outbreaks due to poor water quality are being recorded even nowadays. Although the institutional framework exists at global (e.g., WHO guidelines) and national level, there are still many factors contributing to water contamination. Risk assessment tools, such as HACCP and Water Safety Plans, are being elaborated all over the world to act proactively referring to drinking water quality. The present paper aims at reviewing the implementation status of risk assessment tools around the world and presenting the benefits and the difficulties recorded during the implementation process. The benefits include improved water quality, improved operational efficiency, reduced consumers' complaints, reduced production cost, and reduced potential hazardous incidents. Studying the difficulties, the identification of critical success factors for the implementation of such tools is feasible. Some of the critical success factors include the financial and human resources, staff training, effective identification of critical control points, correct estimation of the occurrence and the severity of the hazards, effective coordination, and efficient monitoring.