Towards Brown Gold | University of Bedfordshire

Researchers

Professor Andrew Church - Pro-Vice Chancellor, Research & Innovation Service (University of Bedfordshire)
Dr Hannah Macpherson - Senior Research Fellow (University of Bedfordshire)

"Towards Brown Gold" is funded by UKRI's Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Programme. It is a multidisciplinary research project focusing on marginality, sanitation and wastewater challenges in five growing towns in Ethiopia, Ghana, India and Nepal. The University of Bedfordshire's Professor Andrew Church (previously Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor, Research & Enterprise at the University of Brighton) and Dr Hannah Macpherson (Senior Research Fellow) are working with the University of Brighton, the Institute of Development Studies Sussex and international partners to contribute to the programme.

The World Health Organisation and UNICEF estimate that 3.6 billion people live without access to safe sanitation facilities. However, 'Flush and forget' systems are an unrealistic solution for many in the Global South who live in rapidly urbanizing 'off grid' towns. Therefore, we are examining how local communities experience and live with these sanitation challenges as well as the kinds of social, cultural and technical processes needed to advance understandings of positive sanitation and re-frame 'shit' — a harmful, polluting waste product — as 'brown gold'.

In Nepal we have been co-producing a research, arts, performance and creative education programme with International Development Service Nepal, Lumbini Development Trust and the British Council. Our case study area in Gulariya (Lumbini Province) was declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) in 2015 and 95% of households use toilets. However, most sanitation systems in Gulariya have unsealed containment and present a high risk of groundwater contamination (where almost all people rely on groundwater for domestic and other purposes). Furthermore, in the Gulariya sanitation service chain, 80% still empty manually, especially in rural communities either by themselves or by a private emptier. These are unhygienic practices of emptying, transportation, and disposal of faecal sludge that pose a high risk to public health.

In response to these findings and to further the ambitions of the Brown Gold programme we have developed a sanitation education facility at Lumbini peace park, located near the World Peace Pagoda, Nepal. The mud houses have been designed and built with local people and materials (bamboo, thatch, cow dung, and mud). The outside of the houses use a traditional method of relief decoration to highlight contemporary issues of sanitation - this includes pictures of the process of proper faecal sludge management and the problems that result if non-sealed pit toilet faeces mix with drinking water. Inside the houses scientific research findings are shared to demonstrate the problems of poorly managed sanitation.

The mud houses are staffed for visitors and a cup decorating activity captures visitor responses to the installation. Programme partners are also co-producing an education and humanure planting programme at the mud houses with schools, community and women's groups. Senior leaders in the Municipality are to be invited to be involved in our calls for fully functioning sewage treatment plants in the province, breaking stigma around shit and mobilising its potential value for re-use products such as agricultural fertiliser, animal feed, biomass and biogas fuels. A performance was co-produced with 12 sanitation workers to draw attention to these sanitation issues and our festival stall, for the Women of the World Festival at the park in April 2022 (pictured here).

The safe re-use of human excreta and wastewater that unlocks its potential as a resource