Development Aspects Impressum Editors

Keywords:

Capacity development Safe wastewater
Web-based Learning Green Economy Knowledge sharing

1. Introduction

The water and agriculture sectors will increasingly be subject to externally driven and man-made changes, yet societies will at the same time expect more reliable services, safe food and less risk. Our understanding of such changes, social phe- nomena, impacts and mitigation measures has gaps and, therefore, knowledge and capacity development should be a top priority on the local, regional and in- ternational agendas.

The gap between water supply and demand is increasing dramatically in some parts of the world. Wastewater is considered a valuable source of irrigation water for farmers in such regions, particularly in urban and peri-urban areas, where large volumes of wastewater are being produced. Urban wastewater can originate from domestic dwellings, institutions, hospitals and industrial effluents. Using (urban) wastewater for irrigation can be considered as both a resource and a risk. On the one hand, wastewater use in irrigation is an effective way of recycling urban wastewater especially as it contains nutrients important for agricultural produc- tion. On the other hand, using wastewater without adequate treatment is associ- ated with significant health risks.
Wastewater is used in different forms for irrigation purposes. It is used directly from a sewage outlet as untreated urban wastewater or in diluted form by mixing untreated urban wastewater with clean irrigation water. Treated urban wastewater can also be used directly (Raschid-Sally and Jayakody, 2008). It has to be men- tioned that more than 80 per cent of wastewater and faecal sludge generated globally is indiscriminately discharged without treatment (Bos and others, 2004). The total number of farmers irrigating worldwide with treated, partially treated and untreated wastewater is estimated at 200 million, farming on at least 20 Mha (Raschid-Sally and Jayakody, 2008).
Wastewater use in agriculture is getting the attention of the international com- munity as an important issue for the global Green Economy. This can be noticed from the message of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB, 2011) to the United Nations Conference on Sus- tainable Development (Rio+20). UNSGAB believes that the global community must make progress on wastewater management and strengthen the respective actions on pollution of freshwater by adopting a shared vision of urban, industrial and agri- cultural wastewater management including collection, treatment and water reuse.
This chapter introduces the concept of a global initiative on capacity develop- ment for safe wastewater use in agriculture. The chapter illustrates the different impacts of the use of wastewater in agriculture. It also outlines the method fol- lowed to carry out a capacity needs assessment in different countries and presents several channels for building the capacities of targeted individuals and organiza- tions.

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