CASE STUDY 6

Brazilian Case Study

Salvador is the fifth largest Brazilian city (~2.5 million inhabitants). Large portions of the population live in poor urban communities lacking urban infrastructure/services (sanitation, trash collection, pavement, urban planning), presenting chronic issues of overcrowding, pests (e.g.: mosquitoes, rats), and environmental risk such as flooding-prone open sewer canals. The study areas are undergoing the implementation of simplified closed sewer systems (condominial sewer, an innovative method linking multiple households to integrated branches of sewage piping), a process happening with deliberative and executive participation of the residents of the intervened regions. Our case study aims to describe the effects of sewer systems in reducing impact on biodiversity loss and pathogen circulation risk in the animal-human-environment interface.

RESTORATION &

INTERVENTION MEASURES

Nature restoration

Improving green infrastructure

Rewilding

hawk

owl

opossum

Public health interventions

Yes

ENVIRONMENTAL

SAMPLES

Reservoirs

rat

Vectors

mosquito

tick

Environment

water

soil/sediment

HUMAN

DIMENSION

Case Study Activities

The low-income communities in Salvador suffer from chronic health and environmental issues due to the lack of sanitation, with sewage being released directly into small

streams at the lower part of the communities. a simplified branched sewage system is being installed in selected areas of the city by the municipality in order to reduce contamination and water flow. The aim of the study is to understand the effects of this sanitary intervention on a native synanthropized fauna including small mammals, aquatic invertebrates, mosquitoes, the circulation of zoonotic pathogens on a complex reservoir system (soil and water, mammal hosts), and, ultimately, its impacts on human disease risk.

Field Gallery

Case Study Area

Salvador is the fifth largest Brazilian city, with over 2.5 million inhabitants. As part of the accelerated and disorganised urbanization propelled by large rural exodus and economic inequality, informal settlements (»slums«) form, outside of the coverage of the infrastructure and services of the »formal« city. Such conditions represent an ecological and public health challenge.
[June, 2023]

Field Work

The Intervention our CSA studies is the implementation of an adapted sewer system in the informal settlements of Salvador, focused on linking the households – previously discharging their domestic sewer into the natural waterways that cross the communities – to the formal sewer system that allows for water treatment, but also fits into the disorganized growth of the informal settlements
[January,2024]

Stakeholder Activities

Our community engagement team develops several activities with the communities' youth, mothers and residents, to better understand the social determinants of health, adhesion to the interventions and promote transformative change through common mobilization. Activites include service provision (e.g.: health fairs), cultural and ludic event (see picture), and community meetings to discuss issues relevant to the community's wellbeing.
[November,2023]