Eight years ago air pollution in China was the curse of the Olympics. Beijing had to spend tens of millions of dollars closing factories, banning cars and trying to engineer the weather. Air pollution was thrust on to the world stage and has stayed there ever since.
Now it’s Rio’s turn to host the Games and attention has turned to water and basic sanitation. Parts of Guanabara Bay, which will host aquatic events, are teeming with dangerous viruses and bacteria, threatening the athletes as well as the 350,000 spectators who may want a dip in the sea.
Rio has the image of a rich, beautiful city, but its crowded hospitals testify to the nightmare of its sanitation for people who must live with urban pollution every day. One in three of the more than 10 million inhabitants of the greater metropolitan area live in places that have no connection to a sewerage system, and only about half of the city’s waste is treated before entering waterways and eventually the ocean.
Not surprisingly, diarrheal diseases and childhood sickness are rife. The many rivers that flow through Rio’s sprawling urban areas into Guanabara Bay were declared biologically dead by scientists years ago and tonnes of raw sewage pour into the sea every day. There are high levels of viruses and algal blooms in the water, as well as industrial contamination and floating debris. A succession of city authorities has promised, tried and failed to clean it up.
In Beijing, a wealthy, authoritarian government could simply ban cars and close down factories for the few weeks of the Games and restart them when people went home. But sorting out basic sanitation and hygiene in crowded, chaotic Rio with its many favelas, steep slopes and a cash-strapped administration is far harder. It involves cultural change, huge costs, many different technologies and immense disruption.
To widespread community anger, only one waste treatment plant is fully in operation instead of the seven pledged by the city when it bid for the Olympics in 2007. Instead of sanitation being extended to 80% of people, as promised, vast money has been spent on highly visible cable cars, beautification and facilities for tourists and athletes rather than on basic services like waste collection and sewers. Unsurprisingly there have been protests.
There should be no excuses because Rio won its bid to host the Olympics in 2009, giving it years to make good its promises. Nevertheless, some progress has been made. When, a few years ago, the city began to realize it was falling well behind on its Olympic pledges, consultants were called in, and a myriad of solutions proposed. The World Bank, the Dutch development bank and many others all contributed ideas and money, and more than 20 separate major proposals to deal with Rio’s water pollution and solid waste challenges were accepted. A million more people are now connected to the sewers than 10 years ago and this will increase over the next decade.
To read the full story, visit https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/aug/03/why-is-rio-de-janeiro-finding-it-so-hard-to-clear-up-its-waste-olympic-games.