Waste and the City: The Crisis of Sanitation and the Right to Citylife by Colin McFarlane

Author:Colin McFarlane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso

Animal geographies

While there is debate, it is likely that the origins of COVID-19 lie in human contact with bat droppings in peri-urban Wuhan. It would be wrong to position animals as an enemy when in fact what is so often needed is a much better coexistence with them in our cities, but it would be wrong too to underestimate the scale and threat from animal faeces. Yet, this is precisely what has been done in sanitation research, policy, and practice.104 Animals – goats, cows, chickens, pigs, dogs, cats, rodents, birds, and more – are important parts of the ecology of sanitation.

They defecate into water, drains, open ground, and soil. They rummage through heaps of solid waste scavenging for food. They pass on parasites. They provide milk and food. Meat hangs in kiosks and provides sustenance not just for people, but for flies and microbes. Discarded animal parts rot in garbage grounds, where birds and insects clear the debris even as they spread infection. Then there are the rats, history’s most vilified vectors. ‘We are scared of getting bitten by the rats while using the toilet,’ said Aarti Shinde, a resident in Jai Santoshi Mata Nagar, Mumbai, of the local toilet block: ‘The rats that climb up from the toilet are big and children get scared.’105

Poultry, cattle, sheep, and pigs generate 85 percent of the world’s animal faecal waste, much of which ends up in cities.106 Contamination of food and water sources is common, particularly in poorer urban contexts. Pigs, for example, can be ‘mixing vessels’ for influenza, combining both bird and human flu. A study of free-range pig rearing in Guwahati, a city in northeast India, found that pig sheds were often poorly maintained and that the combination of inadequate hygiene, poverty, and density posed particular risks for zoonotic infection.

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