USE OF DRY TOILET IN HIMACHAL AND LADAKH
Scientists have developed a potentially safe microbial concoction that will be able to revive water-conserving traditional dry toilets in cold deserts in India to handle human waste and cater to the local agroecological needs.
Dry toilets in Himachal Pradesh and neighbouring Ladakh compost human excreta to create organic manure for local farmers. Despite this, this practice has fallen out of favour in recent decades.
The indigenous Ladakhi mission to mainstream organic farming by 2025 counts dry toilets as one of the measures towards achieving its organic farming and carbon neutrality objectives. As long as organic farming can meet food security needs, it can be considered a nature-based solution, experts said.
Despite their unkempt appearance, these two-tiered sanitation structures, set against the sprawling cold deserts of the Indian Himalayas, have supplied organic manure to local communities for their agricultural needs, in this water-limiting region, for generations. Human excreta are composted into natural manure (night soil compost) by adding a mixture of dry materials such as livestock dung, ash, and wood chips. In dry cold desert regions such as Himachal Pradesh’s Lahaul and Spiti valley and the Union Territory of Ladakh, the night soil compost is indispensable for the local agricultural needs.
Since the 1980s, social apprehensions, unhygienic conditions of dry toilets, urbanization, modernization, and an increase in tourism have resulted in the popularization of septic toilets, which have decreased in use; chemical fertilizers catering to cash crops have also affected its use, experts, government officials, and local residents have argued.
Scientists at the CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (IHBT) may have an answer to ensuring the continuation of dry toilets with improvements. They are experimenting with beneficial bacteria extracted from the night soil compost in order to construct a compost booster with carrier materials that can replace the dry materials to speed up the degradation of the night soil to handle human waste in cold desert environments. As part of the action plan to make Ladakh carbon-neutral and pursue organic development, Ladakh’s action plan encourages the continuation of the traditional system. The plan encourages users To use the traditional composting toilets with improved aesthetics and composting.
In addition to being prepared using beneficial cold-tolerant bacterial consortia with plant growth-promoting characteristics, the booster also contributes to increasing the productivity of crops. Scientist Rakshak Kumar Acharya, at the Biotechnology Division, CSIR-IHBT, Palampur, said that the product is extremely user-friendly since users only have to pick up a handful after defecating. In terms of pathogenicity, the booster is safe to use.
Sanjay Kumar, director of the institute, has stated that the technology conserves water and produces quality compost from faecal matter to help sustain the agroecosystem of the region and provide opportunities for the creation of local businesses.
In Himachal, Acharya and colleagues have been distributing compost boosters to households for field trials since 2018. They have also recently teamed up with the army to work on sewage disposal at their Ladakh unit. Ladakh authorities have been contacted to use the product in Chaksas or Ladakhi dry toilets.
Tashi Tsetan, chief agriculture officer, Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council elaborated that a mix of solutions such as the compost booster-bolstered dry toilet system, vermicompost and bio-fertilisers will underpin the union territory’s strategy to mainstream organic farming in Ladakh by 2025 with one of its objectives to enable farmers to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
Maintaining a balance
Biodynamic farming can be considered a nature-based solution to climate change as long as there is enough land to grow food for the growing population, says Tek Bahadur Sapkota, agricultural systems and climate change scientist with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in Mexico.
If organic farming is combined with minimal soil disturbance, it can sequester carbon. Sapkota told Mongabay-India that organic farms are free of chemical-induced emissions (e.g. carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and nitrogen oxides) as well as the emissions generated by their production and transportation.
A trade-off must be considered between food security and climate action objectives in organic farming. It is difficult to produce enough food without applying sufficient soil nutrients via chemical fertilisers. In some cases, it may even be higher if we rely too much on animal manure for organic farming and if greenhouse gas emissions associated with livestock production are included,” Sapkota says.
But night soil compost is more effective for plant growth than livestock manure, which is why it is still preferred for farming. As for the winter months, particularly December, January, and February, we have to rely on the dry toilets since we don’t have access to flushing toilets in summer. Most older people use dry toilets in summer, while the younger generation prefers to use modern toilets. In addition, modern systems are easy to clean, which is another reason why young people avoid dry toilets,” 66-year-old Katoch told Mongabay-India.
The residents and farmers rely on the research institution to source the compost boosters since no local entrepreneurs have implemented the technology in the Lahaul valley. “We are trying to assist them with Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise clusters and to encourage unemployed youth to participate in this venture as the demand in the area is huge,” Acharya of CSIR-IHBT, added. Due to snowfall and transportation difficulties, the regular supply of compost booster is disrupted during extreme winters.
Acharya suggests that an increase in temperature (warming) may facilitate the process of composting. This is because higher temperatures may accelerate the microbial decomposition of night soil compost. Because of the low temperatures in cold regions and the limited load of microorganisms, the process of composting is challenging. “The cold-adapted bacteria can be added to the compost booster to resolve this problem, as it accelerates the rise in temperature at the onset of composting,” he said.
One way to bolster climate resilience in vulnerable communities is to implement sustainable farming practices. A report released at the United Nations Desertification summit this year states that despite the limited success of the Green Revolution in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, organic agriculture and agroecology represent one of the biggest opportunities for developing successful rural communities.
It notes that institutional interventions help “improve access to organic inputs, particularly organic fertilisers, and the creation of specific research, training, and extension programmes.” the author explains.
In the Himalayas, the odds are stacked against them. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report noted that snow cover has decreased since the early 21st century; glaciers, however, have thinning, retreating, and losing mass in high mountain Asia (including the Himalayas) except for Karakoram glaciers. The snow cover will decrease and the amount of snow will decline during the 21st century, snowline elevations will rise, and glaciers will lose mass when greenhouse gas emissions reach high levels, the study said.
According to the IPCC, climate change impacts on high mountains, including the Himalayas, will pose challenges to water supply, energy production, ecosystem integrity, agricultural and forestry production, disaster preparedness, and ecotourism. The Himalayas are largely dominated by tourism, which is threatening water security in the region, a problem that is only going to get worse with climate change.
On the basis of long-term observations of the Chhota Shigri Glacier in the Lahaul-Spiti valley, scientists have suggested rising temperatures and reduced winter snowfall are contributing to the loss of mass of glaciers in the western Himalayas. The researchers found that summer-monsoonal snowfall drives glacier mass in the western Himalayas, and if more of this snowfall occurs in the years ahead, glaciers (in the western Himalayas) will likely remain healthy. In the western Himalaya, the primary drivers behind glacier melting are wood combustion and forest fires rather than carbon emitted by fossil fuel combustion.