Wastewater Treatment Project for Palma Soriano, Cuba: Assessment of Cultural and Ecological Conditions
by Daniela Pena Corvillon
The Palma Soriano’s Wastewater Treatment Project is a proposal to use cultural identity as a trigger to reverse ecological degradation. The research methodology draws from environmental, social and urban analyses to unveil the best strategy to address the ecological, river restoration, agricultural, and water treatment challenges in Palma Soriano, southeast Cuba. This article explores some of the dilemmas that arise when the human need for water quality and food overpowers the ability of the natural ecosystem to support the demands. The primary objectives are to provide a better quality of life and to create new opportunities for the local community to reconnect with natural cycles of water and the cultivation of their own land. The research shows that stopping the processes of desertification combined with forest restoration of the upper of the Cauto River, where Palma Soriano is located, is critical to the achievement of these objectives. The research is presented in the context of ecological design – an emerging framework for re-envisioning the built environment in terms that encourage the dynamic, positive, and mutually beneficial interaction between humans and the ecological world (Mozingo, 1997).
The research project promotes the strength and capacity of local people to protect their own environment by proposing a community-based master plan for public spaces, cultivation areas, new sanitary and storm water treatment infrastructure, and restored natural landscapes on the Cauto River. It is also a proposal for re-imagining the complex web of interactions among people, the built human environment, community identity, urban agriculture, and the supporting natural ecosystem. The project includes natural wastewater treatment, reforestation, community urban agriculture and a public commons along the river. This project will produce healthy water recycling, provide a potable water source for the city, encourage ecological restoration of the riparian zone, and provide new opportunities for food production. In order to achieve such a solution, this paper first identifies a potential community and environmental problem. Second, it develops an analysis of the area and recognizes the main problem. Third, it presents an integral solution of the problem. And finally discuss this specific project in relation with a global context, and evaluate the solution proposed as a solution for other areas that have affected by similar social and environmental injustices. The research project also uses a socio-metabolic perspective on the “end of the pipe” issues of water quality and social disadvantage (Martinez-Alier et al., 2010), understanding “social metabolism” as the manner in which human societies organize their exchanges of materials and energy with the environment (Fischer-Kowalski, 1997; Martinez-Alier, 2009). It is a solution that can take over essential and humanistic ways of connection between humans and their environment. In this way, water management, and specifically wastewater treatment, would be a solution to bringing together communities reclaiming a clean environment, and promoting a respectful and conscience social metabolism of exchanges with the environment (Fischer-Kowalski, 1997; Martinez-Alier, 2009).
Read full research paper at http://fofj.org/index.php/journal/article/view/66
Uniform Resource Name Code urn:nbn:de:hebis:34-2014062645560
Photo credit:- Daniela Pena Corvillon
