主要漁場トンレサップ湖の水上生活者にトイレを　カンボジア

【シエムレアプ（カンボジア）ＡＦＰ＝時事】カンボジアの巨大湖トンレサップで水上生活を送るシ・ボーンさんは、４歳の娘が汚染された水で遊び下痢になって亡くなったことを思い出し、涙をこらえた。（写真はカンボジアの村チョンプロレイに投入された水上トイレ。）
　トンレサップ湖の水上生活者は１０万人に上る。１２人家族のボーンさんの暮らすチョンプロレイ村には、民家７０軒と小学校１校があるが、衛生設備は皆無だ。
　地元の社会的企業「ウェットランド・ワーク（ＷＷ）」は、排せつ物などをろ過する「水上トイレ」の導入に取り組んでいる。だが、設置費用が高額のため、まだ一部の幸運な人しか利用できていない。
　漁業で生計を立てている水上生活を営む村人は、数世代にわたり湖に直接排せつしてきた。この水を調理や洗濯、水浴びに使っているため、下痢やコレラなどの水系感染症のリスクにさらされている。
　■微生物マジック
　湖上と周辺合わせて１００万人以上が暮らすトンレサップ湖は世界最大の内陸漁場だが、水上家屋２万軒には排せつ物を処理する仕組みが備わっていない。
　水・衛生問題に取り組む国際ＮＧＯウォーターエイドによると、世界人口の約３分の１は適切なトイレを利用できない環境にある。また下痢は、５歳未満の子どもの主な死因となっている。
　ＷＷは、水上トイレ「ハンディポッド」が、シ・ボーンさんの村や同様の問題を抱える他国の人々の助けになると期待する。
　ハンディポッドは、小さな三つのタンクを排せつ物が通ることで、ろ過しきれいにする仕組み。「バイオフィルム」と呼ばれる微生物の集合体により病原体が除去された処理水が、湖に放出される。
　放出された水は飲み水にできるほどではないが、洗濯や調理には安心して利用できる。
　ＷＷはチョンプロレイ村に水上トイレを１９か所設置した。利用できる人は限られているが、好評だという。
　２か月前に水上トイレ設置の抽選に当たった漁師のルウン・ノブさんは、「ボトル入りのきれいな水は１本４０００リエル（約１３０円）するので、料理や水浴びに使うためになんて手が出ない」とＡＦＰに語った。「きれいな水は飲むためだけに買っている」
　ＷＷは、欧州連合が支援する複数のプロジェクトを通じて、２０の村にハンディポッドを１００か所した。２０２５年までにさらに２００か所への追加を目指している。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2023/04/17-17:15）

Pointing to the murky waters of the Tonle Sap, Si Vorn fights back tears as she recalls her four-year-old daughter dying from diarrhoea after playing in the polluted lake.
Her family of 12 is among 100,000 people living in floating houses on Cambodia's vast inland waterway, and while their village has 70 houses and a primary school, it has no sanitation system.
Now a local social enterprise, Wetlands Work (WW), is trying to tackle the problem by rolling out floating toilets to filter waste, but the high cost of installation means for now they are available to only a lucky few.
For generations, villagers whose livelihood depends on fishing have defecated directly into the water that they use for cooking, washing and bathing -- risking diarrhoea and even more severe water-borne diseases such as cholera.
We use this water, we drink this water, and we defecate into this water. Everything! Si Vorn, 52, told AFP, saying her family fell ill all the time.
Every day, I worry about my health. Look at the water, there is no sanitation. I'm so worried but I don't know what to do.
- Microbe magic -
More than a million people live on or around Tonle Sap, the world's largest inland fishery, but there is no system in place for managing human waste from the 20,000 floating houses around the lake.
Cambodia, ravaged by war and the genocidal Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, is one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia.
Around a third of the population does not have access to proper toilets, according to the WaterAid charity, and diarrhoea is a leading killer of children under five.
Wetlands Work hopes its HandyPods, as the floating toilets are properly known, can help Si Vorn's village and others like it in other countries.
HandyPods use three small tanks to filter and clean the sewage.
Human waste passes from the toilet into the first tank, then the second and third. Inside, trillions of microbes in a biofilm -- a slimy matrix of microorganisms -- remove pathogens and the treated water is discharged into the lake.
We're addressing sanitation in floating villages that have never experienced sanitation before, Taber Hand, the founder of Wetlands Work, told AFP.
The resulting grey water may not be clean enough to drink, but it is safe to use for washing and cooking.
The company has installed 19 floating toilets in Chong Prolay, Si Vorn's village, and they have proved popular with the few that have them.
We use this water because a bottle of clean water is 4,000 riel ($1), so we can't afford to buy clean water for using, cooking and bathing, fisherman Roeun Nov, who won a free HandyPod through a lucky draw two months ago, told AFP.
We buy clean water for just drinking.
- Cost a barrier -
WW has installed more than 100 HandyPods in 20 villages on the lake through two separate projects funded by European Union, and aims to roll out 200 more by 2025.
The hope is that the more villagers see the toilets in action, the more they will want proper sanitation.
Outside Cambodia, WW has also installed the system in 12 villages in Myanmar, but cost is a major obstacle to widespread adoption.
The floating toilets cost around $175 each -- a huge sum of money for Tonle Sap fishing communities, where on a good day a villager might make $5.
Hand said his team was considering subsidies in the longer term, so that families would only pay $35 to $40 for a treatment system.
Chan Sopheary, a WW field officer, said lake people were beginning to change their behaviour around sanitation and hygiene, but they were not willing to pay for the toilet yet given their poor livelihoods.
We cannot afford one because we just make enough money for daily spending, Si Vorn's husband Yoeun Sal told AFP after bathing in water by his house during a hot afternoon.
If no one helps us, we will keep using the lake (as a toilet), he added.