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Illustration of an Arborloo by Tanya Haldipur Project Overview 8 arborloo toilets were built for shared household use for new arrivals in Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda by refugee-led UNIDOS Social Innovation Center, in partnership with Re-Alliance. When full, these portable toilets will be moved for continued use and trees will be planted on the full pits.  The project showed the potential for lower cost arboloos to be rapidly built to respond to influxes of new arrivals. Beyond providing a safe, dignified toilet, arboloos compost wastes in-situ, building soils and feeding sapling trees such as mango, guava or banana, planted above. Because they use shallow pits and are simple to construct, they can be built and maintained by the local community with very low maintenance costs. Because wastes are composted in-situ, there is no secondary handling, reducing risks to health.  UNIDOS trained eight households of new refugee arrivals, all identified as Persons with Special Needs, to construct and maintain the lower-cost arborloo toilets using locally available materials. They continue to support the use and maintenance and will help households move the toilets and plant trees when they are full. What is an Arborloo? Sectional drawing of a relocated arborloo, by Tanya Haldipur The arborloo is a simple, lower-cost toilet that integrates sanitation with tree planting. It is a shallow pit toilet, typically dug to a depth of between 1 and 2 meters which promotes the conditions for composting. When the pit is full, a new pit is dug nearby and the toilet is moved. A tree is planted on the full pit. As a pit toilet, they are not suitable for all locations including areas close to natural water sources and places with rocky ground. Because pits are shallow, they only have the capacity for household, or shared household use, rather than communal latrines as the number of users must be controlled.   The Arborloo Process Construction:  The user first digs a shallow pit. A portable toilet consisting of a ring beam, slab, and superstructure is placed over this pit. Use:  The pit is used as a standard pit latrine. Users are encouraged to cover the excreta with soil, ash, and/or leaves. It is important to train people not to add excess water or put rubbish down the pit. Relocation & Regeneration:  Once the pit is full, typically between 6 and 12 months, the toilet superstructure is moved to a newly dug pit nearby. Planting:  A beneficial tree, such as mango, guava, paw paw, banana, or mulberry, is then planted directly on top of the filled, nutrient-rich pit. The Multiple benefits of Arborloos The Arborloo system turns human waste into compost, allowing the tree roots to tap into the nutrients to boost growth. This process delivers multiple long-term benefits to the community: Paulinho from Unidos and representatives from OPM visit a participant who is using and maintaining the arborloo. The structure is timber and clad with light-weight metal sheeting Sanitation and protection:  Provides immediate, dignified, and safe sanitation. Because the toilets are for households rather than communal latrines, they are closer to where the users live and safer for women and girls. Ecology: Trees stabilise soils, provides shade and cooling, sequester carbon, increases biodiversity. The compost boosts soil health and water-holding capacity.  Resources:  Over time trees can provide food, mulch and coppice materials for households The project successfully built eight arboloo toilets, provided sanitation and maintenance education to the selected households, and will engage households going forward in continued M&E, moving the toilets and tree-planting. Challenges The final report highlighted two primary challenges: High Demand:  The demand for the toilets significantly exceeded the supply. It is important that toilets are not over-used by too many people so padlocks on the outside of the toilets were needed to ensure the toilets were kept for household, rather than communal use.  Higher materials costs:  Seasonal changes led to an increase in the price of construction materials, impacting the initial budget. Despite these challenges, the project demonstrated a successful, replicable model for providing resilient and regenerative solutions to communities by integrating sanitation, hygiene promotion, and tree planting. How much does an Arborloo cost? The Nakivale project used lower-cost, locally sourced materials to maximize the sustainability and replicability of the design. Materials for the superstructure can be varied according to context. The cost of materials and transportation for a single Arboloo toilet  in Nakivale: Item/Material Unit Cost (UGX) Total Cost (UGX) Total USD cost Iron Sheets 24,000 192,000 55 Rebar x 10 35,000 140,000 40 Wood 12,000 84,000 24 Cement 40,000 80,000 23 Wheelbarrow 15,000 60,000 17 Kazao Sand 20,000 60,000 17 Rebar 8 15,000 45,000 13 Nail (roof, wood & sheet) 6,000 30,000 9 Padlock 5,000 5,000 1 Sub-Total (Materials) 696,000 199 Transportation of Materials (per toilet) 80,000 80,000 23 Total Unit Construction Cost  (Materials + Transport) 776,000 UGX 222 USD The total project budget also included crucial non-material expenses, including 580,500 UGX for project training costs, and 1,005,332 UGX for Unidos staff wages.  Resources See more about Unidos' work: https://unidosprojects.org/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/unidosprojects/ See a short Youtube video featuring the aborloos here: https://youtube.com/shorts/QK4SEjxEpls?feature=shared    Download the one page guide to arborloos here: Read the Re-alliance guide to ecological sanitation here

Re-alliance Co-ordinator Juliet Millican shares her thoughts after a work trip to Ethiopia I have just returned from 2 weeks in Ethiopia, training researchers in participatory research methods and interviewing representatives from government, INGOs and NGOs working in climate and conflict displacement.  The trainee researchers, many from a local university, were informed, enthusiastic and passionate, keen to work closely with local displaced communities to explore their experiences and their challenges. Everyone was aware of the acute situation that much of the world, but fragile states particularly, are facing. Extreme weather events and an increasingly harsh climate are creating more emergencies year on year, adding to the disintegration or breakdown of the temporary structures and facilities put in place to respond. The instability created as a result, fear over access to scarce resources and dissatisfaction with how governments are coping, only leads to further instability, further conflict and still more displacement.  In a country like Ethiopia, where language, cultural and ethnic differences are stark between regions, groups vie with each other for power, and, like in much of Europe, families who have been in a region for several generations are now being told by former neighbours to ‘go home’! Climate emergencies exacerbate conflict; conflict is protracted, migration is increased, temporary camps overflow, services breakdown and people resort to sanitation and hygiene practices that further damage their health and that of their environment. Despite the challenging conditions in which they live and the hostility of hosts, they are left in a state of dependency with few options but to adapt. At the same time those attempting to respond to the crisis are having to do more with less. The dismantling of USAID and the sudden disappearance of many internationally funded NGOs and INGOs from the sector have left those who are still working within it struggling to cope. Government officials are stuck in emergency response mode, asking for more of everything in order to keep going. In Ethiopia’s case, this is more money, more land, more tents, more latrines, more trucks to de-sludge latrines and more imported food. But it’s never enough and communities become disdainful of what the government is doing, and conflict further increases. Those officials tasked with humanitarian response cry ‘but we were only mandated to save lives, not to sustain them over longer periods, these structures weren’t built to last!’.  The old system cannot work within the new world order, and the sector, and the way in which migration is managed, has to change.  INGOs are exploring new and innovative ideas that involve bringing different sectors together in response. Partnerships with local universities and funding for research rather than emergency response can unlock new technologies that reuse the waste created by large groups of people in one space. Whether solid waste, food waste, or human waste, they are looking to recycle or compost these and to put their value back into the market or the soil. NGOs are experimenting with water retention and water capture, urine diversion toilets and grey water use, and have had some success in improving environmental conditions and supporting groups to grow food. But these approaches need investment to test and to spread, and people need to be encouraged to accept and to use them rather than waiting for more support from outside.  It is not difficult to see how a range of factors are colliding into a complex system in a state of crisis, with only a few pockets of hope. While there is no single easy solution, shifting one element in a system can eventually shift the whole. What won’t help is vainly working to keep the system functioning in the way it always has done, when it is already at breaking point.  Elements that desperately need shifting include: Dependency, and the expectation that the solution comes from outside Globally the political will is no longer there, and the damage created to human and environmental health by bringing in rather than developing within has become obvious. People need more control over their own solutions, and external support can plan for this, by designing emergency response in a way that rapidly begins to shift power and responsibility and involve those displaced in the response.  Working with environments rather than against them. ‘ Don’t push the river’ is a phrase I have grown up with, look for the flow and go with it. This often applies literally as well as metaphorically. Supporting what people can do, looking at what people want to do, and moving with rather than against environmental conditions. Water retention landscapes are essential to raise the water table so that land can recover, food can grow and water can be pumped from wells. Assessing and understanding the land and putting strategies in place before emergencies occur can offer alternatives to, for example, temporary concreted latrines in areas that flood and break or overflow in rains.   Building partnership with local structures and systems and working across sectors rather than only seeking expertise within them . Partnerships with local universities, working with young and enthusiastic researchers like I have done here, or experienced and knowledgeable academics, who know their people and their context and are keen to experiment, can bring new technologies adapted to context, if they have the funds for research. Partnerships with local private sector organisations,  who see the business potential of some of these technologies, can generate small livelihoods for the people who implement them, in selling food, collecting waste, making compost or saving seeds.  Planning for the unexpected and for the long term and investing in longer term solutions.   The unexpected is no longer unexpected, while we don’t know what will happen when, we do know things will be unstable for the foreseeable future, and emergencies develop rapidly into long-term and protracted crises. Building shelters from locally-sourced durable materials rather than using plastic tents that will break down and infiltrate the soil reduces the damage and waste from short-term fixes.  Introducing reusable elements into rapid construction processes enables temporary shelters to be converted into longer-term structures over time and means an emergency response can evolve into a resilient settlement that benefits people and the environment.  Re-alliance does some of this work and is a tiny part of a growing movement that recognises the need for systems change. Like the Sphere guide to Nature Based Solutions in Humanitarian response, and growing numbers of visionary practitioners in communities, in some INGOs and in academia, they are together creating pockets of hope. Although we won’t find all the answers on our own, we feel at least we are assembling the right partners, having the right conversations and shifting some of these moving pieces in the right direction.  Join us, as members, funders, or advocates and become part of the conversation.

A statement on this week's UN Environment Programmes Emissions Gap Report ahead of COP30 We want to start this statement by saying that there is hope. It’s easy to feel disheartened, and it’s also easy for writers to fall into the doomscrolling traps that make our readers feel shocked and scared for the sake of a clickable headline. Yes, we are in a dire place, but that doesn’t mean we should sit back and let corporate greed in the minority world ruin us all. We can take action. Hold on to your optimism as you read the latest UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Emissions Gap Report . This week’s report   marks ten years since the Paris Agreement and delivers a very frank warning. While the last ten years has seen a solid uptake of seemingly positive policies from nations around the world, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise, reaching a record 57.7 gigatonnes of CO₂ equivalent in 2024 . Current policies and practices put the planet on course for around 2.8 °C of warming . The report highlights that 1.5 °C of warming will almost certainly be exceeded within the next decade , if indeed we have not already passed this threshold. Oxfam’s new report titled Climate Plunder  highlights how the majority of these emissions are caused by a small group of people in the Global North. A single billionaire emits as much emissions as the entire population of many countries. At the same time, many billionaires and their companies lobby policymakers to protect their polluting interests at the expense of progressive climate policies. This greed, very literally, costs lives. Politics tends to be innately slow. Sometimes, this is rightfully so because, of course, policies need to go through a consultation period and be reviewed and iterated on by a wide number of people with a high level of expertise in the subject. However, we often see how policies are undermined because of corporate interests. Climate policies move at a disproportionately slow rate, and at previous climate conferences like COP we see that climate goals gradually weaken throughout the drafting process after interventions by fossil fuel lobbyists. We acknowledge and applaud the meaningful steps forward toward climate action, but these steps are far too slow and too shallow. Every moment of inaction or weak action locks in further harm for people, non-human animals and ecosystems, especially in the Global South. Many communities are already facing climate-induced disasters and displacement. But we don’t need to wait for the political needle to shift. Communities around the world are already transforming their eco-social landscapes through regenerative design. The wild, natural world is filled with learnings on how we can meet our human needs while also living in partnership with thriving, healthy ecosystems. We need politicians and policymakers who are Permaculture Designers, Agroecologists, Regenerative thinkers, and implementers of Nature-based Solutions. As practitioners in Regenerative movements, let’s educate them at every possible opportunity. But while they are learning, let us stand in solidarity with each other, and learn from one another’s wisdom. Let us tend to our own communities, locally and internationally, to grow resilience from the group up. We can’t wait, and we don’t need to wait. Signed, Re-Alliance members

From Permaculture in refugee settlements, to eco-building in disaster prone regions, to water harvesting in areas severely affected by worsening climate change, Re-Alliance and our members showcase how we can create stability, resilience and abundance, even in times of crisis. What could a regenerative humanitarian response look like? Increasing the impact and influence of regenerative responses to disaster, displacement and development Explore Re-Alliance free guides Re-Alliance promotes a regenerative vision, beyond sustainability, for the humanitarian and development sectors. From Permaculture gardens in refugee camps, to eco-building in disaster prone regions; eco WASH interventions, to integrated nature-based solutions for settlement designing: Re-Alliance members are showcasing how we can create stability, resilience and abundance, even in times of crisis. Watch Videos Play Video Play Video 07:13 Beejvan | Restoring and regenerating sacred food forests in India Beejvan began in 2022 to revive local understandings of tree-based farming. In this film, Founding Director Sanjana Krishnan explores the joys and the challenges of land-based work. The project has become more than a farming practice, but a healing and community-building activity. 🎥 Film by Pankaj Rishi Kumar Play Video Play Video 04:41 YAKUM | Protecting and restoring the bio-cultural abundance of the Amazon YAKUM partners with three indigenous nations in Ecuador to turn degraded land into cultural food landscapes. In this film by Remi Bumstead, Re-Alliance member YAKUM explores the importance of Indigenous wisdom in forest protection and restoration, and the abundance that healthy forests can offer in terms of culture, food, and climate resilience. Arley Paraguaje and Nick Ovenden explain why YAKUM rediscover and replant diverse cultural foods, and safely harvest food from standing forests. Find out more about YAKUM's work at https://yakum.org/ 🎥 https://remibumstead.com/ Play Video Play Video 07:21 Minak | Growing nutritious mushrooms in a refugee settlement Mariam Antoine from Minak Women-led Organisation helped co-create a programme of training women in Nakivale Refugee Settlement to grow nutritious Oyster mushrooms in reusable buckets. In this video, trainees from Minak organisation explain how mushroom cultivation is such a powerful way to grow the health and income of people living in refugee settlements. Re-Alliance worked with Minak to create a how-to booklet for growing mushrooms. Read more about the project here and download the booklet: https://www.re-alliance.org/post/cultivating-mushrooms-in-buckets Minak is bringing to life real examples of #Permaculture in #Refugee settlements. Play Video Play Video 06:08 YICE Uganda | Urine-diversion dry composting toilets Join Winnie Tushabe, co-founder of YICE Uganda, and Ecosan user Uwizeye Salima, in exploring Ecosans. In the Nakivale refugee camp in Uganda, refugees are given a small plot of land to build a dwelling and farm food on. Re-Alliance's partner organisation YICE Uganda (Youth Initiative for Community Empowerment) is working with families to create kitchen gardens but yields are limited because the soil is poor. Re-Alliance and YICE collaborated to build eight urine diverting dry toilets (or ‘Ecosan’ toilets) for families. By separating the urine and faeces, the volume of composting waste is reduced, extending the capacity of the compost chamber and giving an immediate source of fertiliser in the form of urine, which, when diluted 1:10 - 1:20 with water, is an excellent fertiliser rich in nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus. Diverting the urine away stops the compost chamber from becoming anaerobic and smelly and the addition of wood ash or saw dust, after using the toilet, acts as a dehydrating cover material. This design used recycled plastic barrels as containers for the faeces, which ensures no ground pollution. Once nearly full, the barrel is moved aside and replaced with a fresh barrel. With the hot composting achieved inside the barrels, compost can be created in under 12 months in the Ugandan climate. The compost is used to enrich the soil around fruiting trees and bushes. Find out more about this design and create your own with our free guides on www.re-alliance.org/publications . Play Video Play Video 07:35 Unidos Social Innovation Centre | Eco-social regeneration in Nakivale Refugee Settlement What could it look like if Refugee Settlements were thriving ecological and social spaces? Unidos Social Innovation Centre is a refugee-led, community-based organisation that engages with young people located in the Nakivale Refugee settlement, South West Uganda. In this video, Unidos founder Paulinho Muzaliwa explains how they support the communities to create abundant Permaculture gardens, grow biodiverse food forests, and build healthy soils. Find out more about Unidos at https://unidosprojects.org/ Donate to Unidos' work here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/water-4-thriving-african-permaculture-group 🎥 7Times Film Production Play Video Play Video 04:36 Ecopoblaciones | Ecopoblaciones Ecuador Ecopoblaciones Ecuador create eco-social regeneration programs that promote the participatory design and implementation of sustainable and resilient populations. Their work integrates ecology, social, economic and cultural aspects, using tools and processes of eco-neighborhoods, eco-social movements, permaculture, ecotourism, bio-construction, participatory leadership, emotional management, well-being, among others. Find out more about Ecopoblaciones Ecuador here: https://ecopoblaciones.github.io/ Find out more about joining Re-Alliance's thriving community of members here: https://www.re-alliance.org/members Play Video Play Video 11:32 Green Releaf | Designing for resilience in disaster and conflict prone regions in the Philippines Green Releaf Initiative prototyped two projects that aimed to respond to and prevent disasters, in contexts of climate and conflict vulnerability in the Philippines. Green Releaf worked with Permaculture as an approach to address food security, regenerative livelihood, and ecosystem restoration. They had a community-led approach, working with early adapters as grassroots permaculture leaders to train as multipliers. They aimed to highlight the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) from the community, honouring their earth wisdom as key to the community's resilience. Featuring grassroots community leaders from areas affected by disasters and displacement where Green Releaf worked, this film begins to document the knowledge learned and practices implemented over time. Play Video Play Video 02:32 What is Re-Alliance? What is Re-Alliance? What do we hope to achieve? These questions and more are explored by some of of the founding members of the Re-Alliance network. Join our membership As part of our network, whether a grassroots practitioner or a member of an international NGO or Aid organisation, you will have access to dynamic knowledge, a vibrant and active community of experts, and a wealth of opportunities for collaboration. Our membership is open to all. The only requirements are an interest, understanding or expertise in regenerative design, experience in the humanitarian or development sectors, and a willingness to comply with our code of conduct and policies. Find out more Read Articles Nakivale Arboloo Toilets: Growing Trees from waste Illustration of an Arborloo by Tanya Haldipur Project Overview 8 arborloo toilets were built for shared household use for new arrivals in Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda by refugee-led UNIDOS Social Innovation Center, in partnership with Re-Alliance. When full, these portable toilets will be moved for continued use and trees will be planted on the full pits. The project showed the potential for lower cost arboloos to be rapidly built to respond to influxes of new arriva Mary Mellett Where next for humanitarian response to climate and conflict displacement? Re-alliance Co-ordinator Juliet Millican shares her thoughts after a work trip to Ethiopia I have just returned from 2 weeks in Ethiopia, training researchers in participatory research methods and interviewing representatives from government, INGOs and NGOs working in climate and conflict displacement. The trainee researchers, many from a local university, were informed, enthusiastic and passionate, keen to work closely with local displaced communities to explore their exper Juliet Millican Community-led regeneration is a remedy for political inaction A statement on this week's UN Environment Programmes Emissions Gap Report ahead of COP30. We are in a dire place, but that doesn’t mean we should sit back and let corporate greed in the minority world ruin us all. We can take action. Community-led regenerative movements offer us a clear pathway forward. We need Nature-based Solutions grounded in land-based wisdom. Re-Alliance Sign up for our newsletters For inspiring stories from our network of practitioners around the globe, to learning about how to integrate regenerative design into humanitarian and development contexts, sign up to our newsletter below. Sign up We can support you Re-Alliance and our members have hosted several training programmes for humanitarian and development organisations and agencies. We can help you and your organisation to integrate regenerative paradigms and practices into your operation, interventions, and policy. Contact us to arrange a meeting and find out more. Contact us

< Back Mary Mellett Research, Content & Compliance Lead Mary has a background working for community groups and charities, including homeless charities, community facilities provision and neighbourhood planning projects. After studying Architecture and Planning at Bristol UWE, she has used the skills learnt to help support groups with their varied needs including website maintenance, group liaison, finances and grant applications.

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