2 October 2009 signified a turning point for Rio de Janeiro’s environmental scene. Following decades of grappling with ill-managed waste disposal and severe water contamination (Trendafilova, Graham and Bemiller, 2017), the Brazilian city was declared as host of the 21st Olympic Games. This moment was historic not only because it marked an achievement once unthinkable, but also because it provided Rio de Janeiro the golden opportunity to clean its polluted waterways and improve its urban image.
Yet, these feelings of pride and optimism quickly dissolved into anger and disappointment, as targets of achieving 80% sewage treatment remained unmet. More alarmingly, Rio de Janeiro’s iconic Guanabara Bay remained nearly as polluted as before, making it less than ready to host upcoming Olympic water sports events. This raised a big question among the general public and international community: why was water pollution unresolved despite the increased construction of sewage systems?
Just days before the Olympics, reports revealed that Rio’s Guanabara Bay remained clogged with untreated waste, raising health concerns amongst athletes (Biller and Smith, 2016)
The answer lay in the high rates of improper waste disposal, especially in favelas. As we might recall from the previous post, favelas mostly lack access to sewage facilities, resulting in domestic waste being discharged directly into adjacent water bodies. This lack of access does not only refer to the measly number of facilities, which officials have addressed by ramping up construction works in neighbourhoods surrounding Guanabara Bay (Keith, 2016), but also their poor proximity to favelas. As noted by Fistarol et al. (2015), favelas occupy large areas of non-inhabited forest land, making it challenging to identify centrally-accessible areas where facilities can be built. Furthermore, favelas are unevenly distributed around Rio de Janeiro (Figure 1), with some located in hilly areas above 50 metres in elevation. Therefore, favela dwellers who live far from sewage facilities have little choice but to dispose of their waste in smaller tributaries (Keith, 2016).
Figure 1: Distribution of favelas in Rio de Janeiro (O’Hare and Barke, 2002)
However, these tributaries often merge into larger channels connected to Guanabara Bay, which receives liquid effluents produced from 16 municipalities (Fistarol et al., 2015). This results in the significant accumulation of domestic waste in Guanabara Bay, which surpasses the rate of wastewater treatment. According to Figure 2, the number of secondary and tertiary channels flowing into Guanabara Bay far exceeds the number of wastewater treatment plants, with there only being two plants within Guanabara Bay’s drainage basin. It is hence unsurprising that water pollution has not abated despite the higher uptake of sewage treatment facilities, as waste disposal rates in favelas outpace that of treatment.
Figure 2: Map of tributaries connected to Guanabara Bay (Comitê de Bacia da Baía de Guanabara, 2013)
Ultimately, it is regrettable that state efforts to clean up Guanabara Bay — and Rio de Janeiro’s notorious reputation as “an open sewer” — have failed. Only 78% of households are connected to sewer systems (Keith, 2016), with this percentage not accounting for favelas, and water quality remains poor based on World Health Organisation guidelines. It is hence evident that water pollution is a complex issue, and can only be addressed when its point sources are accurately identified and controlled to prevent large-scale pollutant transport. Furthermore, in linking back to our second post on the complexity of collecting Olympic pollution data, we should recognise that data collection is not always an objective exercise, with marginalised groups often being excluded from the process.
References
Biller, D. & Smith, M. (2016). Rio Promised to Clean Up Guanabara Bay Before the Olympics [Online image]. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-unsolved-murder-in-rio/
Comitê de Bacia da Baía de Guanabara. (2013). Location of Wastewater Treatment Plants around Guanabara Bay [Online image]. Comitê de Bacia da Baía de Guanabara. http://www.comitebaiadeguanabara.org.br/sig-rhbg/
Fistarol, G. O., Coutinho, F. H., Moreira, A. P. B., Venas, T., Cánovas, A., de Paula Jr, S. E., … & Thompson, F. L. (2015). Environmental and sanitary conditions of Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro. Frontiers in microbiology, 6, 1232. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2015.01232
Keith, E. F. (2016). Treating Rio’s Wastewater Beyond the Olympics. Natural Resources & Environment, 31(4), 48-50. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44213918
O’Hare, G., & Barke, M. (2002). The favelas of Rio de Janeiro: A temporal and spatial analysis [Online image]. GeoJournal. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025134625932
Trendafilova, S., Graham, J., & Bemiller, J. (2017). Sustainability and the olympics: the case of the 2016 Rio summer games. Journal of Sustainability Education, 16(3), 1-22. http://www.susted.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Trendafilova-Graham-Bemiller-JSE-Fall-2017-General-PDF.pdf
