As the government of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq launched a Keep Kurdistan Clean initiative, the impact of camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees is often overlooked by authorities. The UN's refugee agency brought this to light in a recent tweet. Mitch McTough is a second-year PhD candidate Coventry University in England and is focusing some of his doctoral research on the impact camps have on local watersheds. The native of Kenya has three years of humanitarian experience within Iraq and five years elsewhere in the sector with a focus on conflict.
In an interview with Rudaw English on April 18 in Erbil, McTough argues that a more holistic approach can be implemented by relevant agencies to improve water supplies to camps, as well as drainage. Some solutions are simple such as using rock instead of concrete or asphalt, as rock and sand are natural filters for black water. Additionally, IDPs can make use of sustainable drainage solutions, as well as water butts to catch and filter rainwater which the displaced could then take back home when they decide to return.
"An issue that exists in Syrian refugee camps is that there is very little regard with what happens beyond the camp's fence," says McTough, who argues more holistic approaches should be taken and better planning implemented during the emergency phase. Overall however, conditions in the Kurdistan Region's "camp settings are very favorable for Syrian refugees at the moment more so than in many countries."
More than 1.74 million Iraqis remain displaced 18 months after the government declared an end to the Islamic State (ISIS) in the country, according to the International Organization for Migration. The Kurdistan Region continues to host more than 1.5 million IDPs and Syrian refugees, per the KRG Joint Crisis Operation Centre.
Rudaw English: The UN has expressed concern because of recent flooding in camps for IDPs and refugees in Iraq. This leads to shopkeepers losing their goods and families losing food, clothes, bedding, and tents. How much of a concern is this for Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq's humanitarians?
Mitch McTough:
When we look at refugees and IDPs in particular in this country the concerns exist primarily with those who are outside of camps and not inside of camps in areas which aren't as infrastructually sound. As far as the host or urban community environments where there are dwellings as opposed to camp settings — camp settings are very favorable for Syrian refugees at the moment more so than in many countries. For example, compared to Kenya that has an isolation policy and Jordan as well or at least it's de facto. In Kenya it's a de jure isolation policy with very little money being put into camps; whereas here, there is a lot of money being put into camps. The main camps that exist in the KRI are very well serviced infrastructually. Drainage is hard-drainage. So for communities in those camps, it's not as big of an issue.When camps are built what types of factors are taken into consideration when it comes to drainage?
The government has site selection and depending on whether it's the government that is conducting the assessments in cooperation with UNHCR taking lead on that, you will still find that the government has the final say on site selection. It's also the agreement that exists between the landowner which can also affect camp selection. Also the development of that site is largely affected by who the owner of the land is: whether it's the government or a private landowner and also the tenureship because where there's no will to invest in drainage where there is an [expected] short lifespan to a camp's site. For example, if you took Gawilan refugee camp [administered by Duhok, but in Nineveh province], depending on how it's administrated that also affects how much investment is put into that and that administration will want to look at how much money is put into that.
Next within the example of this case study, you would have an area that was the emergency camp and then, in this case in 2013 that emergency camp was phased and developed it into hard infrastructure moving from tented into plots which have proper sewage on-site and drainage systems – so surface water as well as black water.
So if camps have proper drainage on-site, how does that affect the surrounding ecology, farmlands, properties, etc..?
An issue that exists in Syrian refugee camps is that there is very little regard with what happens beyond the camp's fence. At the moment, there are end-of-pipe solutions. Water that comes from the home sheds is discharged by what are essentially V-drains or culverts or PVC pipes leading straight out of the camps. There is very little regard for the environment. The water is often contaminated with very high levels of black water. We have conducted tests and there are bacteriological tests that get conducted and you can see the levels of COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand) or BOD (Bacterial Oxygen Demand) which shows that there is a high level of bacteria in this water.
Who or what do those levels affect? Farmers?
It can lead to larger open-water bodies, for example, lakes, rivers, reservoirs, dams. If this water is leading out from camps where there is a high concentration of a high-urban environment, what you'll see in urban areas is they have water treatment facilities. What you'll see is that camps usually don't have that on-site and this water is usually discharged and you'll find cases of nitrification where you'll see algal blooms and it affects the local. These are the green thickets over lakes, for example.
So what is the ideal way for water to flow away from camps? Is there an international standard or recommendation?
Essentially it's to look at these settlements from a long-term perspective with planning, similarly to what you'll see in IDP camps where there is an "act first and improve later approach," the model should be to try to address working backwards — so working backwards with a system that can absorb a long stay population and create systems that can manage that or get to that — for example, on-site having DWAT (decentralized water treatment systems) implemented because they essentially manage gray water on-site. Another option is compact water-treatment units, which would more suitable in this kind of site, but they are very costly. And this is the issue because people do not want to invest at the outset in things like this, but compact systems are an advisable solution because they are mobile.
When I've looked at case studies of some of the IDP camps across Iraq, they first of all in federal Iraq and to an extent the KRI... because of federal Iraq in the KRI, there is a push for IDPs to return because of the need to get them back to vote and a number of other reasons, but more-so they don't want them in these areas anymore. They want them to be housed back in their areas of origin.
When we look at these sites in particular, there is poor site selection and design. When they look at site selection, they aren't looking at it topographically. Often what they do when they design a camp is they excavate and they back fill, so they excavate and then back fill to make the land suitable. There's a certain angle that the land needs to be for it to drain properly, but they don't design it in that way. So what you find in IDP camps because of the "act first and improve later" approach what comes in first are emergency supplies...
A good case example is Qayyarah-Jad'ahdah where you saw flooding at the start and they had to immediate upgrade because Qayyarah-Jad'ahdah are essentially in the floodplain of the Tigris and the floodplain still exists. So the problem with the way they have designed it even if they capture meteorological data, they are not planning it from a catchment approach. They are looking at it from site-specific approach. If you put any urban settlement within a floodplain, it's going flood no matter what anti-flood measures you put in place because topographically it's too large of site to handle in one small area.
You have to look at it from considered a practice that is as natural flood risk management. It's taking a practice that is staggered, so you're working up the catchment area, further up the source of the floodplain, and you are looking at berms near the source, small damming measures, including also possible sustainable draining systems like introducing more vegetation on the site, and trying to reduce the number of conventional draining or hard impermeable systems.
At the same time because the landowners don't want to deal with the clearance of the costs in clearing and decommissioning. They don't want to deal with these kinds of highly engineered sites afterward. In the KRI, there might be a grievance that exists with the government to handover and decommission sites. But for federal Iraq that is not the case.
Sheltering and housing IDPs is very costly for locals, the governments, and internationals. What is the cost impact of not building camps in a proper way, or is there not an impact?
If there is a cost impact it's not necessarily on loss of life, but globally looking at natural hazards, you'll tend to find that floods are on the lower category associated with deaths in natural disasters when compared to scenarios like earthquakes and tsunamis. The costs associated financially are that the infrastructural costs are much higher especially when considering that the areas these people live in are typically less invested in infrastructually. They are much more open and exposed to the risks; therefore, irreparable damage is much more tangible. Certainly there is an economic downfall in poor urban planning, especially in poorer residents in it where you have Syrian refugees and IDPs.
Camp-wise there is a cost burden on not investing in the start and having to shift people around. For example in Nimrud camp in Nineveh, they had to shift 300 people around when camps got destroyed – to clarify that's 300 tents, so 300 families who have all their NFIs, non-food items, in there. So clothing, blankets, etc., all that gets wiped out. So then the pods themselves get destroyed. I do not know the exact price of a tent, but you could be looking at $500 per tent minimum – and then think times 300. It is a cost that needs to be more thought out.
Some camps have already been closed because of returns or integration into the host community. What steps should be taken to reclaim these areas so they are usable by the landowners and community?
One of the big problems is the increased use of conventional drainage systems, so this question can't be answered in isolation. It's more a case of various components pulling together and in this essence if you say you want to have an improved long-term perspective on dealing with decommissioning camps and also how you deal with people, costs could be put into other areas like facilitating decommissioning, facilitating how people are supported, and also considering alternatives solutions to drainage and flood risks.
For example, one area I'm working in now is sustainable drainage systems. So rather than putting in tarmac or cement roads, think about putting gravel down as a natural filtration method or permeable paving systems like PVS, which is similar to cobbles with sand or grass in-between and sand and grass is able to penetrate in-between that.
Another way is to incorporate filtration pits, which is essentially sand surrounding the tents themselves, ensuring that there is a proper gradient on the land, doing flood inundation mapping so you are looking at low points in the topography, also looking at natural flood-risk management at the catchment level, and adopting more green infrastructure on and around the site. Moreover one of the main costs is maintenance, improvements, and upgrades.
So if you create a system which is able to be owned and managed by the community, then the responsibility and the earnest comes on them, and that reduces the overall cost burden on the agencies implementing them. These are practices that happen in cities in the West and there's a big shift towards this to reduce overall cost burdens by councils. So the question is: "Why are we not able to accelerate change in the camp and humanitarian environments and improve settings – the immunity, the biodiversity, the quality and quantity of water on the site and control all of those things so that is holistic and harmony?"
Is there a better time of the year to do that?
In Iraq unfortunately, you cannot implement these types of projects in the rainy season, and there is the dry season in countries where there is 50-degree heat, and there is the planting cycles as well, so it has to be very controlled and the budget has to be there to be able to implement it quickly and effectively.
To pivot, we have mostly talked about water drainage. But water supply for camps is a basic concern. So how can the supply of water be done differently?
Water tankering is occurring often at camps like Haj Ali and some of the camps in Nineveh. They are still meeting the minimum of 35 liters per head and that's drinkable water. It's treated water that they are getting from water-treatment plants then transferring with tanker trucks.
The three largest water reservoirs in Iraq are partly or fully under the control of the Kurdistan Regional Government – Lake Dukan, Lake Darbandikhan, and Lake Mosul. Are camps able to tap into these reservoirs and the rivers?
No. Water trucking is the most costly method of supplying water by far ... To cover a population of say 150,000 – which none of the current camps host ... For example during Mosul when water supply routes were cut when the bridges were down, there was a project that was delivering water aid to 150,000 people. Just for the water trucking alone, it cost something like $2.4 million.
If you put that in perspective when you have a water treatment, one compact unit, which I believe can service more than that population with a higher output, much faster delivery, and efficient, is about $1 million before you connect it to the water distribution line. And the long-term cost [benefits] outweigh those of water trucking.
In my opinion, the water delivery solutions to some camps are very inefficient right now. There should be more innovative initiatives taken for things like water conservation in camps, water butts – a way of harvesting rainwater – and these innovative methods aren't being adopted. Once again, these are methods which can be taken away with those individuals back to where they came from, to their areas of origin. So there's added value to training people how to use these methods.
[Water butts] are essentially any water-holding vessel and you can treat the water that is captured within it. There are many methods which can be introduced to treat the water like sand filtration, clay filtration – and it's just not practiced. And the mandate and the responsibility should come from these agencies which are implementing this work, not the beneficiaries or government.
Is there precedent? Where are these methods implemented?
For example in Kakuma refugee camp (Kenya) water conservation and energy conservation are considered. So they use waste water for biodigesters to generate gas at the household level. Also they produce NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium), a fertilized slurry that they put out on small urban farms like kitchen gardens. This is something that could be incorporated here very well. Everything here is happening in silos, so you have a kitchen garden program, but you don't have a water-conservation program running alongside it. The earnest and responsibility is really on the agencies which are involved in the implementation of these programs.
On a final note, protracted displacement in the KRI is a particular concern. You have camps which are basically becoming cities in the west of the Kurdistan Region along the border with Syria.
This is why the planning process really needs to incorporate alternatives to the conventional models being used at the moment. Green infrastructure is certainly one, but it's not the panacea to this ongoing problem globally, not just here, you're seeing camps lasting up to 17.5 years. Dadaab refugee camp (Kenya) has been around for over 25 years. The Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon have been around over 50 years and they have some of the worst drainage systems in the world. Dadaab camp has flooded so many times just in 2017 with over 300,000 people ... 63,000 people displaced from the camp due to flooding. It's an ongoing problem and better site planning of the initial emergency phases should really be considered. Budget envelopes should be altered to incorporate some flexibility to adopt new forms of drainage.