[00:00:06] Bridget Scanlon: I would like to welcome Mario Bianco to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. Mario is a hydrologist, actually he's got many different degrees as you will learn during the podcast, and he's currently working in international consultancies in environmental hydraulics with the World Bank and the UN and many different agencies.
So, he's worked in about 12 different countries over his short career, which is just amazing on WASH issues, Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene in crisis situations. And today we're going to focus on his recent work in Ukraine and then Syria and Somalia, although he's worked in many other countries.
Thank you so much Mario for joining me.
[00:00:54] Mario Bianco: Same to you.
[00:00:57] Bridget Scanlon: Maybe you want to describe a little bit about what WASH is and how that functions with international aid.
[00:01:05] Mario Bianco: Yeah, so the acronym WASH stands for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene and it makes up a specific sector in international aid where projects concern water supplies, sewage, the distribution of hygiene items and a variety of themes that somehow connect to this. I've been working in WASH for the United Nations and several organizations.
And for quite a few years, I've been working for the International Committee of the Red Cross and their department, the engineering department has a slightly different name. It's called Water and Habitat because it deals with engineering, so as a whole. So also, with construction and electric supplies, et cetera.
And this gave me the amazing opportunity, really, to work on practical issues in several countries and always in a fragile setting. So, besides the engineering and the technical part there's always a social part which is relevant, and which might be a real challenge to deal with.
[00:02:13] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. So, one of your most recent positions was working as a project manager in Ukraine I think in 2023, 2024. And of course, everybody realizes that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and a lot of other things going on since then. Maybe you can first provide a little background to the listeners on our Ukraine.
For many people, we hear about it all the time in the news. It's about a 600,000 square kilometer area, about the size of Texas. And the population peaked in 1993 with about 52 million people and then declined to gradually to 46 million in 2014, and then a big decline to 38 million in 2023.
A lot of refugees after the war in 2022, and internally displaced persons IDPs. So maybe you can describe that a little bit, Mario.
[00:03:19] Mario Bianco: Yeah, definitely. So, Ukraine, so it's the largest country in Europe and to my knowledge had already before the beginning of the war, the lowest birth rate in Europe. So, the population growth has been a challenge since several years the war in Ukraine started in 2014.
In 2022 a full-scale invasion happened, Russia invaded the whole country, but the war happened in 2014, and this is a date which all the Ukrainians remember well, as the life of everyone in the country changed back then. The war started with the invasion of Crimea and the eastern part of Donbas in Ukraine. The war continued for several years. Somehow, they say at a low intensity and then in 2022 the intensity of violence spread countrywide.
So yeah, I used to work in Ukraine for a UN agency managing different offices of engineers. And a program which used to be called Water in Emergency.
So, we were working on water supplies together with water utilities in urban and rural settings in southern and eastern Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Odessa, Mykolaiv, Dnipro and yeah. I happen to move a lot to visit projects, to speak with engineers. And because of the nature of the humanitarian work and how the funding system works for the UN and for NGOs a big part of the project was really to do proposals and to advocate for funds.
So, my job was mainly to deal with the local water utilities, called Vodocanals in Ukraine and to understand from them what were the issues in several parts of the country, and then to coordinate with other organizations and UN agencies who operated in the same areas in order to make up projects together and to avoid overlapping, all organizations in humanitarian aid are grouped in clusters.
So, we were part of the WASH cluster, an ensemble of organizations that deal with the same topic in similar areas. And UNICEF in Ukraine is the UN agency that coordinates the different organizations that are part of the cluster. And then to detect projects and to prioritize projects out of outstanding needs country wide to consider requests that might come directly from the water utilities, from the government, from local communities, et cetera, makes a big part of the work as well as producing proposal to be shared with international donors would normally come back with questions that needs a reply and everything is done in a quite a tight time frame.
And so, it is always teamwork really. There was me, but it was a large team of bright Ukrainian engineers. And of course, there's a large international staff and things are always done together. So, this is perhaps one of the parts which I preferred more of. So, the job. So back then it's-Sounds like it's a very real teamwork.
[00:06:32] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah. It sounds very challenging. so, I appreciate your mentioning the low birth rate in Ukraine, because when I look at the population time series, I see from 90, early nineties through 2020, just a gradual decline from 55 million to about 45 million.
And then I saw a UN report recently, which indicated from 2014 to the present, there was a 10 million people left refugees from Ukraine. And these are in many different countries in Europe, they said about a million each in Russia, Germany, neighboring countries, Poland, and then about 0.2 million in many other countries and are less in many other countries in Europe. So that's a good, context. And you arrived in Ukraine in September, right? September 2023. And so that was after the dam the Kakhovka Dam was destroyed right?
[00:07:26] Mario Bianco: Yeah, yeah. It was after and the program for the UN agency I used to work for was already established somehow. So, I didn't have to contribute starting anything from scratch but rather I had to fit into something which was already existing. And yeah, you mentioned, so Kakhova dam destruction, this is probably one of the major dramas that happened in Ukraine. So, a large dam that used to produce electricity as well for the country. And after its destruction, a large area was flooded, a large number of pumping stations were not provided anymore through electric supply, and a number of settlements in the area lost water provision. And so, we had to work or to start working in the very same areas in order to provide people there with a backup.
And here, so before I was thinking about what to say on this podcast, I had a few lines in mind, something that always impressed me in Ukraine and everywhere really is people’s resilience. So even before international agencies come with large funds and knowledge. It's not unusual, really, people to already have settled so set up, so by themselves somethings in order to keep living and yeah.
So, what happened in the area of Kakhovka dam, for instance, is that as a backup supply. The government and international agencies identified groundwater but to my knowledge and then that was already my understanding while I was in Ukraine. There were not many data about groundwater there really, and it was really hard to implement geophysics. Being the area close to the frontline. We couldn't fly drones, of course, or helicopters, but even we couldn't go there on the field. So, we didn't have easy access there. Probably it's the connection among different agencies, the government and water utilities that consent.
So right now, to find out information and to get a general understanding about the context before, as you mentioned, as we mentioned, there's a demographic issue in Ukraine. It came to my mind that might not be obvious to think about this. I think it wouldn't be so for me, but this directly affects the management and water supplies.
Besides the demographic issue, so many men have to join the army. And although of course the government tries to protect specific roles, which are functional or needed for infrastructure to keep functioning it's remarkable. So, the impact that the loss of human resources, the loss of knowledge and skills has on the management of complex infrastructures in Ukraine, as well as in Syria, or in any place I happen to work and where infrastructures were actually developed. So yeah, so this happened in Ukraine as well. It was hard for us to find hydrogeologists in Ukraine. It was hard for us to find drillers. And of course, willing to move in an area where anything can happen.
[00:10:47] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so those challenging from all sides. Yeah, right. I hadn't really even thought about, the loss of manpower and stuff because they're fighting, and so you don't have probably lost a lot of engineers and all of those people. I hadn't thought about that, but when I was looking up Peter Gleick has a database on water conflict chronology.
And it was really nice, very detailed description of all of the issue impacts on water from conflict in Ukraine. And I think as early as 1941, the first dam that was built in the mid-thirties and then bombed in 41 by the Russians. So, it's been going, these sorts of things have been going on for a long time.
And the Kakhovka Dam, you mentioned, that held the reservoir stored about almost 20 cubic kilometers of water before it was destroyed. And that's most people in the U. S. they use the term million-acre feet. One-million-acre feet is about 1.2 cubic kilometers. So, the units are similar.
So, when the dam burst then you lost a lot of water and that flooded all of the surrounding regions, but then groundwater levels also dropped a lot because you lowered the base level. So, maybe you can describe how you had to drill deeper to get the groundwater.
[00:12:06] Mario Bianco: So, while I was in Ukraine, we started the study. So, we didn't drill, but the purpose was to start to actually drill, my assignment ended. Yeah. But to understanding based on feedback that we received from the water utilities so in the area from governmental actors. Water levels in existing boreholes dropped and as many boreholes actually had no water anymore.
And this I suppose made even more difficult to estimate the cost of drilling. Cause one at that point would be like, be supposed to drill deeper. And yeah, there were plenty of consequences of the destruction of the dam. For instance, there were vast areas downstream from the dam covered through by minefields.
And water would, displaced the mines, make the demining more complicated. And so, this area, became even less accessible than what already they used to be before. And because we mentioned about borehole drilling now, so perhaps something which a researcher or someone working in the private sector here in Europe so, for instance, might not think it's that in no profit despite the fragile context and the challenging situation, there are some strict financial constraint that also apply to large UN agencies and NGOs. For instance, we would drill a borehole doing a study and then we would call a contractor to drill, and perhaps the same contractor who did the study, so that if the study is poorly done, we penalize one contractor, that's less headache for everyone.
But in non profit, it might be harder to do this, or it might require a variety of justifications because in terms of finance, and this is already a big part of the job, everything should be well justified, and everything should be done according to a proper procedure. And everything which doesn't correspond to that procedure has to be justified and explained to non-technical people that might not understand our vocabulary, our issues, et cetera.
For instance, it might not be allowed, the contractor who did the study, to also drill. This is something which in non profits often, so it doesn't happen. And if it happens, then it should be explained to the donor, to the government, which provided the money, etc. Why this happened? Why it is these exceptions?
Oh, for instance there's a very limited range of variability in the cost of contracts. So, contract cost is a big thing, really. So, if we budgeted money for drilling down to 100 meter and the borer finally requires to drill to 200-meter, this is not an obvious change, really. Once we do a contract, we should be more or less sure about that, oh, it might be extremely time consuming to edit contracts, to edit costs, et cetera.
And yeah. And actually, to deal with financial constraints, which are a part of the job as we work with someone else's money, often happens to be more challenging than the context. In itself, in Ukraine, for instance, in many areas, we were supposed to work for drilling aquifers or groundwater might happen to be in a fracture aquifer at depth.
Particularly because the superficial aquifers might not provide, might not be able to provide water of a proper quality for drinking. So, not being able to run much geophysics, not having much information about the place there I believe that a good approach might be to drill exploratory bores.
So, to drill some of them and see what's going on under the surface. But that also might be challenging in terms of finance. How may we explain to a donor that we drill a borehole without keeping the borehole and without extracting the water? There's a variety of themes which are probably obvious to anyone who deals with water or did this job for some time.
[00:16:15] Bridget Scanlon: But I guess Mario, you would think you have enough challenges with the providing water in these emergency situations that you wouldn't have to deal with the bureaucracy of worrying about a budget or worrying about a contract and everything. So, I think it's nice that you highlight that, in addition to all the other constraints in these crisis areas, that you also have to deal with these mundane things that we think about in trying to. It's hard for me to imagine, you had almost 20 cubic kilometers of water in the reservoir, how you could try to replace the water use with groundwater?
Drilling wells, how many wells did you end up drilling or were you successful in drilling?
[00:16:57] Mario Bianco: Me? I didn't really. I'm saying, so we started the study. There was a plan from the government, which I believe in, it is still there. I didn't receive updates anyway to drill. I don't remember how many to provide water for different settlements. Basically, so drinking water and for what I recall, I don't, I may not be sure about it, but the focus was on drinking water.
So, irrigation, et cetera might have been dealt with as a separate issue. And something which is also interesting in my opinion about that is that, so Ukraine has a solid legislation, environmental legislation in terms of groundwater exploitation and drilling. It is hard really to drill in Ukraine.
Perhaps it is hard to drill in Britain as well. So, I guess, there's always a variety of steps, but even authorities, I believe, might not think about the complexity of these things until the problem really arises. So, for us, it took quite some time to understand the legislation and to understand how we navigated the legislation, because the government, of course, tried to and the help to release some waivers you say, yeah, for so I live in Oxford, but I am not from Oxford as you can get my accent.
Anyway, yeah. So, to facilitate a bit the work for several agencies, but it was not clear for us if these waivers would apply to us as well, or only to governmental actors and this kind of things. Despite the context and perhaps the most obvious challenges that might relate to war, and the fragile social situations.
There's a number of issues which come though on top of it. Plus, we deal with engineers in our team that all of them connect with drama. So, within their own families it might not be so straightforward even for us to ask an engineer to move from one oblast, one region of Ukraine to another.
There's plenty of checkpoints. They must have documents. They might be stopped. They might be inquired why they didn't join the army. It's very hard. In Ukraine, it was even harder for me, the context is in Syria. So not for me because I was international stuff, but also for our staff.
Who was from the place, and every day the human part and the challenges which each engineer experience in her, his personal life. Of course, men, not obvious.
[00:19:38] Mario Bianco: And in my opinion, this is a key feature of managers. So, in the sector to be aware about the perspective the large part of our staff actually lives the experience and have to go to work. So, every morning.
[00:19:53] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. That's very interesting. You don't think about these things, the environmental regulations, the costs, and the budget constraints and all of these different things on top of the actual real situation, where you're just trying to get some work done and then engineers trying to come from other regions and documents. And I guess Oblast is a kind of a state is like a state and so going from one state to the next if they have to travel and documents and all of that sort of thing, that's just incredible.
You work in the WASH sector water, sanitation, and hygiene. And so, sanitation is also a big part of that. And so, with the loss of the hydroelectricity, and Kakhovka Dam was providing about 350 megawatts of hydroelectricity. So, with the loss of that electricity, then did you lose water treatment and was it difficult to treat water?
Or even sewage treatment and all of that sort of thing. Was that a big issue for you there?
[00:20:55] Mario Bianco: Definitely. The delivery of services had to be remanaged. So, from the government and so available resources were so redistributed among essential services. I suppose that who mainly is experienced the long hours of power cuts were people so in their own homes the government tried to keep running the essential services.
And it must be said that so as part of the warfare of the Russian warfare, so what the treatment station, water pumping station, electric supplies are by purpose hit in order to make life difficult for persons that are part of all the secondary effects of shelling, that might break pipelines, et cetera.
But still, so we work on sewage as well. The projects that I have been involved in concerning sewage were about replacing sand for sewage, sewage treatment facilities, as far as I remember, or replacing pumps. The focus was mainly on water, but sewage as well. Yeah. And in terms of hygiene, we had a unit that used to distribute soap.
And so, hygiene as articles particularly in places close to the frontline in the immediate afterwards of an attack. So, for instance, people might have to leave their houses. They might be welcome in places that are already organized to welcome displaced persons. And some of the articles that are essential at the beginning and that might not be available are really the hygiene articles.
And those were part of the job, really, to ship them. And there were post services in Ukraine as well that provided this work for humanitarian. So, they facilitate by making available their own means, the transport of packages from our stock to the frontline.
Yeah, we, in terms of what should we experience, so the world range of services really, but mainly.
[00:22:59] Bridget Scanlon: Right. Yeah. And so, you mentioned a couple of important points. In addition to the six or the 7 million refugees that went to other countries in Europe, mostly the surrounding countries, you have a lot of internally displaced people. So before in 2021, when I was looking at the data, there were less than a million, about 0.8 million internally displaced people's IDPs. And then that increased to almost 6 million in ‘22 but then dropped again to 3.7 million in 23 and 24. Then you have to manage all of those people. Are they generally clustered in sort of camp situations or, how are these organized these IDPs?
[00:23:41] Mario Bianco: Yeah, the government organized a specific structure to welcome displaced persons. So, Russia, the Russian army reached the outskirts of Kyiv in 2022. The situation was quite unpredictable and a large part of population from Eastern Ukraine moved to the western part and then moved back to their houses.
Whenever so the war actually concentrated in a specific part of the country. And this explains the rapid population movement. Now I was not involved myself into, so following up on this but the agency I was working for provided services for structures that would welcome persons.
And I should say that the Ukrainian government was quite organized, in my opinion in this.
[00:24:32] Bridget Scanlon: yeah, it's the capital city. And you sent me a little while ago, you sent me a dashboard that had a multi-sector WASH data on it for Ukraine multi-sector needs assessment, which I thought was very interesting in describing water availability and the sources of water.
And I guess when I was looking at it, it represented the period from June to August 23, 2023, and indicated that the water source is about 40 percent piped water, almost 50 percent boreholes and wells. And I guess this is for potable water total in Ukraine and 13 percent bottled water.
So, it's a really nice dashboard to describe treatment options, whether there was a scarcity issue and those sorts of things.
[00:25:22] Mario Bianco: Yeah. Big cities or urban settlements are normally well served through water networks. But the situation is quite different in urban, in rural Ukraine for what I've seen. Quite basic wells water infrastructures might be the only existing thing there. And even before the beginning of the war, anyway in the status of water supplies in urban settlements in Ukraine I suppose it was already fragile because of large water leakages.
To prepare for my assignment, I read a few documents I didn't find, so I didn't find very many available online, but I recall I read a report from the World Bank that was prepared sometime in the nineties, I think, and it's already mentioned leakages in some urban settlements above 30, if not 50%.
And because of what the treatment required today as well for water to flow into urban networks. This issue, the public health, poor efficiency of water networks implies massive additional cost for the water utilities that have to spend money in big quantities of aluminum sulfate or chlorine, whatever is needed for water treatment, and these quantities are wasted, and I suppose we are talking about tons of chemicals.
This term which is used in these circumstances it's about non-revenue water, so water, so which is not-
[00:26:50] Bridget Scanlon: Nobody paying for us.
[00:26:52] Mario Bianco: Like I said, we saw by the users, and this goes on top of several challenges for the water utilities that also have to pay their own team. They have to procure the chemicals.
However, in this fragile situation. Now we're talking about Ukraine. It could be anywhere, really whenever. The government or whatever actor is in power for any reason, doesn't provide enough to utilities to keep running the infrastructures where ideally this is where the international communities step in and make available funds to international agencies to keep running the system in cooperation with the government, of course.
So, everything is done with the constant dialogue with the actor. We’re supposed to manage the service. And yeah, so that's really, so the mental part of our work, really.
[00:27:43] Bridget Scanlon: Right. Right. So, I guess a lot of the issues that you mentioned are issues we have in underdeveloped, and developed, and all countries really. So, pipe leaks and all that sort of thing. and that represents a big loss of energy because the energy used to treat that water, then you're losing it without using it.
So, in addition to the water loss, then there's the energy loss. And then you mentioned all of the chemicals that you need to use to treat it. And then that goes down the drain, but you also bring up an important point between urban settings that have networks and everything, and then rural settings.
So, we have the same issue in the U.S. The difference between small community water systems in rural areas not having the funds to deal with the contamination, or drought or other issues, versus urban areas that have funds to maintain systems. And it sounds like from the World Bank report that they were already fragile, even before the war, so it wasn't starting off from a good point.
[00:28:45] Mario Bianco: Yeah, exactly. And in Ukraine, there is one more thing that I was about to forget. Their heating system as well works through water. Like water is the means used for heat transfer which is the same in my country in Southern Europe, so however which means that a part of the work of the agency I used to work for was about rehabilitating and keep running heating system which were systematically, which are systematically targeted.
And this implied providing means for water treatment, because the water for being used as a means for heat transfer has to be of a certain chemistry installing pipes pumps, et cetera. So this was for me the first time to actually witness work on this heating system done, to that scale in Ukraine, really.
[00:29:36] Bridget Scanlon: So, I guess I know this is not part of WASH, but another aspect is food supplies, and food security and all of that. So, Ukraine is a wheat basket of Europe, supplies wheat and maize and oil seeds to many different countries. So, I was looking at the international trade data and it was up to 55 billion in 2021 and then dropped to 38 billion in ‘22 after the war.
But food is a big part of that. And 26 billion for food exports in ‘22. And then oil seeds, a big part of that and cereals and stuff. So, it may not have impacted Ukraine so much because they produce so much food, but it probably impacted the exports and the countries that were dependent on Ukraine more.
[00:30:28] Mario Bianco: Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. So that's good news. So, on this side I guess it was last week or a couple of weeks ago. So recently anyway, Ukraine's managed to ship large quantity sort of grain to Syria. Despite the war, they still managed to run the production and so this is an effort of the world, which I think should be considered really.
So, the global effect of Ukraine. Not being able to produce as much as it used in the past, not being able to export, particularly because the navigation of ships in the Black Sea, it's a way harder now than what it used to be in the past, etc. And this war doesn't only concern Ukraine, really.
So, it has an impact, particularly on countries which might have a limited capacity to produce enough food for their own consumption. And they had big quantities received from Ukraine. This was studies was published,etc. So, anyone might want to have access to this kind of information.
[00:31:30] Bridget Scanlon: Lorenzo Rosa had a paper indicating that less than 2 percent of agricultural production was irrigated. So, I don't think irrigation was a big part of the production, which is good, but there's potential to expand it in the future.
[00:31:47] Mario Bianco: Oh, definitely. Yeah. So, there's a lot of water in Ukraine on that. There's no doubt.
[00:31:52] Bridget Scanlon: Just to finish talking about Ukraine, how do you see rehabilitation happening there? It's just such a long road. It's so challenging.
[00:32:02] Mario Bianco: The situation is so very fragile. And unpredictable. So, we don't know. So, what could happen? So, in the future however, particularly the closest to the frontline, for instance were thinking of how to build resilience. So perhaps how to rehabilitate the former boreholes, etc. In order to have for themselves enough water in case anything happened to the existing water supply, etc. Ukraine. So, there are already projects of development. So, something that might not aim at restoring the service as it used to be in the past, or just providing them in the mind, the minimum quantity of water.
There were also projects that aimed at stepping up standards in order to bring them closer to, or just the same to the Euro is European one. And I suppose this happens mainly. So, in the Western part of the country in areas far from hostilities, but it is happening now so I think it is something peculiar of the context.
And this mix between emergency response development upgrades however, the situation is unpredictable now as it used to be years ago. But from my point of view, I really so admire the commitment of the water utilities in Ukraine and the team we have to work with. I had the chance to participate in a meeting of this local network of water utilities.
And for me to sit with them, to talk to them, understand the issues and try to with them to design projects, which are not standalone projects, but they work together in order to organically build up a program. So, to converge into a unique scope that for me was the best part of the assignment really.
And so, and everywhere. And just for sharing something more personal. I think that working on infrastructures in general but particularly working on water. In my opinion, give a chance to someone to really step into the life of persons and understand. So, understand. So, depends. I, so I may not understand everything, or if I understand a bit, I'm already happy, but at least to observe some dynamics, which are anything but obvious, really.
And we spoke about infrastructures. That contribution to the international aid system is normally called assistance. So technical assistance, the delivery of technical service. But in my opinion, this is not the core and should not be the core of international aid. So, as engineers or technicians or whatever we are we work on a specific component of the program, but we always work with non-technical persons that have a more political role, which is essential in international aid, really were the ones who relate with authorities should understand the context in its own complexity and really drive operations. It might be. Something else perhaps that was saying that is obvious to anyone who worked in humanitarian aid, I think, but maybe not so obvious outside is that, so infrastructures have additional meanings in a fragile context. It is not just the water network or the well or whatever is, whatever comes with it sometime.
An agency might be able to deliver a variety of services to a certain area where the access was denied at first, just because at first that agency managed to convince the community to letting them rehabilitate in a while. And trust is built step by step. Of course, this was not the case in Ukraine, in areas controlled by the government, we had access.
But in other contexts, it's way more challenging. For instance, Afghanistan. While the American soldiers were still there, the access in certain areas was really hard, and trust had to be built over the years with the different stakeholders in order to be able to deliver medical service, et cetera.
And maybe everything started from water. So yeah.
[00:36:07] Bridget Scanlon: So yeah, I guess it's really nice that you describe it's not just technical, it's social, it's cultural and it all fits together. And it's nice how you describe that, maybe they will be more resilient in the future after this situation. This is a dreadful situation, having backup water supplies, having backup energy water treatment and all of those so that they're more resilient in the future.
So maybe we will jump to Syria, where you were.
[00:36:36] Mario Bianco: Let's do it.
[00:36:38] Bridget Scanlon: For many years in 2021 and 2017. And it's been in the news recently because of the change in politics. So maybe you can describe that a little bit. The political situation, how that has evolved over time, and then your work there.
[00:36:54] Mario Bianco: Yeah, just to give a general context in 2011, various populations in several countries took part to the so-called Arab Spring. So, I don't know where this term came from. So anyway, and a change of governments happened as a consequence of this in Syria, there was a dictatorship, a very harsh dictatorship, and the dictatorship repressed the opposition at first, and actually, the first protest violently.
The response of the government was extremely violent, and according to some voices that I heard, even more violent than what many young Syrians back then would expect. The war evolved so over time, and other groups step in and we heard about ISIS, of course, and other groups that were inspired by different thoughts.
But at the beginning, the protests were really for a change in regime. And they started in Daraa in southern Syria. And which is an area where I had the chance to work in really. So, the first time I was in Syria was in 2017. And I worked along the coastline and that area, that's the area where many working in the government of Syria back then used to come from the family of Assad.
Used to come from one of the cities. And yeah, violence happened there already as well, but the war was mainly in other parts of the country. That area always stayed under the control of the government. So, it was a place which received a large number of internally displaced persons from other places. Aleppo, Homs, etc.
The main purpose of our projects there really was about resizing the water infrastructures. Like, water infrastructure being designed for a certain number of users happened at some point quite drastically to serve a larger number of persons. And then we had to cover up, and also, we worked on rehabilitating summer houses close to the beach.
So, holiday houses that became houses for IDP as well as so medical facilities, et cetera. Now, something particular of the context there for me was that, as I said, many working in the government. So back then it used to come from that area. So it was not unusual really to receive phone calls or a strong push for running projects in villages, which didn't seem to be in need or not particularly, but maybe because someone in the government related to them. So to these places, and I'm saying this because the purpose was about drawing a portrait of the daily life of engineers working in fragile context.
This is part of the dynamic, really. To filter out the request and to deal diplomatically with different actors that on one side might push for projects, but on the other side are the ones who give the possibility to international agencies to work in in certain areas. And it is clear then whatever the government is harsh and whatever dictatorship is in place; the government might not care about giving any kind of service to their citizens.
The negotiation is harsh. And nothing is obvious, really. It's not obvious that entire villages do not receive any water. We receive a permission so we receive services from an international agency. It is not obvious that the access is given to the international agencies to deliver aid.
This really goes through plenty of talks and negotiation. And I suppose there's something about trust in there. It's a complex thing, but so it's a key part of the job, really.
[00:40:28] Bridget Scanlon: Right. In contrast to Ukraine, where the population was declining because of the low birth rate, population in Syria had been increasing a lot since, I see from the 80s on, or maybe even earlier. But went from like 10 million in 1980 to maybe 23 million in 2011. And then you mentioned Arab Spring, and then it was under Assad's son Bashir I guess, who was in power.
And so, pretty tough dictatorship. And then the Arab Spring in 2011, then full blown conflict then by 2013, and so on. Population decreased a lot of refugees, so I think I was looking up some of the data of about 3 million refugees in Turkey from Syria and about a 0.75 million in Lebanon and also a similar number in Jordan and a lot in Germany also.
So, a lot of refugees leaving Syria to go into other countries. And then in addition to that, I guess you've got a lot of almost 6 million internally displaced people, yeah. So, it's a difficult situation. But also, looking at energy generation. So, a lot of large reduction in electricity production from 2011 on.
[00:41:43] Mario Bianco: And that would affect water treatment and all of those things also in providing water, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. So what the treatment is an interesting aspect of the war in Syria. Was that so chlorination was hard to implement during the war because chlorine could be used to produce chemical weapons. Humanitarian actors had a waiver for importing chlorine into Syria.
That was really a key task for us to import chloring and to grant the continuous water treatment even for large cities. I've been involved in a project in Latakia. And of course, I say I, so because I'm talking, but so I really like to underline. It's always a teamwork. And the job is done by the Syrian engineers.
The international staff has a role really, but it's a teamwork really.
[00:42:33] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And I guess it emphasizes how all of these things are connected. So, in electricity generation, water treatment, water availability, water quality, sewage treatment, all of these things are connected and impacted then by war and- power cuts.
[00:42:51] Mario Bianco: And so whatever, there used to be villages on the coastline in 2017, that would receive water a few hours every few weeks. And we had been working that replacing horizontal pumps for re pumping water. So up the mountain etc. This, of course, reflected on the daily life of persons. And when I come back in Syria in 2021, then the war had settled. So more or less in large part of the country, the government had retaken control. I had the feeling that the economy was much worse than in 2017. And they also power cut, even in Damascus used to be much longer. I can't tell if this is a trend, but it could be.
In the afterwards of a war, whenever the light of the scene, shutdown and attention moves elsewhere. Where this is a time where international funds also drop. And this is a time when the economy might collapse. And this is what happened in Syria. Yeah, so I promised myself to speak about water, so I will.
So otherwise, we have a second podcast. Yeah.
[00:44:01] Bridget Scanlon: Which is, our colleague Saeed Mhanna, who is working on the fact that agriculture greatly decreased as a result of the war in Syria. And then so groundwater depletion was not as much. And groundwater levels rose, and springs started flowing again and things like that.
And in the Orontes Basin that he was working on. So that's an interesting aspect.
[00:44:24] Mario Bianco: So, you know something about, so water, which I think it's interesting because yeah, anyway, so people started to use in the outskirts of Damascus and in many areas, sewage for irrigation. Because that was the water available. And in the outskirts of Damascus, there's also a large sewage treatment plant whose functionality was interrupted, I think, or massively decreased as an effect of the war.
That's the story behind anyway, and this created a larger groundwater contamination in the outskirts of Damascus. So, where people used to drink from the same aquifer, so it was not usable anymore. And water supplies had to be developed in order to restore the service. Now just to give the portrait, entire cities or towns around Damascus were empty as a consequence of the war. I've been working in some of them, only a few families started to come back.
And these few families, it makes me think in terms of resilience, how they manage to have some electricity, some water, just by themselves, by reconnecting to some boreholes in the areas or building up some how you say so electric networks, et cetera. Because you mentioned so electricity, a common thing that I noticed is that it's a transformer that normally are coupled with submersible pumps are normally removed and the circuits inside are being stolen.
And I don't think one could make much money out of it. I don't know. But I think so are easy to steal. So, the replacement of transformers was a large part really of our work in order to restore the water supplies. So, in a country as the Syria was what the electric supply is also complex in terms of high, medium and low voltage the existence of transformer, the existence of station able to transform the power from high to medium and all these places.
So many of these places were destroyed. Okay, so what I want to say is that, so it's, so it is not just water, electricity, they all go together, and they all serve the purpose to restore essential services, in this case water. So, nothing, it's a box in itself really. And this is, the idea behind naming a department Water and Habitat for the International Committee of the Red Cross in order to be able to deliver a variety of services that integrate with each other.
[00:46:53] Bridget Scanlon: And have you heard anything recently about, since the regime changed recently, you think many people would be returning to Syria now?
[00:47:03] Mario Bianco: I read news. Actually, yeah. So, I read UN report. So right before this podcast but the results were based on service to my understanding. So, I read quickly. So yeah, it seems that anyway, a large number of persons are willing to return. And of course, uncertainties exist.
I think so it's always good to be positive. So sometimes it might look naïve or whatever, but so for me, Syria was a bright example of resilience really was a very intense and constructive human experience. So yeah, I think, so this is something which I learned in Syria, as well as in Ukraine.
[00:47:48] Bridget Scanlon: Right, right. So, I guess it just for the listeners. Ukraine is about the size of Texas, and Syria is about the size of California.
[00:47:56] Mario Bianco: I've been in California on holidays. I didn't really think about the dimension of the place, but yeah.
[00:48:05] Bridget Scanlon: So, I guess the last area I would like to just cover briefly with you, Mario, and our guest today is Mario Bianco, who works for international consultancies and develop in many different crisis situations, WASH sector. So, you work in East Africa, you worked in Somalia in 2011, 2012, and also in some refugee camp in Kenya and nearby Kenya.
So maybe you can describe the situation there and what you were doing. Thank you.
[00:48:34] Mario Bianco: Yeah. I worked in the Dadaab refugee camp in 2012. Yeah, in summer 2012. It was in the afterwards of a dramatic drought, which affected the Eastern horn of Africa. So other droughts happened afterwards. That one was already a massive one, and back then the DadAab used to be the largest refugee camp in the world. As far as I remember, there used to be more than 350,000 persons. When I went there it was already in the afterwards of the big crisis. So, it was not much in the news anymore. But people were still there. And we used to work on water supplies. The initial purpose of our presence there, I was working for an NGO, was to work in the refugee camp.
But then despite the massive number of international agencies, the emergency, et cetera insecurity was remarkable there. Some colleagues were kidnapped, and release afterwards anyway, but because of that, we had to change plans. And we mainly work with the host community in that area.
That experience was for everyone who used to be so involved there. And first of all, for the Kenyan and Somali staff that used to work for us and for the refugees was really intense and challenging in terms of negotiation with the host community that people living in the outside who always wanted their own share because of the vast presence of international organizations, because of insecurity.
So, because of the threat that was on so any of us in moving out of the compound, we used to move from Nairobi to the refugee camp in a convoy and the first car of the convoy was a car of the Kenyan army. They used to go very slow to assess the road and to detect the presence of unexploded devices.
This is not a paradox. It's like that in so many places, but it probably sounds as a paradox that actors that are there to delivery are actually the international presence. So, under threat and yeah, we work in schools and the hospital for the rehabilitation of water supplies and latrines.
And other agencies, the majority of agencies kept working in the refugee camps fixing borders in an area on the border, which is between Kenya and Somalia. So, in a desert, really so that was the job. And I've been working in Somalia as well in Somaliland. which is an independent country.
So, the factor in the north in Hargeisa[MB1] (the capital of Somaliland), but then also Mogadishu and in other areas of Somalia. And in 2012 they asked me to participate in an assessment in Wajir. An area of Kenya border in Somalia in the moment where the drought reached its how you call it? It's a top point.
Then, so Muslim[MB2] , but big, that's the word. Yeah. And yeah. And that assessment only lasted a couple of weeks. So, something like but for me was one of the most intense chapters of my whole experience. There were persons moving from Somalia into Kenya without anything, really.
They were collecting resins from the tree in order to resell it and get some money. All the animals in the surrounding of this town Wajir, which is known in Kenya were dead. So, I remember a few certain animals, a few cows, which survived being fed through paper and carton.
There were skeletons of animals. So, on the road, I remember. So, giraffes were the few animals that really survived, because they managed to eat the leaves on the top of trees. And we were staying in a guest house in the center of this town where everything was available constructs could cross the road and come, but the surrounding of the town already was in a dramatic situation.
And we ran the assessment, and we went there and then the common understanding back then was that, so it hasn't rain for a few seasons, so there is no water, and that's it. But something that so raised so many thoughts so in my head for several years was that while we were there, we saw the most of the boreholes being non-functional, they were broken.
There was no fuel, but the fuel wells were functioning. They were powered through windmills. And they were used for irrigation and there was water. At the same time, the government of Kenya and then eventually I think also international agencies started to ship water through water trucking.
There used to be no water tanks, no places able to receive water. Back then I recall people collecting water with plastic sheets. So, there was no preparedness. And I started to think about the availability of groundwater back then. And I know that more recently studies were done through geophysics, GRACE, et cetera.
I will not step into this because it's not my field, but so I've read them. And I think so they started to give some explanations of what happened. But also, I started to think about drought early warning systems. So, this is something so often so debated. So, I had the debate during a summer school in Delft (Netherlands).
So last summer with a professor and anyway, we had different opinions. From the perspective of a hydrologist, perhaps early warning would be very hard to implement because weather the forecast spans a limited time. And so, I see the point, but something that so I had in mind back then in Wajir was that the price of food was already a massive indicator that something was happening already before. Before the beginnings of the drought, what was the story? The price of meat in the market increased at no, decreased at first, at the beginning of the dry season, before it was such an emergency. Because so there was an abundance of meat and then decreased afterwards. But when meat was not available anymore in the market, the crisis was there since already quite some time.
So, I don't really have an answer. But my thought was always like, groundwater was there as a backup system, but boreholes were not functional. And the drought and the emergency were already there before many could actually flag it up.
[00:55:00] Bridget Scanlon: Right. And so, I think now the famine early warning system network, that Chris Funk and his group they provide up to six months warning of upcoming droughts, and then they get agencies to cooperate so that they make sure that famine that happened in 2011
[00:55:17] Mario Bianco: That's good.
[00:55:18] Bridget Scanlon: 2012 in the eastern horn of Africa is not repeated.
And so now, the agencies collaborate and work together and provide funding to avoid that sort of calamity. I really appreciate your painting a portrait for us of what it is like to work in a humanitariancontext. And all of the things that we don't think about, WASH in the WASH sector.
Working with governments, working with regulations, working with contracts and financing. And then the refugee host community interaction and those sorts of things. So, a lot of things that, in addition to the major issues that you're dealing with, so a lot piled on top. So, I hugely admire you and really-
[00:56:01] Mario Bianco: Not me. So, there's thousands of persons that do the same job, really. So, thousands.
[00:56:06] Bridget Scanlon: I think you are doing amazing work and I'm glad that you took the time to describe some of these things for the listeners and for me and I wish you the best in your future work. And thank you so much for joining us and good luck with your future work.
[00:56:25] Mario Bianco: Thank you so much, thank you!
