Title
Floods, faeces & fishes: Managing island watersheds for sustainability and public health outcomes
Author(s)
Jenkins, A.
Published
2014
Publisher
EcoHealth
Abstract
Outbreaks of waterborne diseases are often seasonally associated with increased periods of rainfall and drought. In several Pacific island countries, including Fiji and Samoa, flooding events following cyclones and prolonged rainfall have been linked to outbreaks of waterborne bacterial disease (e.g. typhoid, leptospirosis, shigellosis), resulting in costly disaster response measures. Regional and local scale climate variability and the decreased ecological resilience of drainage basins interact to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme floods and droughts, contributing to disease emergence. Agency responses have been largely reactive, with little attention to basin scale preventative measures or attempt to evaluate downstream impacts on the ecosystem services (e.g. food fish security) on which Pacific islanders depend for their livelihoods and well being. Drawing on experience, literature and my preliminary research results, I discuss a transdiciplinary research framework for watershed health designed to understand the relationships between river basin modification and human health in the Pacific Island context. Within this research framework I investigate the hypothesis that typhoid re-emergence and decline in diversity of food fishes in Fiji have the same determinants, namely alterations to catchment land cover that result in increased flooding, sedimentation and associated pollution to waterways and the nearshore environment.

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PUB15166