Two Decades of Experience on Nature-Based Solutions for Wastewater Treatment in Egypt, Palestine and Tunisia

Abstract

AbstractA few nature-based wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) designed in three arid countries, i.e. Egypt, Palestine and Tunisia are presented in this chapter, with a focus on the potential of treated wastewater reuse in line with circular economy concepts. All the presented systems are Horizontal Subsurface Flow (HF) Constructed Wetlands (CWs) (Egypt, Palestine), Vertical Flow (VF) CWs (Palestine), or multistage CWs combining HF and VF stages (Tunisia, Palestine). The CW WWTPs operate in the range of about 50–5000 PE and all cases include reuse as the main final destination of the treated effluents. Almost twenty years of direct experience in these hot or arid climate countries, lately extended to new projects in India, Indonesia, Cambodia, have generated some useful indications for the design of nature-based solutions (NBS) in such operational scenarios, duly reported in the following discussion.KeywordsNature-based solutionsConstructed wetlandsTreatment wetlandsSustainable sanitationSustainable water managementWastewater reuseCircular economyEgyptPalestineTunisia