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M. Adank, B. Belete, M. Jeths: Costs and benefits of multiple uses of water: a case from Ethiopia
This paper presents a study conducted under the RiPPLE project1, with the objective to provide better insight in the costs and benefits of multiple use water services. In this study, the costs related to the provision of water services and the benefits related to water use were analysed for two cases in the East Haraghe zone, Ethiopia, each taking a different path towards multiple use services. In the Ido Jalala case, domestic water supply services were upgraded to enable small-scale irrigation, while in the Ifa Daba case, irrigation services were upgrades to also cater for domestic water use. In both cases, water was used for multiple uses by the community members, regardless of the water services provided. The study shows that in the studied cases, the benefits of multiple use easily outweigh the costs involved in providing water services. It also shows that with relatively small additional costs, single use water services can be upgraded to multiple use water services, which facilitate multiple uses, bringing along relatively high additional benefits. [authors abstract]
Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) has gained international recognition as an appropriate framework for meeting the challenges of water scarcity. IWRM is fully supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), where experts asked themselves how they and their partners could learn together and in an innovative and forward-looking way from the wealth of existing experience in water and watershed management. This question triggered an initiative named “Water, Land and People – Voices and insights from three continents”, which was implemented in Bolivia, India and Mali, facilitated by Intercooperation. In each of the three countries, a learning group of 12 to 15 participants from different sectors – farmers’ and water users’ associations, project teams, NGOs, private sector, government, SDC staff – jointly defined a learning agenda and deepened topics tools like story-telling to ensure a high level of authenticity while capturing experiences. Participants and facilitators appreciated this innovative tool for enabling them to break with the usual formal setting, see complex issues from previously unperceived angles, and challenge fixed mindsets.
The learning groups concluded that the learning process was most effective and motivating when intermediate results were immediately put to use as inputs for decision-making in other ongoing initiatives (as opposed to working in isolation to achieve a final product). In India, the learning group was consulted by the authorities and thus contributed to the elaboration of revised watershed guidelines. The three learning groups exchanged and presented their preliminary findings during the 4th World Water Forum in Mexico City in March 2006.
Moreover, each learning group presented its findings in an innovative and attractive manner, by putting video, audio and power-point presentations, short stories and comics into interactive presentation CDs. These country-specific products were then partially translated and assembled to form a global product available on DVD as well as on the Internet (www.waterlandpeople.net). This final product provides a rich resource base and is meant to be used by many actors on different levels, ranging from local stakeholders (e.g. water users’ associations and authorities), the SDC and partner institutions to policy-makers and the wider public.
This year’s case study award goes to Nigel Murimiradzomba from Plan Zimbabwe. Out of the submitted abstracts, his was considered the best and will now be developed into a full case study. His work deals with one of Plan’s programmes where the provision of drip irrigation kits was part of a rural water supply programme. This allowed farmers to also use water for gardening activities. The drip kits reduce water losses and enable better use of limited water supplies. One of his key findings is to link such programmes with production-market chain linkages i.e. input/seed suppliers, suppliers of technology and market outlets, so as to optimize the benefits of the programme.
Paper presented by Sally Suttonat the 5th RWSN Forum, Accra, Ghana, 2006.
Self supply is a rural water strategy rather than just low cost technologies. It builds on the largely unrecognised but great investment rural people have already made in their own water supplies, especially at household level. Particularly in areas where comunal approaches are of quetionable sustainability, people can be encouraged to improve their own supplies rathet than remaining dependent on the timing and policies of donors and governments. [authors abstract]
This is the background note for the session on MUS, sanitation and reuse for the MUS Thematic Group Meeting, Delft, 12-13 Feb 2007.
The multiple use services approach has been gaining recognition in South Africa over the last few years, expressed in a range of policy, research, implementation and advocacy initiatives. In 2005 a national seminar was held on the theme. One of the concerns raised was that local government is the key to implementation, but they had so far been rather absent from the discussions. In a follow-up to the 2005 seminar, a second seminar was convened by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) and the MUS (Multiple Use Systems) project in partnership with WIN-SA (the Water Information Network of South Africa) and SALGA (the South African Local Government Association) on 25 October 2006. The objective of the seminar was to look at the implications for local government implementation of the mus approach. This focused on the guidelines for local government implementation of multiple use water services that DWAF is developing. Participants came from a cross-section of institutions: national government departments, provincial DWAF offices, local government, research institutions, NGOs and consultancies.
The importance of mus to realising goals of addressing poverty through water was emphasised. However, there are still no coherent, agreed upon, national definitions of multiple uses of water, that give clarity while leaving room for flexibility. It is agreed that livelihoods and Local Economic Development (LED) are at the heart of mus, and that the boundaries of that cannot be tightly set. Definitions can become an academic discussion, but are important as they have implications for mandates and for accounting and funding. Mapping of the different funding streams need to be combined to implement mus. This is complicated, as the agencies who administer them operate at different levels and with different procedures. Integrated Development Plans (IDPs), in theory, provide a mechanism for alignment between various agencies and plans, but in practice IDP processes are sometimes weak. IDPs could be the basis for assessing demand and needs for mus, considering supply issues, and enabling cooperative governance. Combining piped water supply with alternative water sources, especially rainwater harvesting, seems to provide the most practical way forward in the South African context. The lack of capacity at municipal level and how this may limit the implementation of mus which is a new and more demanding approach was raised as a concern. On the other hand, the integrated approach required for mus may also be an opportunity to achieve more impact and reduce poverty.
A range of activities were proposed including strengthened communication and advocacy and continuing the work on the guidelines for local government, especially in the area of financing mechanisms. This should be accompanied by the piloting multiple use initiatives in the context of municipal service delivery plans.
A recent Stockholm Environment Institute research project has looked at the patterns of domestic water use in rural and peri-urban areas in Vietnam, with a particular focus on micro enterprises undertaken in and around the household using domestic water supplies. The study took place in 7 provinces across Vietnam and involved over 100 households. The overall approach was based on conventional rapid participatory appraisal techniques, and included the use of interviews with key informants and households, focus group discussions, field observations and documentary analysis.
The study found that water had a significant role in productive activity in and around the home, both in production for household consumption and for income generation. The majority of households surveyed had a vegetable garden and/or were raising some type of livestock, usually pigs. Some of this food production was clearly for household consumption, thus increasing households’ food security, but some household crops were being cultivated exclusively for sale in the village market. Most families with more than 2 pigs were also selling pork.
Water was also crucial to other home-based income-generating activities (IGAs), particularly for those undertaken by female members of the household. The most common household IGA observed was the production of food products, and these enterprises were generally run primarily – and often entirely – by the women of the extended household. In many cases, the male head of household and older sons worked outside the household area, either farming or as wage labourers; working on their own, the women were able to produce food items for sale while having sufficient time to raise children and take care of the household domestic needs. This pattern held true in both rural and peri-urban areas and means that these activities are of great significance in gender as well as livelihoods terms.
Service-based businesses also offered specific benefits to female household members. A motorbike washing business in a peri-urban area of Thai Binh illustrated the advantages of this type of micro enterprise, both in terms of how it meshed with child-rearing and other household demands and with respect to the low level of investment and skills required. The female owner of the business washed five motorbikes in a typical day, noting it was something she did in her spare time; for start-up, all she had needed was a pump (for drawing water from the river), soap and an air pressure hose (for drying the bikes). The woman estimated her daily profit at VND10,000-15,000 (US$0.62-0.94): a significant sum of money to her, and earned from only an hour or two of work a day.
While many of these IGAs were not seen as sources of prosperity for rural households (in contrast, for example, to farming shrimp and fish, working in the city, or having equipment and machinery to run larger businesses), people did believe the additional income was essential to household security. There were also instances in which IGAs had been used to generate sufficient investment capital for households to move into more lucrative businesses. One family in Thai Binh, for example, had used profits from raising pork and producing rice wine to save enough money to join with two other families in buying a car for a taxi service. This family’s experience thus illustrates how water-dependent small-scale enterprise can serve as a ladder out of poverty.
From: ‘Productive uses of domestic water: a household-level study from Vietnam’ by Stacey Noel, John Soussan and Nguyen Phuong Thao. To be published in 'Sustainable Development of Water Resources, Water Supply and Environmental Sanitation: Proceedings of the 32nd WEDC Conference', November 2006. Contact Stacey Noel at the Stockholm Environment Institute for more information
The winning case study for the 2005 award was Laba Hari Budhathoki of NEWAH in Nepal. It described the broad benefits of an integrated water, sanitation and hygiene project that also included promotion of kitchen gardening. NEWAH used the award to undertake a follow-up study, and you can now read a full report on how gardening was promoted in the project, and the impacts.
This report present the findings of a case study on the productive use of water in urban areas that was carried out in the low-income neighbourhoods of Bhuj, Gujarat in Western India.
Summary
Nango Yusufu, 41, was desperate like many Jos residents practicing urban agriculture: he could not earn enough from his farm to meet even basic family needs. Nango became one of the urban farmers maximizing bio-retention areas or rain gardening in rock-free neighbourhoods since the bulk of Jos land mass is covered by extrusive crystalline rocks. His best time for maximum cropping is often the rainy season. It is only during this period that he could grow limited cultivable land. But whatever he harvested was soon eaten. Another period of scarcity would follow until the next rains.
In 2004, the Rural Africa Water Development Project (RAWDP) initiated a project to promote intensive Bio-retention gardening. The project also involved the turning of rock pavement into an area of native plants and vegetation to help lessen urban storm water runoff, as well as using these rock pavements as catchments for the rainwater runoff. The project taught farmers new gardening techniques and helped them harvest and store rainwater in small on-farm ditches. Through the training he received, Nango learned to keep his soil fertile by feeding it with organic matter, including manure from his cattle and household waste. By collecting, retaining and using rainwater, he realized that he could also grow vegetables for sale during the dry season when prices were high.
With help from RAWDP, Nango built two small-farm reservoir that he used to collect the hitherto wasted water runoff (from the rocks) during the rainy season. Today, using water from the reservoir for irrigation, he grows maize, cassava, groundnut, cabbages, carrots, onions and tomatoes. Both the animals and crops are benefiting from the available water. Other farmers have emulated Nango and are replicating his initiatives. It is also common scenes in Jos to see animals drinking from these ponds and people using the water from such ponds to do laundry, wash cars, concrete for construction and other useful activities. This development has reduced the stress on municipal water infrastructure in Jos. There is current moves by environmental groups in the City to propose a bill to the Plateau State House of Assembly on ways of making water from this alternate sources compulsory in construction and other activities.
Background
Jos is the capital of Plateau State, Nigeria. Jos is a City on a Plateau in the centre of Northern Nigerian and is a great hydrological centre or water shed with radial pattern of drainage in which rivers like Hadeija, Kaduna, Sokoto etc take their sources. The highest point of Jos Plateau is Shere Hills (1650m). Jos Plateau is massively made up of volcanic rocks. The annual rainfall in Jos varies from 131.75cm – 146cm. Highest rainfall is usually recorded in July.
Jos has a population of 1.2million people (1991 Census) who inhabit its total land area of 1322 square kilometers. Its near temperate climate makes it an ideal location for holidays. It presently boasts of a coterie of westerners and many Nigerians from other remote parts of Nigeria. It is a cosmopolitan urban area. The Plateau State Water Board (PSWB) has the mandate to supply water to the urban and semi-urban areas of the State, especially Jos. PSWB presently have a total of 4 schemes in the City, having a combined design capacity of 101mld and serving approximately 728,000 people. The schemes have a total of 15,700 connections and an estimated pipe length of 1,308km.
Usually, water supply from PSWB is irregular. Most residents are under-served hence source their water from water vendors (who often source their water from available boreholes and local streams), rainwater harvests and remote streams. Due to the cost of water and the difficulty of getting it, Jos is still far from the UN-Habitat quantity availability prescription of at least 20 litres per person per day. In Jos, water supply takes an undue proportion of an average household’s income i.e. more than 10% and with excessive effort and time. Many residents spend more than one hour a day for the prescribed 20litres per person per day. As at today, more than 54% of Jos population is lacking access to clean drinking water and a greater than this number lack access to improved sanitation and hygiene.
Growing urbanization and inequality in economic distribution in Jos has continued to constrain people’s access to a decent and healthy living. Most consumers cannot afford an economic rate for water supply because they lack adequate income to afford it. An immediate fall-out of the severe water situation in Jos is the harvesting of rainwater mostly through the use of structural measures eg. terrace, bunds, banks etc, channeling and storing same in concrete or rock ‘coated’ dams, ponds and pans etc. These ponds are today of great benefit to a greater number of the population who resort to it for their daily water needs especially the washing of motor cars, motorcycles, engineering construction, farm irrigation, laundry and animal husbandry etc.
Methods and results
The use of structural measures as a water conservation technology in Jos primarily include any of the following;
- Diversion ditch/cut off drain: a graded channel with a supportive ridge or bank on the lower side. It is constructed across a slope and designed to intercept surface runoff and convey it safely to an outlet or waterway.
- Retention/infiltration ditches: large ditches designed to catch and retain all incoming runoff and hold it until it infiltrates into the ground etc.
The methodologies being used in this study are basically those of the World Overview of Conservation Approach and Technologies (WOCAT). WOCAT, a Bern, Switzerland applied research organization has the vision of local soil and water conservation (SWC) knowledge and experience shared and used globally. Soil and Water Conservation (SWC) in the context of WOCAT is defined as: activities at the local level which maintain or enhance the productive capacity of the land in areas affected by or prone to degradation. SWC includes prevention or reduction of soil erosion, compaction and salinity; conservation or drainage of soil water, maintenance or improvement of soil fertility, etc. land in this context means a combination of water, soil and organic content or matter.
The WOCAT methodology was originally designed to focus mainly on soil erosion and fertility decline in erosion-prone areas. However, during development and application of the methodology, users asked to include other land degradation types such as salinization, compaction etc. A SWC Technology consists of one or more measures belonging to the following categories. Agronomic, vegetative, structural and management etc. Combinations of the above measures which are complimentary and thus enhance each other, are part of a SWC technology. Our approach here, defines the ways and means used to promote and implement a SWC Technology and to support it in achieving more sustainable soil and water use.
Our research method in cognizance of the above includes a combination of some of the following;
- formal surveys
- observations
- review of available information and previous projects
- semi-structured and ‘conversational’ interviews with key informants
- workshops
- group interviews with rain harvesters/soil and water conservation practitioners.
In exhausting these tools, the participatory Rapid Appraisal (PRA) is used as the primary investigation method. This method is being used in combination, triangulated and being cross checked against one another for maximum and reliable effects. The expected outputs/outcomes of over study on Water Retention Ditches are;
- Workshops and seminars to raise the importance of water retention ditches in agriculture, domestic water supply and sanitation etc.
- The development of pro-poor and gender sensitive governance framework, including policy options, norms, standards and management tool kits.
- Capacity building activities and demonstration of best practices on these technologies/approaches.
- Documented reports on the usefulness and productive use of water through these technologies/approaches.
Lessons Learnt
- Our study have shown that in most cases, that the construction and use of these structural measures to catch and store water ensures the availability of water all year round.
- The technology primarily involves integrated use of natural resources, mostly a local technology/approach and requires mostly indigenous and local technology.
- It was also observed that when these structures are constructed that a multiple benefits is often achieved. Some of these benefits include the control of soil erosion, flooding and drought. It creates employment as well as providing enough water for toilet and laundry (thus improving household hygiene and sanitation), farm irrigation, animal husbandry and self sufficiency on the land owner/user.
Recommendations
- To really sustain and improve on the gains being made from these technologies and approaches there is an urgent need to educate and build the capacity of local users.
- There is every need to promote best practices in this regard. This is necessary in order to guide against excessive water wastages pollution and land degradation.
- There is need to develop usage into a business model, such that the economic benefits can easily be quantified. This is very vital in up-scaling, replication and sustainability.
- A move towards immediate concise documentation of water supplied through rainwater catchments, transportation and storage is urgent. This is necessary in order to have data update that could easily serve as a reference and guide for policy and practice.
Since this type of structural infrastructure is assisting greatly, especially in providing alternative to supplies from the PSWB, there is every need to mainstream it into government framework and accord it maximum recognition. This is vital in order to improve and standardize it.