Drought resilience - General issues
The list below are general issues to consider to increase the resilience of WASH systems.
Drought Cycle Management and project cycle
- Institutional - Introduce Drought Cycle Management into all NGO programming in drought-prone areas so that money is invested where it should be, rather than being diverted for emergencies.
- Institutional - Access donor funding that supports longer project durations for drought contexts the technical side of implementation not rushed.
Adopt and implement Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM)
- Institutional - Align plans across the whole water sector and other sectors that have an influence on water supply (e.g. the power sector) and demand for WASH services (e.g. planning departments)
Adopt principles of adaptive management in planning WASH approaches
- Institutional - In a complex and rapidly changing situation there can never be sufficient information to reach a settled ‘optimum’ decision. Hence, the WASH sector should put effort into planning approaches that are and supported by strong monitoring and information management systems, which allow for constant adaptation and the upgrading of plans and activities.
Strategy specific to pastoralist and agropastoralist areas
A water kiosk in Zambia's poor neighbourhoods. Photo: WaterSan Perspective.
- Environmental - Concentrate efforts on seasonal water points rather than perennial (e.g. those more directly varying with rainfall) and vary according to pasture spatial needs.
- Environmental - Reduce pressure on existing pastureland and water sources, and improve animal production through lower travel times by creating new seasonal water points in under-utilized areas of pasture, with maximum distance between sources of 30km, yet in areas of guaranteed peace.
- Environmental - Water points for pastoralists should be at least 5km out of towns, which avoids conflict and reduces waiting times.
- Technical - Increase number and size of appropriate dryland water sources (ponds, pans, berkeds, hafirs, rock catchments etc) for communities to phase their use through the year. Results include: less distance to walk in dry season, water stays for longer per site, cost of water might reduce, fewer animals die (meaning less cattle raiding and thus more stability)
- Technical - Avoid installation of permanent water sources – give priority to water harvesting structures.
Operation and maintenance
- Institutional - Concentrate on technologies that need less community management and less operation and maintenance. (See “Promote economic use” below.)
- Institutional - Where communal management is required, time is needed that goes beyond the average NGO project cycle (e.g. 33 months). In such situations, devote enough time to community mobilization and user group formation as these tend to be more sustainable.
- Financial - For communal managed systems, a good system of regulation or a clear audit process needs to be in place that the whole community is aware of.
Maximize and build on existing knowledge and resources
- Institutional - Plan WASH activities with, not for, local people. Listen to local people and consider their ability to sustain interventions.
- Institutional - Build on existing community drought coping mechanisms and local knowledge systems.
Demand-responsive approach and ownership of technology and structures
- Technical - Men and women should decide what technology & service levels they need, and location of facilities. Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) can help identify perceived needs and can result in better performing projects. Women should be actively involved.
- Technical - Encourage flexibility in design depending on PRA results. During technical design, the true participatory process allows continual learning and adjustment to go both ways – in this view, participation is not a concession by powerful outsiders but an essential process for project success.
- Institutional - Men and women should decide on management arrangements, which leads to them better able to cope with problems in times of stress. Women should be actively involved as they have a vested interest to make the system work (due to lower water collection times for example).
- Financial - Men & women should decide on financing arrangements. Women should be actively involved.
- Financial - Beneficiaries in non-destitute communities with livelihoods (e.g. pastoralists with animals) need to feel they own the WASH facility (that they firstly perceived they needed via Participatory Rural Appraisal). Ownership can be generated through (a) contribution towards the project costs, but this can/should be more than just stones, water, labour but rather hard cash as well; (b) clear idea by beneficiaries on who will own the final facility; (c) clear spatial separation of pastoral & town water supplies.
- Financial - Reasonably secured ownership of land resources appears to be a necessary prerequisite for promotion/adoption of rainwater harvesting techniques – farmers find it difficult to invest in storage systems on land they do not control.
Improve involvement of women
Women gather water in Pemba, Tanzania where GLOWS is working on sanitation projects and hygiene education. Photo: GLOWS.
- Technical - Involve women in design and construction of facilities.
- Institutional - Women are traditional domestic water managers and are usually those who are involved in agriculture, yet involvement is still weak – continue to advocate involvement in decision making, design and O&M
Promote economic use of water
- Technical- There may be a role for the private sector in providing critical technical expertise in both design and construction phases of techniques to individual users/farmers.
- Institutional - There are certain opportunities for non-communal water supply (e.g. privately owned, self-supply, household treatment) that could be explored. Such methods can be more resilient just by the fact that they are not communally-owned and managed.
- Financial - Promote economic use of water – e.g. vegetables, trees, fruits leading to cash available which is a buffer to reduce vulnerability, and has the health impact of a better diet
Give preference to decentralized rainwater harvesting systems
- Technical - Decentralized rainwater catchments are known to be more efficient than larger area catchments – for the sake of efficiency (to gather more water quantity) therefore, preference should therefore be given to smaller scale decentralized systems. In addition, in terms of decision making and control, decentralization is argued as important in success of rainwater harvesting.
Technical expertise and piloting new techniques
Clean Drinking Water & Sanitation Projects in Ghana, West Africa. Photo: MyUbique.
- Technical - Successful water projects require relevant technical expertise from beginning to end of project. Short-term hiring of technical consultants is not enough to guarantee quality work and success. Expertise is essential for certain design and construction phases and we should not assume that indigenous knowledge will contain everything to solve local problems – rather it is a balance between the two.
- Technical - Each system needs to be designed and constructed so as to be site-specific. A successful technology at one site should be transferred to another area with different physical and/or social settings only after great care and some modification. This is to say that a certain amount of experimentation and failure may be needed in this process. It is therefore recommended to start small, learn as you go and expand as needed.
Mix & match
- Technical - There is no one solution for drought-prone areas – best is to mix and match according to:
- Time of water use (e.g. open dams for use directly after rains leads to more used and less evaporated water, sand dams used in areas where livestock go in dry season)
- Technical constraints (certain techniques suitable only certain places – e.g. sand dams built in riverbed, berkeds built away from riverbed)