Changes

# De-silting will most probably need to be carried out at some stage. There may be more sustainable ways of doing this compared to the usual approach used in the recovery stage of DCM, where this process is often paid for by NGOs and where there is a lack of community will to contribute. While animals seem to be a good option for effective de-silting, food-for-work or cash-for-work incentives are commonly still needed to entice communities to improve their own ponds. It is better to train only a few animals for de-silting work to save damaging the equipment, but farmers tend not to want to use their animals to work on someone else’s land. This lack of ownership in communal projects is a recurring thread of failure in WASH projects, and should require new and innovative ways to engender ownership and management of facilities. An institutionally-resilient way to de-silt ponds may be to promote ponds on private land, where one landowner has a vested interest to maintain and de-silt the pond, thus reducing the need for NGO intervention in the longer run.

# Digging deeper to have a larger volume to surface area ratio. The Charco dam from Tanzania incorporates this through hemispherical design. The problem might be greater levels of investment needed with increased depth. Experience digging reservoirs in Sudan using food-for-work showed that the deeper the dam, the higher the food ratio.

# Planting trees around the pond will act as a windbreak, thereby reducing evaporation.