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Are you already familiar with 3R solutions and practices? How does it make the difference? RAIN is co-hosting the session ‘The Potential of 3R to Improve Water Quality and Quantity’ at the Stockholm World Water Week. This session will be held on Sunday 5th of September, from 9:00 to 12:30 hrs in room K11 at the premises of the Stockholm World Water Week.

The event is organized by the Rainwater Harvesting Implementation Network (RAIN), Acacia Water, MetaMeta, the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, Germany (BGR) together with Southern & Eastern Africa Rainwater Network (SEARNET) and The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). Furthermore it is sponsored by Aqua for all (A4A) and the Cooperative Programme on Water and Climate (CPWC).

3R is an integrated approach for managing the water buffer that includes Recharge, Retention and Reuse, using simple small-scale 3R solutions to address large-scale problems. Groundwater use and recharge and rainwater storage can be optimized for water quality and climate change adaptation, especially for those living under fragile socio-economic environments. This seminar is to demonstrate 3R solutions with proven results. We will present three cases from 3R with the latest developments and best practices on Water Recharge, Retention & Reuse with a focus on water quality.

The event is moderated by Prof Richard Carter (Head of Technical Support Unit at WaterAid). The session is complemented by a variety of renowned experts from different backgrounds to envisage a lively debate and interactive discussion with the audience.

The 3R concept will be elaborately discussed in four round table discussions;

• Institution building and policy development for 3R - Mr Lourdes Baptista CE of WaterAid in India.
• 3R and health - Mr Bruce Gordon, World Health Organisation (WHO)
• 3R and saline groundwater - Dr Arjen de Vries, Director of Acacia Water
• Implementing and financing 3R- Dr Azene Bekele-Tessema, ICRAF

For more information about 3R, please visit www.bebuffered.com

For more information, including how to get to the venue, please visit: www.worldwaterweek.org

A rainwater harvesting project in the village of Fayako (Senegal) will be sponsored by 3 former Dutch top-athletes who call themselves The Dutch Channel Swimmers. They will swim across the Channel between the United Kingdom and France to raise funds and create awareness for the project in Senegal. In this project 21 households will receive individual rainwater harvesting tanks of 10 m3 each to provide water at their doorstep. The Dutch Channel Swimmers selected this project from the Akvo projects. RAIN wishes them all the luck and inspiration needed to achieve this admirable goal!

Trois athlètes professionnels à la retraite, qui se font appeler les Nageurs Néerlandais du Canal, prêteront un appui financier à un projet de collecte des eaux de pluie (CEP) dans le village de Fayako (Sénégal). Ils traverseront le Canal entre le Royaume Uni et la France à la nage pour rallier des fonds et pour attirer l'attention sur ce projet au Sénégal. Le projet donnera à 21 ménages un réservoir CEP de 10 m3 chacun pour leur fournir de l'eau à côté de leur seuil de porte. Les Nageurs Néerlandais du Canal ont sélectionné ce projet parmi les projets Akvo. RAIN leur souhaite tout le courage et l'inspiration dont ils auront besoin pour atteindre ce but remarquable !

More and more people all over the world are forced to live with limited and irregular access to fresh water resources. Nepal is no exception in this, in spite of the average annual rainfall of nearly 1400mm. In Nepal, water supply by using piped water systems is often unfeasible, both technically as well economically due to the difficult terrain and scattered settlements. This has tremendous implications for people’s livelihoods in mountainous and rural areas of Nepal, especially for women and girls, who are forced to spend hours in fetching water to meet their and their family’s basic water need.

Three key problems can be indentified in the hilly and rural areas of Nepal:

- Water supply: due to longer dry periods, the lack of winter rains, that is currently being experienced, and the difficult terrain, water is scarce and difficult to obtain. Women have to walk hours down and uphill in order to fetch water from often unsafe sources, like springs and streams.

- Energy supply: electricity is either not available or too expensive in rural areas, hence people (often women) spend hours collecting fuel wood for cooking. This leads to deforestation, and hence erosion of the steep hills and unhealthy conditions since wood is burned indoors.

- Food supply: in hilly areas, people depend on small scale agriculture both as source of income as well as for their own food production. This is mainly rain fed agriculture and therefore extremely dependent on the rainy season. Due to the water shortages, food production decreases and people become more dependent on markets outside their vicinity, which increases the costs of products.

Several non-governmental organisations in Nepal have been successfully promoting rainwater harvesting as a solution for structural water shortage as well as a measure to cope with climate change, especially in areas where other sources of water are (technically and/or economically) unfeasible. These activities also contributed to the signing of the working policy on rainwater harvesting in 2009 by the government of Nepal in which rainwater is being recognised as a source of water for drinking as well as productive use. Implementation however, still remains limited to NGOs who have focussed on specific uses of rainwater, e.g. drinking water. None of the NGOs has yet integrated the different uses of rainwater e.g. irrigation, biogas production and cattle breeding.

This was seen as an opportunity by BSP-Nepal and IDE Nepal, who have joined hands early 2010 to develop a pilot on rainwater harvesting for securing water, food and energy in rural and remote villages in Nepal, by using rainwater for drinking water (and other small domestic uses), biogas production and small scale irrigation. Although rainwater harvesting storage capacity often seems to be a limiting factor to make multiple use of rainwater economically and financially feasible, it is often found that people tend to manage the water from the rainwater harvesting system very efficiently. A rainwater storage system of 10 cubic metres is sufficient to provide a family with water for drinking and other small domestic uses for a whole year (based upon 5 litres per person per day).

The main goal of this pilot is to assess the possibilities and limitations of using rainwater for drinking water, biogas production and irrigation in order to support a livelihood approach in rainwater harvesting projects in rural areas in Nepal. Rainwater harvesting tanks of 10 cubic metres will be combined with small open pond systems in order to asses to potential of covering all needs, ranging from small scale domestic use to productive use. A positive side-effect is that the slurry from the biogas plants will be used as fertilizer. A challenge will be the proper management of all these different systems by the beneficiaries as well as the operation and maintenance. Another challenge is the impacts of climate change on the functioning of this approach.

The activities to be carried out under this pilot this year are:

• A desk study on multiple use and rainwater harvesting in Nepal;
• A water needs assessment within the project area in order to assess to total storage capacity needed to enable multiple use of rainwater;
• Based upon the outcomes of the storage capacity needed, an identification and cost-comparison of different rainwater harvesting systems will be carried out;
• Implementation of an integrated set-up of rainwater harvesting tanks, biogas plants, small ponds (cement and plastic) and micro-irrigation kits and intensive involvement and training of the beneficiaries of the project;
• An assessment of potential revenue of using rainwater for productive use and identification of potential financing options (next to the ‘subsidy’ model);
• Water use assessment after implementation of the pilot;
• Documentation and distribution of lessons learned on using rainwater for water, food and energy.

This pilot forms a unique project for Nepal and the Rainwater Harvesting Capacity Centre of the RAIN Foundation in Nepal will ensure that the outcomes of this pilot will be used for promotion of this livelihood based approach as well as further development of the rainwater harvesting activities by other NGOs in Nepal. RAIN Foundation aims to replicate this pilot in other countries.

Rainwater Harvesting as a Means of Adaptation to the Challenges of Climate Change

July 11 – 16 2010, Awassa, Ethiopia The Southern & Eastern Africa Rainwater Network (SearNet) hosted at the World Agroforestry Centre, in collaboration with the Ethiopia Rainwater Harvesting Association (ERHA) and the Rainwater Harvesting Implementation Network (RAIN) are pleased to invite you to participate in the 13th SearNet International Conference to be held on the 11th – 16th of July, 2010 at the Tadesse Enjori Hotel, Awassa (Ethiopia). This year’s main theme is: Rainwater Harvesting as a Means of Adaptation to the Challenges of Climate Change. The overall conference objective is to facilitate sharing of experiences on how rainwater harvesting is being used/can be used to cope with challenges of climate change.

Important dates:

• Deadline for registration and confirmation of participation: June 10, 2010
• Deadline for submission of Abstracts: June 20, 2010
• Final submission of full papers: June 15, 2010
• Receipt of conference materials by registered participants: July 11, 2010

SearNet Secretariat:

WORLD AGROFORESTRY CENTRE (ICRAF), UN Avenue, Gigiri, P.O. Box 30677 00100, Nairobi, Kenya

Telephone: +254 20 7224419 Fax: +254 20 7224401

RAIN advertorial in Change Magazine, issue Water and Climate 2009

The organisers of the session "Water Recharge, Retention and Reuse: 3R Solutions for Water and Food Security" at Stockholm World Water Week 2009 have launched their website: www.bebuffered.com.

 

 

 

 

 

From left to right: The Prince of Orange, Anthonie Kamerling (Dutch actor), Beau van Erven Dorens (TV personality), Marjolein Meerburg (Practica Foundation), Sjef Ernes (Director Aqua for All), Ton Jantowski (RAIN volunteer)

Two years after the first successful edition of Live Earth, Al Gore and founder Kevin Wall organised a second world wide campaign to highlight the problems of the overall climate change. The theme of the 2010 campaign is the global water crisis. On the 18th of April, people all over the world ran 6 kilometres, the average distance women and children in developing countries have to walk daily to fetch water. One of these runs was held in and around the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam. Except in the Netherlands, the same distance was run at 192 other places in the world.

RAINs water project in Nepal was selected as one of the four Dutch projects for sponsoring. The Prince of Orange of the Netherlands, Prince Willem Alexander and other famous Dutch personalities like Beau van Erven Dorens, Anthonie Kamerling, Miryanna van Reeden, Dirk Taat, were the first to start. Just after twelve o’clock, the Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam, Municipal Councillor Hans Gerson launched the run. About 3000 runners enjoyed running on this near summer day in April.

No rain this day but a deep blue sky. The fact that the concert was cancelled remained a bit a dark cloud, but the overall impression of the day was positive. The different low budget techniques to obtain drinking water did gain full attention. The Dutch broadcasting organisation Veronica gave no less than a half hour attention on the Run for Water and the global water crisis. The daily news for children also spent an item on the event, while several newspapers published about it.

Live Earth collaborates with the Dutch organisation Akvo to connect the globally acquired gifts to reliable drink water projects in the world. One can donate directly by going to the Akvo website. It is also possible to text WATER AAN to 5757 (if you have a Dutch cell phone). Both means of donation are still possible!

It started as an alternative form of teambuilding. The question was: Is it possible to work on teambuilding, which has a social-civil purpose at the same time? One year later, team Planvorming of the Waterboard of Delfland is working on a project with RAIN, funded by AquaforAll.

Team Planvorming is a part of the Project- and Engineering Sector of the Water board of Delfland. It is a multi-disciplinary team which consists of approximately 20 people with a diverse background: from civil-engineering, water management, geography to communication. In their daily work the team advises on the project preparation of various projects on water management and flood control. Within the project with RAIN, the team works, together with international water expert Hans Hartung, on an inventory of best practices on rainwater harvesting techniques, financing mechanisms, projects, programmes and policies. This should result in a set of practical tools which guides implementing organisations during their projects as well as creates awareness on a national level on the potential of rainwater harvesting. These tools will be available online and a CD-rom will be produced for training purposes.

As the team puts it: “The nice thing about the project is that the subject is new for the team members, which means we are forced to think outside the box and work together differently. A person who normally works as technical expert, now gets the chance to be project manager. The project also gives team members the possibility to expand their horizon and along the way learn about the (hidden) talents of the other team members. On the other hand it is a serious assignment and we want to deliver a useful product to RAIN. The fact that RAIN will take the tools we developed to their partners in the South, makes it even more interesting and relevant!”

Jan-Kees (senior advisor): “In my daily work I try to find solutions to cope with the burden of heavy rainfall. It is inspiring to do it the other way around in this project and search for ways to make optimal use of rainwater.”

RAIN participated in the MUS Group meeting on the 24^th and 25^th of August in Rome. The MUS group is the result of the thematic group known as PRODWAT (productive uses of water at the household level) which established in 2003 and in 2006, reflecting a broader focus on improving the delivery of multiple-use water services at the household level by agencies traditionally associated with both the domestic and irrigation (productive) water sectors, changed to the Multiple Use water Services (MUS) Group.

During the meeting several issues related to MUS where discussed and presented (all presentations are available here), such as:

• Performance indicators for multiple-use: Due to the fact that during several sessions at the World Water Forum in Istanbul this year, people asked for more clarity on indicators for multiple-use, both at the system level (performance indicators) and national and global level (indicators on access to create awareness).
• MASSCOTE and Aquastat. MASSCOTE is a methodology to assess performance indicators in large irrigation systems and the development of auditing methodology to that effect, with inclusion of multiple-use indicators. The Aquastat is a database system where data on multiple use can be included.
• MUS in Programmes: Several presentations were given on how different organisations are including MUS in their work programmes, and the issues encountered in this. Presentations were given on MUS through rainwater harvesting (RAIN), MUS in the HCS and RiPPLE programmes in Ethiopia (HCS / RiPPLE), MUS in a programme being developed by an alliance of Dutch NGOs working on WASH (Plan Netherlands), MUS in IFAD programmes (IFAD).

The book "Multiple Use Water Service Implementation in Nepal and India - Experiences and Lessons for Scale-up", written by IDE was presented.

The Government of Nepal Ministry of Physical Planning and Works oganised a Regional High-level Meeting on rainwater harvesting (RWH), where Ministers / Secretaries, senior policymakers and representatives from non-governmental organisations working in South-Asian countries were invited to share knowledge, expertise and experiences among the region from June 28 to 30 in Kathmandu, Nepal.

This conference emphasized the importance of rainwater harvesting as an alternative water source in urban settings and as a valuable and often only solution for water in rural areas, where other systems like piped water systems are not feasible. The South-Asian region has much experience on and expertise in RWH. Field experiences and research results on technical, social, ecological and economic aspects of RWH were shared and the potential of using rainwater for multiple purposes were discussed.

At the end of the conference a resolution was developed in which all participants raised 9 key issues, which should be recognized and taken up by all governments in the South-Asian region to enable effective and sustainable implementation and upscaling of rainwater harvesting. All participants recognised the importance of continuing sharing knowledge and experiences on RWH in order to optimize project, programmes and policies.

RAIN and Acacia Water have developed a practical guideline for sand dam implementation. This guideline is based on the Swiss Re 2007 award winning pilot project “Water harvesting to improve livelihoods in southern Ethiopia: from pilots to mainstream” by RAIN's partners ERHA and AFD and on large-scale implementation of sand dams by SASOL in Kenya. This manual can be seen as a "growing document" which will be improved and updated with experiences in implementation of the upcoming years in Ethiopia and Burkina Faso. Click here to download the guideline.

 

More than 850 million people – that is one person in six – have no choice but to use potentially harmful sources of water. Considerably more have inadequate access to water, struggling each day to procure sufficient water to meet their basic needs. Read more...

Successful sand dam pilot project in Ethiopia

RAIN and Acacia Water have won the 2007 Swiss Re International ReSource Award for Sustainable Watershed Management. Of the 154 projects submitted from around the world, the project titled ‘Water Harvesting to improve Livelihoods in Southern Ethiopia’ distinguishes itself through combining the implementation of a straightforward and proven technology with an approach involving all local stakeholder groups. Through an innovative combination of sand dams and below ground rainwater harvesting tanks, the project will provide safe drinking water and water for agriculture and livestock for at least 2000 people in the remote and critically-dry Borana Zone of southern Ethiopia. Additionally, the project will contribute to regional water resource protection: making optimal use of available water resources, enhancing catchment water retention capacity and averting ground water depletion. Of increasing relevance is the solution offered by rainwater harvesting in protecting the livelihoods of vulnerable communities from the foreseeable effects of climate change.

The project is carried out in collaboration with implementing partner organisations ERHA in Ethiopia and SASOL in Kenya. Furthermore, local capacity is developed and strengthened and water management committees are established and trained in maintenance & repair, and water quality.

Click here to read the article (only in Dutch)