Scaling Up Multiple Use Water Services by Barbara van Koppen

Author:Barbara van Koppen [Koppen, Barbara van]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics, Development, Sustainable Development, General
ISBN: 9781853398308
Google: lyH2nQEACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 18767078
Publisher: Practical Action
Published: 2014-01-15T02:57:29+00:00

Water allocation within schemes: universal priority for multiple basic water uses

Horizontal co-ordination would address not only fund allocation for infrastructure and water services, but also the allocation of water resources both within schemes (as discussed in this section) and at larger scales (in the following section). This would overcome the last set of contradictory objections to scaling up MUS that we found in the MUS Scoping studies.

Some WASH sub-sector professionals object to domestic-plus approaches because they fear that allowing for domestic-plus within their schemes ‘will steal water designated for domestic uses away for productive uses’. Moreover, those with more land and other assets would use more water, which would further widen inequalities. The concerns to protect basic domestic uses and narrow inequalities are valid, certainly from the perspective of poor women. However, this argument ignores the fact that there are already productive uses in schemes designed for domestic uses. The fact that certain infrastructure is constructed with money from a WASH sub-sector’s budget hardly affects villagers when they decide how they want to use the water. Even efforts to ‘hardwire’ certain priorities in the technical design are only partially effective, as was found in Nepal (see Box 4.1). Negotiations about water allocations are shaped by people’s stakes and their complex, hierarchical relationships, often at the expense of the poor and women. Negotiations are also more influenced by the sites of water availability and upstream–downstream locations than by the technology in itself.

Box 4.1 Does the hardwiring of a priority for domestic uses work?

Winrock International and iDE in Nepal tried to hardwire a priority for domestic uses into their multipurpose piped gravity schemes by changing the common one-reservoir-one-distribution network into two separate reservoirs, each with its own distribution network. The engineers designated one reservoir and distribution network for domestic uses, while only the overflow of the domestic reservoir was channelled to another reservoir connected to a distribution network intended for irrigation. This works when homesteads and irrigated fields are located far from each other. However, when domestic water uses and productive uses take place around homesteads, people’s multiple needs appeared to influence actual water use more strongly than the engineers’ instructions that a specific off-take is designed for one specific use only (Mikhail and Yoder, 2008). In Bagargaun village, the Nepal MUS Scoping Study found that after the construction was finished, villagers retrofitted the design to the earlier model of one-reservoir-one-distribution-line. Instead of two taps around the homestead from two distribution networks linked to two nearby reservoirs, one bigger line has the same effect and is cheaper overall. The engineers realized that the best option was putting the issue of prioritizing water uses back into the hands of the community (Basnet and van Koppen, 2011).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.