Community water security - UN-Water
Community water security - UN-Water
Community water security - UN-Water
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<strong>Water</strong> for Life<br />
21<br />
What are the barriers to planning a <strong>water</strong> project?<br />
There may be many reasons why a<br />
community lacks safe <strong>water</strong>. Problems<br />
might include lack of money, lack<br />
of knowledge about building <strong>water</strong><br />
systems, lack of support from the<br />
government, or lack of participation by<br />
people in the community. To achieve<br />
the goal of safe <strong>water</strong>, the barriers<br />
must be identified and removed one by<br />
one.<br />
People are more likely to improve<br />
their <strong>water</strong> source and to maintain a<br />
<strong>water</strong> system when they see:<br />
• immediate community benefits<br />
such as more <strong>water</strong>, easier<br />
access, or less disease.<br />
• low cost.<br />
• only small changes in daily routine.<br />
A <strong>water</strong> project should benefit<br />
everyone in the community equally.<br />
• positive results such as less mud, fewer mosquitoes, or more <strong>water</strong> for home<br />
gardens.<br />
Solutions exist within the community<br />
Throughout history, every culture has developed ways of finding and protecting<br />
<strong>water</strong>. People have used divining rods, invented devices for lifting and transporting<br />
<strong>water</strong>, planted trees to attract rain, and made laws to encourage neighboring tribes<br />
and villages to share <strong>water</strong>, prevent conflicts, and preserve this precious resource for<br />
future generations.<br />
Villagers teach development workers<br />
A group of development workers came to a Colombian mountain village to help<br />
the villagers fight diarrhea by protecting their <strong>water</strong> sources. When they visited the<br />
village spring, they saw that cattle and soil erosion<br />
affected the spring. The development workers<br />
suggested two simple solutions- to put up a barbed<br />
wire fence to protect the spring, or to graze their<br />
cattle elsewhere.<br />
The villagers did not like these ideas. They<br />
predicted that the barbed wire would be stolen<br />
before long, and they did not have enough land and<br />
money to make proper cattle pastures. But seeing the<br />
problem, they came up with a solution that would<br />
work. Everyone from the village came out to plant prickly vegetation upstream from<br />
the spring. This forced the cattle to drink <strong>water</strong> at lower places along the river and<br />
solved the problem.
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