Planning
Tupac Mejia's presentation dealt with guidelines for MUS design and their application in Honduras.
Fungai Makoni (IWSD) presented guidelines for planning water for livelihoods in Zimbabwe.
This presentation by Daniel Renault provides an overview of the MASSMUS guidelines, a methodology developed by the FAO to assess multiple-uses of water in large-scale irrigation systems.
In this presentation, Barbara van Koppen (IWMI) highlighted guidelines for community scale MUS, as applied in Southern Africa.
Lessons learnt from the IWRM Demonstration projects on innovations in local-level Integrated Water Resource Development
This note highlights three research domains to support implementation of MUS at scale and also to communicate the merits of MUS at policy levels.
This is a presentation on project on localised IWRM, or community based MUS. It assess eight opportunities or steps to improve the benefits/cost ratio and promoting MUS.
Sustained access to water in low- and middle-income countries is crucial for domestic use (drinking, personal hygiene, etc.) and is also an imperative for people's livelihoods, income-generating activities and small-scale enterprise (e.g. livestock, horticulture, irrigation, fisheries, brickmaking, and othes). Overall, this book exposes the detrimental effects and impacts of approaching water services in isolated ways -- where the continued practise of separating community water services between domestic use and livelihoods have done little in alleviating poverty.
Noting that the design and management of most water services fail to reflect the 'real-life' use of water, the essay contributions to this book suggest a multiple-use water services (MUS) approach in meeting people's dual water needs. The contributions to this book are drawn from an action research project that explores water systems in eight countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Nepal, South Africa, Thailand and Zimbabwe). Known as the action research project ‘ Models for implementing multiple-use water supply systems for enhanced land and water productivity, rural livelihoods and gender equity’, the findings of the research study is a collective product of engagement amongst 150 institutions worldwide.
This book shows how livelihoods act as the main driver for water services and how access to water is determined by sustainable water resources, appropriate technologies and equitable ways of managing communal systems.
Climbing the water ladder requires a small fraction of total water resources, yet has the potential to help people climb out of poverty. Local government can be the pivot to make this happen. But, it needs support to implement its mandate to meet multiple-use demand and to become more accountable to people in communities.
This book is a joint publication by IWMI, CPWF and IRC.
Below is a link to the PDF version or you order a hard-copy version here.
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Looking at livelihoods strategies of poor rural communities, it becomes evident that people require water for both domestic and productive needs. Access to reliable supplies of water affects a great number of activities, and water availability can provide a wide range of opportunities for the rural poor. However, traditionally, water supply planning has focussed on meeting basic domestic needs only. To achieve greater water security at village level, and for water to meaningfully tackle poverty, a more holistic and integrated approach to water planning is needed, which is based on an understanding of people’s livelihood strategies and the role of water resources (and constraints) within those.
This paper attempts to discuss such an approach, which was developed and piloted in Bushbuckridge, South Africa. SWELL (Securing Water to Enhance Local Livelihoods) is a community-based planning approach that aims to enable improved allocation and use of water resources for water-related livelihoods. The SWELL methodology is based on a participatory process that brings together villagers, water service implementers and other agencies. The process enables stakeholders to develop a greater and shared understanding of people’s multiple water needs and available water resources, and to jointly develop strategies and plans, based on that information. The paper provides an overview of the methodology, as well of the application in Bushbuckridge, through to the outcomes of the assessment processes and how those were taken forward.
This paper was presented at the 7th WaterNet/WARFA/GWP-SA Symposium, held in Lilongwe, Malawi.
In South Africa multiple water use services have been recognised as an important component for poverty reduction and rural economic development. This has been made explicit in, for example, the Strategic Framework for Water Services. However, this policy isn’t yet elaborated into local government guidelines. Likewise, there exists a conducive policy environment for integrated planning and cooperative governance, two key issues to facilitate institutional support to multiple use services. This paper examines to which extent these policies are followed in Bushbuckridge Local Municipality, a poor rural area in Mpumalanga Province.
Bushbuckridge is currently struggling with reducing service delivery backlogs. There are many reasons for that, including the pre-democratic governance and neglect of rural areas, while others are the institutional confusion that has arisen as a result of changing mandates for water services provision and a lack of staff capacity (both in terms of absolute numbers and skills profile). Even providing Free Basic Water remains a challenge.
One way, in which planning for multiple uses could be improved is through integrated development planning. Although the framework for that is clear, it is followed in a minimal way. Assessment of the village water situation is not done in a comprehensive way, the time of planning is way too short and not all relevant stakeholders, including decentralised line departments are involved. Again, lack of staff and skills, is a main reason for this. But there is also a failure to learn from past mistakes and to see the benefit of true integrated planning, rather than a box-ticking exercise. Although the Municipality is trying to respond to this, by improving its skills profile, in the meantime backlogs will remain and performance of systems will be poor. In such a context, supporting livelihoods, through multiple use services will be a tough call.