AN INTERACTIVE KNOWLEDGEBASE OF SAFE WATER PROVISIONING FOR RURAL, REMOTE AND

OTHERWISE MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES AROUND THE WORLD

There is a major gap in the ability of rural, remote and otherwise marginalized communities to address drinking water challenges.  These communities often do not have sufficient expertise or resources to determine which technologies or options are available, or how to effectively mobilize resources for their deployment.  The result is lack of adequate safe water provisioning in these communities, usually leading to serious health consequences.  While the problem is particularly severe in developing countries, it occurs in developed countries as well.

It is important to note that many solutions - technological, policy-based and behavioural - exist and have been demonstrated to work.  However, without coordinated access and a mechanism to rate the quality of the information provided, the resulting information deficit is preventing local action, even in developed countries.  The purpose of this project is to develop an interactive global knowledgebase of water treatment provisioning solutions for rural, remote and otherwise marginalized communities that will provide simple, yet comprehensive technical information situated within the economic, social, political and cultural contexts within which such knowledge has been proven and can be successfully applied.  In order to achieve this, the knowledgebase will include both water provisioning alternatives as well as real world lessons learned.

The knowledgebase will be of interest to a range of end-users to identify options and inform choices, including, but not limited to, the various groups involved with provision of safe water to small, rural, remote and otherwise marginalised communities around the world.  Inter-alia, this will include drinking water quality practitioners, communities and their leaders, NGOs, funding agencies, local governments, businesses and engineering consultants.

The knowledge base will be linked to a strategically integrated set of tools:

• Process-based tools that help communities to select technologies that  are appropriate to their needs. These tools include processes that can empower community-based organizations to collectively define what they need, in terms of quantities of water that can be treated in a given time period, ease of operation and maintenance, cost, power requirements,  contaminant removal performance, ease of protection against secondary contamination from pathogens and other important selection criteria.
• Tools that then help communities and other stakeholders identify and obtain the technologies that fit their needs, as they have defined them above.
• Tools that then help users make safe and effective use of those technologies.
• Tools for design of capacity-building and outreach programs that help transfer the above knowledge and skills to communities and show those communities (and other stakeholders) how to act upon the above knowledge.
• Tools for designing and implementing institutional arrangements and incentives that provide stakeholders with ways to address typical problems encountered word-wide in critical areas such as operation and maintenance of water treatment technologies. This would include lessons learned, success stories, etc.

• Tools for testing and verifying the performance of any new technologies that are being promoted for use in communities, a major issue for decision-makers around the world.

Goal:

To reduce the burden of illness associated with water-related diseases in rural, remote and otherwise marginalised communities and aid in meeting the Millennium Development Goals for the provision of safe water and sanitation through improved decision-making for, and increased access to, safe water provisioning solutions. 

Objectives:

• The development of strategically integrated tools that aid in the exchange of knowledge and associated lessons learned in order to determine the best safe water provisioning solutions that consider both the needs and contexts of rural and remote communities

• The development of methods for validating global information and knowledge pertaining to the provision of appropriate and sustainable safe water solutions

• The identification of opportunities for policy development, enhanced capacity development, improved resource allocation mechanisms and the establishment of demonstration sites

Status:

UNU-INWEH will be represented at the RES'EAU Network workshop being held in Toronto, October 1 and 2.

Last updated: 22 April 2009