| Excutive
summary: |
It is
increasingly recognized that promoting multiple water use
schemes entails
significant, but largely untapped opportunities to contribute
to both the objectives of the Challenge Program Water and
Food and the three Millennium Development Goals of halving,
by 2015, the number of people without sufficient food and
income and the number of people without access to safe domestic
water, while empowering women.
Water supply designed for multiple uses rather than for either
productive or domestic uses improves more dimensions of wellbeing,
especially for women. Moreover, the income gained allows water
users associations to finance the capital costs with a loan,
which considerably enhances the sustainability of schemes
and the numbers of new schemes.
In line
with the emerging appreciation for multiple-use water supply,
the first aim of the project is to generate a knowledge
base. Existing multiple-use schemes in rural and peri-urban
areas, including indigenous schemes, will be studied and literature
will be reviewed in project year one and two. In the years
three to five, new pilot multiple-use schemes, fully
financed with five-year loans will be created and studied
in a participatory way. The total number of schemes will be
25, which allows drawing generic conclusions on livelihood
impacts; the financial, institutional, health, technical and
sustainability aspects of managing multiple use water schemes;
needed support; and the critical factors in the policy and
institutional environment that enable or block massive upscaling.
Models, guidelines, and community-level planning tools on
how to implement multiple-use schemes successfully will be
derived from this knowledge base. The new schemes will directly
benefit 3000 poor women and men.
These benefits will be documented and quantified.
The second
aim is to build capacity for upscaling among project
partners,
communities, professionals and policy makers at local, national,
and global level.
Awareness raising will be achieved by disseminating
the models, guidelines,
planning tools, and a promotion video at local, national,
and global level. The
capacity to study and implement multiple-use schemes
will also be enhanced by
developing curricula and training material for students and
professionals.
The project
is unique in forging synergy across the conventional sectoral
boundaries between the productive and domestic water sectors
and between researchers and implementers. The project covers
ten countries in five Challenge Program Benchmark Basins.
A global Steering Committee of seven lead organizations (two
CG centres, one global NGO, two NARES, and two ARIs) will
engage in partnerships in each country with local ‚champion™
NGOs, NARES, poor communities, and farmer networks committed
to multiple-use water supply. Further, establishing national
and global networks of project partners and other governmental
and non-governmental water sectors, development institutions,
and financing agencies and donors will ensure broad information
and awareness raising and timely feedback and buy-in by key
players.
The resulting
global and national awareness of science-based and field-tested
models, guidelines and tools for multiple-use schemes and
the enhanced capacity to implement and study those schemes
is expected to elicit their 100-fold upscaling within five
years after this project.
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