International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance

Newsletter n° 01 - November 2004

Dear Rainwater Harvesters,

If you didn't know, the International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance is now two years old. IRHA wishes to maintain a more regular flow of communication with its partners, other NGOs, national rainwater harvesting organisations, donors and government agencies. This will be done on an ad hoc basis, but on average once a month.

We know that you are submerged with information. We hereby pledge that future editions of this newsletter will not exceed 2 pages in length.


Rainwater Harvesting and IRHA as a broker

One of the International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance's main tasks now, as defined by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, is to act as a link between donors and implementers - to act as a RWH project broker.

We will be constantly looking for RWH projects to present to donors. We will have a database of projects, or a project portfolio, constantly available for donors to fund or co-fund. If you want us to cooperate in fundraising for your projects to donors then we will do so. We will also present projects in our working plan 2005/07. If there are certain donors that you would like to approach independently then of course nothing stops you doing that.

Example: We currently have a donor who is looking for projects to provide fresh, safe, drinking water. We will be presenting this donor a dossier of projects, each worth on average US$ 25-30,000, from which he will choose several. If you have a project proposal ready we will try to propose it to this donor. He is looking for several things:

1) The main goal of the project should be drinking water, rather than water for agriculture or food security.

2) Various statistics are very important to this donor, such as: the cost per litre of water stored in the RWH system; the cost per beneficiary; the total number of litres of storage capacity; or the number of beneficiaries per project; a breakdown of inputs, cement, sand, etc.

3) Precise geographical location and perhaps photographs, details about the local implementers, technology to be used and total costs are important to.

IRHA is carrying out lobbying and advocacy for the RWH family. We will, for example, be present at the WASH Forum in Dakar, 29th November to 4th December as well at the SEARNET annual meeting in Gaboronne. Different donors we meet there want to see different things, of course, but if we have a portfolio of project proposals, we can show them what they want to see. Once the contact with a donor organisation is established and it is interested in a specific project, we can continue the work with the authors to adapt the formulation to the donor's requirements.

Send projects for IRHA's project portfolio to: secretariat@irha-h2o.org


Parliamentarians for Rainwater Harvesting

Together with Mexican congressman Alberto Jimenez, who participated in WOTR/IRHA's exposure and dialogue programme in India in September, the Alliance is initiating a search for parliamentarians with a strong interest in the principles, practice and philosophy of rainwater harvesting. We wish to either create a small number of regional networks or perhaps regional working groups of politicians from different countries to help push forward government action agendas, legislation and enforcement.

In Mexico, for example, Mr Jimenez will be our point of contact in the Congress and we will try to build a Latin American working group around him. This group will have a particular interest in working towards the Mexico World Water Forum in 2006.

IRHA will approach any politicians attending the SEARNET, WASH and other conferences so as to discuss this initiative. We will be happy to follow up on this issue with you if you have any suggestions. There could well be eventual links between parliamentarians and the project below.

Send your proposed parliamentarians to: secretariat@irha-h2o.org


Rainwater Harvesting and Micro-Finance

IRHA has been in discussions with the United Nations Environment Programme - Finance Initiative (UNEP-FI) in Geneva concerning future efforts in the field of micro-finance and RWH.

We are looking for case studies in Africa and in Latin America where banks or other financial institutions have lent money to RWH projects on a micro-credit basis. UNEP is interested in projects which have been "commercially viable and sustainable". RWH is sustainable, of course, but the other important thing is that the financial institution was repaid its loan! These case studies will be included in a UNEP publication, "Opportunities in the Water Sector" which will be distributed to financial institutions. It is important to show to banks that there are opportunities in water beyond financing large, centralised, water supply projects in the capital cities.

This will eventually lead to a development of trust in RWH (as a technique and technology) by financial institutions and a brighter future for people who just need temporary financial assistance to carry out their project.

It is possible that a member of UNEP-FI's African Taskforce will attend the SEARNET conference in Gaboronne at the end of this month, so you may be able to talk to that person yourselves. There is also a strong possibility that the political working groups will get involved with this project in questions to do with the legislative framework surrounding micro-finance.

Send examples of RWH through micro-finance to: secretariat@irha-h2o.org


The Rainwater Partnership

On the 7th October, the United Nations Environment Programme invited IRHA to The Hague, in the Netherlands, to attend a meeting with Southern and Eastern Africa Rainwater Network (SEARNET), the International Rainwater Catchment Systems Association (IRCSA) and the RAinwater Implementation Network (RAIN). The goal of this meeting was to prepare a Type II partnership with the aim of having RWH taken into consideration in the final conclusions of the CSD 13, which will be held in New York in April 2005.

You will soon be receiving an e-mail asking your national rainwater association to endorse the "Rainwater Statement". Please do so!

IRHA will also be pushing NGOs, international agencies and governments to back the Rainwater Partnership in Dakar and Gaboronne. The Rainwater Partnership has already been endorsed by several NGOs and at the African Ministers Council on Water in Entebbe, rainwater harvesting was unanimously endorsed too.

Find out more and endorse the partnership on www.rainwaterpartnership.org
We hope that this site will be up and running very soon.


We hope that this first newsletter has been informative for you. We hope that we can give you RWH news and information going beyond your own region. If you want to put a question out to the rainwater harvesters of the world, send it to us. Do you have RWH news or successes from your own organisation? We will promote them for you. Do you have a new web site? We will put in a link to your RWH site. Do you want to promote a workshop or a conference? We will let people know.


We look forward to seeing you or hearing from you soon.

Best regards from the IRHA Secretariat staff