International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance

Newsletter n° 11 - October 2005
"Every cloud has a silver lining - rainwater"

Dear Rainwater Harvesters, this edition contains information on:

• New IRHA Logo
• IRHA Membership for 2006
• "Lluviatl" - Rainwater Bottled By & For Mexican Rural Communities
• On World Water Monitoring Day, why not test your Rainwater?
• Introducing the Rainwater Association of Somalia (RAAS)
• Drought-proofed by traditional wisdom from Karnataka, India
• Capturing the Rain & putting it to use in Burkina Faso
• A brief report on RWH activity from Kerala, India
• Two articles on RWH in the International Herald Tribune
• Rainwater Tanks Represent Health & Hope for 100,000 Families
• New Publications
• Dates for your Diaries

New IRHA Logo

As you can see at the top of the page, the International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance has changed its logo. As the logo usually appears next to the Alliance's full name and address it was felt that the full name surrounding the logo was a little bit superfluous. The redesign was carried out by Sebastien Stern (www.sebastienstern.com). We hope that you like it.


IRHA Membership for 2006

IRHA was created in September 2002 at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, where rainwater harvesters from 5 continents expressed the need for a federative organisation in the form of an international alliance. Its goals should be to unify the movement worldwide, to build on achievements in the field of RWH & to work towards a strong worldwide network engaged in the fulfilment of the Millennium Development Goals. Therefore, from its foundation, IRHA has set out to bring together like-minded people & organisations with an interest in the development of RWH.

Since then, IRHA has worked to spread its network around the globe & it can now claim to have most of the eminent organisations & individuals from the world of RWH in its network or on its Steering Committee. It seeks to support the future growth and direction of RWH by providing a forum for its members to work together for their mutual benefit.

As a representative & federalist body for those involved in RWH, IRHA promotes the common interests of its members, with the pre-condition that RWH is either a component of Integrated Water Resources Management or part of a poverty reduction strategy.

At its last meeting, IRHA's steering committee recommended that the Secretariat make membership of the Alliance a more formal matter. The Secretariat has since worked on a Membership Charter as a means to strengthen the rainwater harvesting movement & has begun already begun to sign up members.

For 3 years IRHA has been increasingly acknowledged as a unifying & influential voice in the field of RWH. It has established relationships with many RWH organisations, NGOs, CSOs, UN agencies, international & government agencies, companies & individuals worldwide.

Please go to http://www.irha-h2o.org & click on the link to membership. With your help IRHA will continue to put RWH on the sustainable development agenda; to exchange ideas & experience; to influence policy at the international, national & local levels; to provide a vehicle for creating partnerships & to promote a globally representative approach, allowing regional & other variety.


"Lluviatl" - Rainwater Bottled By & For Mexican Rural Communities

Mexico consumes more bottled water than any other country except the United States. All but the poorest Mexicans buy bottled water, despite Mexican tap water getting dramatically cleaner in recent decades, especially in the cities. In 1990, 55 % of tap water in Mexico was treated, according to the National Water Commission (CNA). By 2003, that figure was more than 95 %. See the full article from The Seattle Times at: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002509188_mexwater21.html?syndication=rss&source=seattletimes.xml&items=150

The International Centre for Demonstration & Training in Utilising Rainwater (CIDECALL) in has recently started a fascinating new pilot project. It has opened a purified rainwater bottling plant. It is producing ½ litre recyclable PET bottles of "Lluviatl", with a picture of the Aztec rain god, Tlaloc, on the label. Prof. Manuel Anaya Garduno, IRSCA Vice President for Latin America, is the project leader.

Rainwater is collected at the Texcoco Post-Graduate College, where CIDECALL is based, & is stored in large reservoirs lined with a modern geomembrane. Before bottling the rainwater passes through a multi-stage purification process involving filtration through activated charcoal, reverse osmosis, ultra-violet light & ozone. Many indigenous Mexican communities spend lots of money on buying bottled water. They know it is safe to drink when their tap water supply probably is not, or does not exist. CIDECALL's current pilot projects offer poor rural & urban communities the chance to use their public school roofs to collect rain & buy a complete package of RWH, storage, purification & bottling equipment. "Lluviatl" quality has been passed by the Public Health authorities & marketing of this bottled rainwater is under discussion with provincial authorities & the private sector.

This idea was presented to the Mexican First Lady, Mrs Martha Sagahun de Fox in the installations of the Pro-Mazahua foundation in the Municipality of El Progreso, Michoacan State. Mrs Fox was presented with 3 boxes "Lluviatl". She showed great interest in CIDECALL & commented that she would present the proposal to the President.
The potential social & economic benefits of bottled rainwater for indigenous communities could be huge if President Fox, Mr Slim and other heavy weights in Mexican political life can be convinced that this project is worth scaling-up across the country. IRHA will be organising a visit to this interesting site in March 2006 in the run up to the 4th World Water Forum. If it is a success, then this Mexican scientific research & practical action will be widely promoted by IRHA to other LAC, African & Asian partners! For information visit: www.cidecall.org.mx .


On World Water Monitoring Day, why not test your Rainwater?

On 18th October, tens of thousands of people in more than 50 countries will celebrate World Water Monitoring Day. This day, organized by the International Water Association (www.iwahq.org.uk) & America's Clean Water Foundation (www.acwf.org), aims to bring public attention to the role that the world's citizens must play in ensuring a sustainable supply of clean, usable water in each & every country.

Participants will test the quality of rivers, lakes, & other water bodies using a simple monitoring kit. So why not test the rainwater which you are collecting? All the water quality data from around the world is collected in the WWMD database, which provides a unique snapshot of the state of the world's water. You can take part by registering one or more monitoring sites in your area on: www.worldwatermonitoringday.org.

IWA has a limited number of free water monitoring kits available for participants in low income countries. For more information or if you are interested in receiving free monitoring kits for WWMD activities in your country, please email Tom.Hadfield@iwahq.org.uk .


Introducing the Rainwater Association of Somalia (RAAS)

In Somali, "RAAS" means "habitation" - in this case, human habitation. For nomadic Somalis, habitation must be a place where water is available in abundance, hence, the adoption of the acronym RAAS for this new rainwater association.

RAAS was founded in June 2005 by a group of Somali professionals after visiting an exhibition in Nairobi. They found documentation on rainwater networks in the region and realised that their country, affected by recurrent droughts & famine, could greatly benefit from such a national association.

RAAS has obtained endorsement from the Office of the President of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia & is now in the process of reaching out to regional & international rainwater networks such as SEARNET & IRHA. It has already created partnerships with civil society organizations within the various autonomous regions in Somalia itself.

RAAS' mission is to promote & improve rainwater harvesting technologies, utilization & management. Somalia has a lot of rainwater harvesting techniques that have been developed indigenously but which are rarely known outside its borders. RAAS would like to share these with neighbouring countries whilst learning about & replicating successful techniques from around the region.

RAAS' vision is to exist as a national rainwater association that promotes access to safe & reliable water supplies for domestic, livestock, agricultural & commercial use in Somalia.

The interim RAAS secretariat is based at the International Somalia Rehabilitation Association in Nairobi. Part of its upcoming work will involve developing a five year strategic plan which involves enhancement of RAAS governance structure & operational capacity. For more information write to: raas@yahoo.co.uk .


Drought-proofed by traditional wisdom from Karnataka, India

Three generations of the Nagaral family farming in Karnataka's Bagalkot district have been campaigning to drought-proof fields & to conserve the soil & water. The inspiration to educate farmers in their region came from a text written 170 years ago by Ghanamatha Nagabhushan Shivayogi Swamiji that until relatively recently remained only in manuscript form. The 350-page text is full of practical information - the time-tested knowledge of farming in Karnataka - to help farmers grow a variety of crops, to prepare manure & to conserve soil & water.

The Nagarals demonstrated the success of ancient drought-proofing measures in their own fields. Setting their professions aside, they then travelled widely inside their district to physically guide & supervise the construction of bunds & weirs amongst their neighbours.
Directly or indirectly, at least 500 families in the district earn their bread from drought-proofing work and it is all carried out without a single paisa of subsidy from the government. Though a bit expensive, wherever construction of bunds, waste-weirs etc. was taken up systematically, no drought has yet been able to snatch away the farmers' harvests.

Visit www.indiatogether.org/2005/aug/agr-dproof.htm for the full article written by Shree Padre - a journalist with years of experience in agricultural reporting & rainwater harvesting.


Capturing the Rain & putting it to use in Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world. It has few natural resources. Its economy is dominated by agriculture & handicrafts. The fact that Burkina Faso is landlocked only serves to increase the prices of its few export goods on world markets (cotton & cattle). 65 different ethnic groups make up the population & 81% of the population survives on less than USD 2 per day. 58% of the population has to do without access to an improved water source. 34% of children are underweight, but there are only 4 doctors for every 100,000 inhabitants to weigh them. 81.2 % of the population is illiterate yet only 35% of children go to school. The country is hugely dependant on international aid.

But from small seeds do giant baobab trees grow. That is idea of Geneva based charity "Graine de Baobab" & its founder Eliane Longet. Graine de Baobab's work centres on the village of Ouâda, in the Centre-East region of Burkina Faso. Its population of almost 5,000 people is made up of farmers & pastoralists.

From December 2003 to October 2004, with the villagers providing the labour, a 300m long dam made of stones & cement was built. When the rainy season arrives the dam retains rainwater & run-off & creates a 3km-long lake forms behind it. Before the dam was built storm waters rushed down the valley & disappeared. Now the lake provides a regular watering point for cattle; vegetable gardens below the dam are now irrigated & have become a source of revenue; greater amounts of fish are caught in the lake which has improved diets; water from the lake is used to make bricks all year round; infiltration from the lake recharges the aquifers so that local people can use wells - their traditional water source. When water levels are lower, even the silt deposits which build up behind the dam can be dug out & used to improve the fertility of the fields.

"Graine de Baobab" brought finance for earth moving equipment & ideas for productive uses of the harvested rainwater. For more information, visit: www.grainedebaobab.org.


A brief report on RWH activity from Kerala, India

From Dr. M.I. Jacobkutty
There are many houses in Kerala without mains water, a bore well or even a traditional well. Their entire water supply consists of harvested rainwater, filtered, collected in ferocement tanks & pumped to the top of the house in tanks for all household uses.
In the last couple of years, the State Govt. of Kerala has come to understand the relevance & significance of RWH. The Govt. has now made it mandatory for all the newly constructed Keralan houses to harvest rainwater. This year the Govt. of Kerala earmarked 2,500,000 Rupees (25 lakh or USD 57,000) for each of the Govt. medical colleges in Trivandrum, Allapuzha, Trichur & Calicut to build RWH systems to meet the challenges they face in providing drinking water & sanitation. A number of government establishments & other organizations will receive grants of Rs. 200,000 (USD 4,560) for RWH. Many of the private establishments are already RWH.

The electronic & print media are giving RWH a high profile in captions, video clips, documentaries & case studies. Many of the leading daily newspapers are greatly raising awareness by distributing booklets or pamphlets about the need & significance of RWH. In May, the leading daily "Malayala Manorama" organized & sponsored a two day training programme on RWH. Experts in the field of RWH gave classes on its importance & various techniques to more than 150 delegates. Malayala Manorama gave cash awards for the educational institutions which have the most efficient RWH systems. The Museliar Institute of Technology won the 1st prize of Rs. 200,000. The best higher secondary school won Rs. 50,000 & the best secondary school won Rs. 25,000. Most private higher education institutions, such as the Mar Basalious College of Technology in Trivandrum also have very effective RWH systems.


Two articles on RWH in the International Herald Tribune

"Old ways of water management spring up again in arid regions" by Michael J. Strauss, can be read on: http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/19/news/rswatag.php .

"Water-scarce India, too, weighs a return to ancient practices" by Anand Giridharadas, can be read on: http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/19/news/rswatind.php .


Rainwater Tanks Represent Health & Hope for 100,000 Families

Rainwater collection tanks have already made clean drinking water available to more than 100,000 families in Brazil, & the goal is to build one million by 2008, to ensure water supplies for all poor households in the country's impoverished semi-arid northeast.

The rainwater represents "health & hope" to families who in the past had to walk kilometres to carry home buckets of dirty water, says a brochure by ASA, an umbrella group that links more than 700 NGOs, trade unions, cooperatives & associations. ASA was created in 1999 to promote development projects in the drought-stricken northeast, which is home to some 25 million people, a majority of whom live in poverty.

The group's main aim is to come up with solutions adapted to the local climate & ecosystem, while opposing projects like large dams, which only favour a privileged minority & do not bring about sustainable development. The organisation is also opposed to the government's plan to divert water from the Sao Francisco River, which emerges in central Brazil & runs through part of the northeast, to supply other parts of the semiarid region. Besides the high financial & environmental costs of the project, it would benefit only a few, while accentuating the concentration of water & land, according to ASA.

Each rainwater collection tank costs a little over 1,500 reals (USD 640) to build. The cost is kept down by the fact that the beneficiaries themselves provide the labour, while community solidarity funds are set up with donations from local residents, in order to build more tanks & address other community needs. The tanks are built next to every house in poor rural communities.

In Brazil's semiarid northeast, rainfall amounts to at least 200mm a year, enough to provide water supplies to a five-person household for a year if the water that falls on the rooftops is collected and stored. The cylindrical tanks are built with pre-fabricated cement slabs. Each can hold up to 16,000 litres of water, and they are situated so as to collect all of the rainwater that drains off the roof of the house.

"This is not a programme run by governments or politicians, but rather by civil society," says ASA, which sees social mobilisation & participation as indispensable. The families who benefit from it participate in every phase of the construction & attend courses on the significance of the project & the care that is needed to collect water & keep it clean.

The full story, by Mario Osava, is available from the Inter Press Service News Agency on:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=30233


New Publications

The Food & Agriculture Organization of the UN has produced a CD-ROM entitled "Training course on water harvesting". This provides training modules & other relevant material on water harvesting in Arabic, Chinese, English, French & Spanish, and focuses on "runoff farming systems" for improved production of crops, trees & rangeland species in drought-prone areas. The objective of this training material is (i) to raise awareness of technical staff, extension workers & other stakeholders on the water harvesting options available & (ii) to build local capacity on the use of available data for adequate planning, systematic design & sustainable implementation of water harvesting systems. For more details & ordering see: http://www.fao.org/icatalog/search/dett.asp?aries_id=105009 .
For technical information, write to ines.beernaerts@fao.org

"Urban storm water management in developing countries", by Parkinson and Mark.
This 256 page book covers a wide range of methods & approaches related to urban hydrology & drainage, with a specific focus on developing countries. It covers the main aspects of planning, design, operation & maintenance of urban drainage systems as well as socio-economic & institutional issues related to urban storm water management. It presents structural & non-structural approaches to flood mitigation & pollution control within an IWRM framework. The book provides extensive examples & case studies of "best practice". Price: EUR 53.00 from International Water Association Publishing www.iwahq.org.uk

IRHA Steering Committee member Adélia de Melo Branco & her colleagues Joo Suassuna & Semira Adler Vainsencher have just had a case study published in Vol. 10, no. 3 of "Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change". Entitled "Improving Access to Water Resources through Rainwater Harvesting as a Mitigation Measure: the case of the Brazilian Semi-Arid Region" this paper focuses on the Million Cisterns Programme; an initiative developed by NGOs with the support of Brazilian Federal Government institutions & international funding organizations. The project is innovative because instead of focussing on short-term, top-down, palliative measures based on the construction of dams & wells, it focuses on low cost, bottom-up, long-term measures &, most importantly, it involves an educational component. Thus, the provision of water is closely related to the empowerment of the most destitute & this leads to the sustainability of the actions. The case study serves to illustrate the relevance of the partnership between grassroots organizations & governmental institutions in the context of mitigation. See: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11027-005-0053-8


Dates for your Diaries

Sustainable Urban Development & Rainwater Conference: From Buildings to Cities
will take place 13 October 2005, Lyon, France. The main organiser is Rhone-Alps Research Group on Water Infrastructures (GRAIE). This event aims to bring together urban development & water management specialists, so they can participate in developing a common water management culture through the experiences of stakeholders from different horizons; create a dialogue around common projects; & highlight the importance of an environmental quality approach. The day will be structured around various presentations on different types of experiences & different scales, from the building to the city. Contact: asso@graie.org or visit http://www.graie.org/graie/graiedoc/JTAM/Prg_jtam6.pdf

The 1st International Dialogue on the Worldwide Water Crisis will take place in Seville, Spain, 24-25 November 2005, organised by Green Cross Spain, the Seville Public Water Management Company & Seville City Council. Water management, whether public or private, should take principles of good governance into consideration, particularly with respect to transparent decision-making & fostering public participation. This seminar will look at four very different cases of how sustainable water resources management can be achieved with intelligence, sensitivity & technology at: the Incomati River (S.Africa, Mozambique, Swaziland), the Ebro River (Spain), the Chao Phraya (Thailand) & Lake Titicaca (Bolivia, Peru). More information is available on: www.gci.ch/docs/Seville%20Programme-1.doc

Short course on Water Recycling for Urban Applications will take place at School of Water Sciences, Cranfield University, United Kingdom, 13-14 December, 2005. Water recycling & reuse are becoming increasingly important elements of IWRM strategies. Opportunities for reclamation & reuse expand as research on the technological, economic, & social dimensions of reuse push back the barriers to their effective, safe & efficient application. This course will provide design engineers, process scientists, operators, researchers, regulators, & water managers with core information on the practical aspects of reuse scheme planning & management. Sessions are on water quality standards, technology selection, public perception, & the economic analysis of reuse schemes. Contact: shortcourse@cranfield.ac.uk or visit www.cranfield.ac.uk/sims/water/recycleshortcourse.htm .

7th International Conference on Urban Drainage Modelling (UDM) & the 4th International Conference on Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) will take place in Melbourne, Australia, 3-7 April 2006. This is organised by the Institute for Sustainable Water Resources, Engineers Australia, International Water Association & the Stormwater Industry Association Australia. More information on: www.icms.com.au/UDMandWSUD .
UDM themes: Flooding & risk management; Impacts of urban climate variability & change; Modelling pollutant generation, transport & sewer processes; Modelling socio-economic & human health impacts; Data requirements, optimisation & uncertainty; Advances in decision support & software tools; Real-time control systems.
WSUD themes: Application of novel technologies - their design & performance; Integration into the urban landscape & built environment; Overcoming institutional & socio-economic impediments to WSUD; Non-structural measures; Environmental impacts; Case studies & lessons learned (a) Greenfield & (b) Retrofit; Construction, maintenance & lifecycle costs; Modelling for Integrated Urban Water Management (scaling & multi-criteria approaches); Capacity building & policy programs.

An international conference on Sustainable Development for Rural & Remote Communities will take place in Freemantle, Western Australia, 10-13 July, 2006, organised by the Environmental Technology Centre of Murdoch University in Perth. Amongst the many topics are: Environmental health; Water supply & management; Land use & food production; Social & cultural appropriateness; & Women & Technology. Rainwater harvesting as decentralised water supply option fits into these sections. The objective is to share ideas & experiences on successful sustainable strategies & technical interventions & innovations that lead to improved cultural maintenance & quality of life. For full information contact K.Mathew@murdoch.edu.au or visit www.etc.murdoch.edu.au.


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