ABIDJAN, Côte d’Ivoire (PAMACC News) - Dr Kerstin Danert is a rural water supply specialist focusing on developing in-country capacity with respect to operation and maintenance, cost-effective borehole drilling, technology adoption and sector performance monitoring, and the, and heads the secretariat of the Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN).
In an exclusive interview with ISAIAH ESIPISU of PAMACC News Agency, she discusses the achievements attained so far, the lessons learned, and the bottlenecks towards availing water to the rural poor, as the 7th RWSN conference goes down in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Here are the excerpts:
What is this conference all about?
The forum is a chance to have people from different sectors including local and national governments, nongovernmental organisations, the private sector and community representatives to meet face to face, to exchange knowledge and share experiences.
The forum in particular is very important, because it is looking ahead towards sustainable development goals, and of cause for water. The idea is to have water for all by 2030. And given the fact that that 80% of people without water live in rural areas, we cannot meet this goal without giving attention to the rural people. So the conference is focusing on how we can get water to everyone. Yet no single organisation can do that alone, whether it is a bank, a government, or even a UN organ. It is not possible. So the whole philosophy of developing this conference is to have everybody to work together.
What have been the major challenges to the campaign for water for all?
There has been progress, because there are more people with access to safe drinking water than before. But the main challenge has been reaching out to people living in very remote areas, the very poor people, how to make the marginalised communities with very little means have access to safe drinking water.
Again, there has been a lot of focus on the Millennium Development Goals especially in the past five years to get the services running. But the challenge is maintaining the systems. For example, we can get pipes running, but maintaining these services for years is a big challenge.
And if you look at the contributions coming in through this conference compared to before, there is much enthusiasm on management and sustainability. So people and organisations are thinking more on how to have the systems to continue to work, and this is a positive change.
We need to focus more on professionalism, because if the systems aren’t built well, there is no way they can be maintained.
Another problem is that documentation of what is being done is very weak. That is one of the reasons we are having this forum, to encourage organisations to document what they are doing. We need countries to understand what is being invested, what technologies are working and where.
What lessons have we learned so far?
One of the lessons learned is that we cannot do things in a hurry. You need planning to get things done well. Just running before you can walk is a problem. We need sufficient skills in place to construct and manage. Without that, we cannot achieve sustainable water supply services.
In terms of technology, we are also seeing a bigger variety of water harvesting techniques, we have seen alternative technologies also growing, where people are investing and improving their own services. However, this is only possible to those who can afford.
It’s also important to note that one of the big issues is that since 1990s, there has been very little progress in rural water supplies in Africa. I do not know why, but this is an issue that should be addressed urgently.
Another key lesson is that we cannot think about water supplies, without thinking of water resources. They are totally connected. We need to understand the water resource, we need to measure it whether it is ground water, runoff water or water from anywhere.
What next after the conference?
As a network, we are just but a facilitator. You can’t tell people exactly what to do. You can help them find solutions. Each country and each organization has to adapt to the local context that is acceptable to the local people.
All documentations coming out of this conference will be available online. We also want to see if some of the contributions can be simplified and put together for the better understanding of a masses.
We also want to learn from everybody, and learn from the media representatives on how we can take some of these messages out to the communities.
What I hope to see is people working together. This forum should be a catalyst for engagement.
Who are present in this forum?
We have directors from governments, we have NGOs, we have civil society representatives, we have the private sector, we have the media and we have representatives from communities. What we have done is to bring together major global players in rural water supplies together, to discuss, to challenge each other and to come up with solutions.
All we want is to have people participate as equals so that they can challenge each other without the hierarchy. If we want to reach the solution for water for all, then we cannot afford to cheat each other.
ABIDJAN, Cote d'Ivoire (PAMACC News) - Credit access at affordable rates has availed water supply and sanitation services to hundreds of thousands of households in Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda, the ongoing discourse on rural water supply, taking place in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire has been told.
In his presentation during a parallel session to discuss what the rural people want in regard to water supply and sanitation at the 7th Rural Water Supply Network Forum, Patrick Aluppe, the East African Director for Water.org told delegates that his organisation has used USD 3.6 Million sponsored by the MasterCard Foundation, to catalyse over $20 million in private capital deployment towards water and sanitation. This was done through provision of smart subsidy to financial service providers, to the benefit of over 400,000 households in the region.
“With the right physical product and financial product availability, a lot of gaps in access to water and sanitation can easily be addressed by private capital,” said Aluppe, also a water engineer.
However, he noted that the only way to succeed in such a business, it requires financial institutions that can do it at a reasonable scale simply because if it is done at smaller scale, it is usually never viable.
“There will never be enough charity in the world to solve the global water and sanitation crisis,” said Aluppe, adding that the sector needs fresh thinking and bold approaches to accelerate progress.
“We need market-based approaches that challenge the traditional aid system and help us achieve universal access to safe water and sanitation within our lifetime,” he told the forum, which brings together over 500 participants from governments, nongovernmental organisation, the private sector, the civil society and community representatives.
However, some of the limitations of the water credit model is that it can only work for people who can borrow and repay loans at market rates, and also works only for clients who can be reached by financial institutions.
It therefore means that WaterCredit model may not work with the clients who are considered high risk, or who are too far away from the bank branches. “This is where new innovations will be needed. Water.org is currently exploring the use of digital technology and targeted subsidies to extend access to segments considered high risk by the financial institutions,” said Aluppe.
So far, 748 million people or 10 % of global population remains without access to water and sanitation services even after Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
And yet, finance is still a big problem. On average, investment over the period 2015 to 2030 to meet the Sustainable Development Goal of universal access to basic water and adequate sanitation is estimated at $ 49 billion, whereas current average annual overseas development assistance to the water and sanitation sector stands at approximately $12.7 billion, which is far short of what is needed to solve this crisis.
Today, there is a $12 billion demand globally among families at the base of the economic pyramid bop for access to finance to meet their water supply and sanitation needs.
However, noted Aluppe, waterCredit remains highly relevant in the context of developing countries where access to Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS) services is still low.
Governments can therefore benefit from such a microfinance model by actively encouraging financial service providers with an enabling environment in promoting WSS loans and encouraging the public-private partnerships in respective countries.
It is home rare and endemic species that include the endangered bonobo, the vulnerable forest elephant, golden cat, giant pangolin, Congo peacock, and numerous other rare primates, amphibians, reptiles and birds with over 300 known tree species. And environmentally, the Maringa-Lopori-Wamba forest landscape is known to be a critical carbon sink and biodiversity area found in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
This landscape is an invaluable resource for over 800,000 individuals in this remote rural part of DR Congo. However, due to the increasing population following the high fertility rate among inhabitants and immigrants, this landscape was already succumbing to pressure because the surging population depended on it for livelihood needs, including food, fuel, medicine, income and shelter.
However, following intervention by different players among them Africa Wildlife Forum (AWF) with support from USAID and active involvement of local residents for the past 10 years, the Maringa-Lopori-Wamba forest landscape is slowly getting back to its natural position.
“We started with micro-zoning so as to create protected areas, then mapped all areas including community forests, areas for agricultural production, and logging concessions among others,” said Hugues Akpona, the AWF country manager in the DR Congo.
However, to manage these blocks sustainably, Akpona says, “our approach is to partner with local communities, leaders, organisations and everywhere we go we try to be part of all the decision making processes in raising the conservation agenda.”
In the DRC, the Africa Wildlife Foundation works in MLW and Bili Uele where they are involved in improving the effectiveness of protected area management partnering with local wild life authority, the ICCN that is supported technically as well as financial.
The support includes setting up management units, surveillances, performance business plans, ensuring the use of new technologies, managing community conservation strategy among others.
Akpona underlines the change AWF has brought to this remote area and to its poverty stricken populations supporting the bordering communitiesin the development of agriculture through initiative like distribution of improved seeds, good agricultural practices and other income generating activities.
One of the major project undertaken by AWF was to ensure accessibility of the MLW landscape to the Capital Kinshasa by establishing Congo shipping project. The 500-ton green ship found no reliable transportation for the residents in the landscape but now they are able to transport their harvests and the ship brings back manufactured products from the capital.
The shipping project has provided a reliable way for the residents on its 11 port stop-over on the Congo River and ensures Maringa-Lopori-Wamba stay connected to the rest of the world while increasing production and access to the markets.
The Africa Wildlife Foundation realized another important component in the landscape which is gender balance. This required empowering women achieved through partnering with RFDR (Reseau des Femmes oeuvrant pour le Developpement Rural) to raise production, do literacy classes and develop alternative income generating activities for women and make sure women are also part of decision making processes.
“The landscape is very remote with no TV, no telephone and people don’t know about laws,” says Akpona emphasizing a need to educate and sensitize the local populations about conservation and other sustainable developments.
Among other local NGO’s AWF has partnered with is a group of lawyers enforcing laws including environmental laws and which shares information in the right way for instance sensitizing the locals not to sale bush meat in local markets. And this is tackled through developing some livestock initiatives for the communities.
Working with communities
AWF has been able to work with communities in this part of the Congo for over 10 years, an achievement that has been based on four elements that include; trust, transparency, pre-consent of community and putting into consideration the cultural values of the area.
This approach has ensured sustainable conservation which started with educating the local communities why it was important to conserve and what are their options.
“We are not there to oblige communities to do what we preach, but the benefits have forced those who first though were there to take away their forests but seeing the benefits from communities who worked with AWF later requested our intervention,” says the Akpona.
He emphasizes that, “We convince them (communities) to do conserve for themselves.” The approach ensures sustainability even when the project comes to an end the good work continues since the people know the advantages of doing it.
The work in MLW has produced success stories for the residents who now boost income generating projects which promotes conservation and the most important element was the changing of perceptions on the importance of landscape and the possibility to value resources.
AWF has developed participative land-use plans and engaged residents inthe active management of the forests in which they live, all while delivering livelihoodimprovements. This way it caters for conservation of ecosystems in the Congo Basin.
Such work ensures that vulnerable and endangered wild animals and the habitat is secure which in turn would be catastrophic as scientist warn that if they are not protected some species will be wiped out completely by 2050.
KIGALI, Rwanda (PAMACC News) - The involvement of local communities in forest conservation actions at all levels is key to the success of conservation and sustainable use of wildlife resources in the Central African region, experts say.
According to African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), engaging local communities in natural resource management enhances conservation activities including the fight against poaching and wildlife trafficking.
“The local forest communities are key drivers to the fight against illegal and wildlife trafficking and thus the need to empower them in readiness to conservation challenges,” says Manfred Epanda, AWF Coordinator in Cameroon.
In a paper presented at a side event at the Congo Basin Forest Partnership meeting in Kigali November 22, 2016, Epanda emphasised on the need to adequately sensitise and educate the local population on the importance of conservation to their wellbeing.
“Studies by the AWF has shown the direct relationship between the level of education of the population and attitudes towards conservation,” he said.
According to the studies, the involvement of the local people in the conservation process will enhance conservation by some 11.40 percent, pointing out much resources including wildlife and money can be saved by improving the attitude and knowledge of local people towards conservation.
Experts agree there is a direct relationship between the natural resource potential of a region and the socio-economic wellbeing of the population who rely on these resources for cash and subsistence income.
“The local populations directly rely on their natural resources for survival, but the exploitation of these resources must be done sustainably,” says Richard Eba’a Atyi of CIFOR.
“We do not discourage hunting by the local population as a source of food. The law is against hunting in protected areas and hunting for commercial purposes. This is what the AWF and other partners are against,” says Jef Dupain, Regional Director West Africa, AWF.
Conservation experts also called for reinforcement of wildlife trafficking laws in the Congo Basin forest region to curb increasing illegal poaching activities, especially in protected areas.
Manfred Epanda cited the case of the Dja Faunal Reserve in Cameroon known to be ivory trafficking hotspots, necessitating the reinforcement of the wildlife law and continuous education and involvement of the local population in the protection process.
“ The co-management of protected areas with the local people permit for mastery of the local reality like culture, language, people and provide the opportunity for the population to identify with the project,” he said.
The Dja Faunal Reserve he explained is a UNESCO world heritage site that is facing significant challenges although numerous conservation initiatives are presently ongoing in and around the reserve.
Unfortunately, it attracts the attention of traffickers because it is one of the last remaining refuges for wild apes and many other endangered species in the region, Epanda explained.
Chimpanzees are totally protected wildlife species by the 1994 wildlife law, which stipulates that anyone found in possession of parts of a protected wildlife species, is considered to have killed the animal experts said. The aim is to protect animals like the chimpanzee that are facing serious threats from poaching.
In Cameroon for example according to statistic, some 32 chimpanzee skulls have been seized since the beginning of 2016 during operations carried out under the framework of the wildlife law enforcement initiative started by the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF) in 2003 to effectively enforce the laws.
MINFOF has since been working hard to ensure that those involved with the slaughter and sale of chimpanzee parts are prosecuted because their acts infringe the wildlife law, experts said.
