2.1. Drinking Water Supply
Video: Boosting Development (5:33 min)
Drinking water supply a basic need – Diversifying water supply, watershed protection.
Video: Partnering to re-establish a rainwater harvest culture in the Caribbean (12:23 min)
Drinking water supply options – Rain Water Harvest.
Resource
GWP-C Rainwater harvesting toolbox: http://caribbeanrainwaterharvestingtoolbox.com/rpubs.htm
This Toolkit includes relevant publications for the Caribbean region gathered from on-line sources from across the globe. This toolbox contains information on the following:
- Research publications
- RWH experiences in the Caribbean
- Promotional films
- Technical fact sheets some of which are as follows;
- Safety guidelines
- Water safety and chlorination
- Types of domestic RWH system configuration
- Calculating amount of water from roof
Exercise:
Example of guiding questions to create and enabling environment for RWH:
- Are there regulations in place for the construction of rainwater catchment systems and the usage of the water they collect? If not, identify those needs.
- Are there legislations supporting RWH e.g., in the building code? Would this be required to support RWH.
- Is there a need to create partnerships and if so with who? Identify partners and their roles if possible.
- What economic incentives are needed?
- Is there a need to promote education on the different advantages of RWH? At what level should this education and training start?
Water service interruptions can have serious economic, environmental, psychological and public health consequences on a community. Resilient communities can significantly reduce these risks at negligible cost.
2.2. Sanitation
- SDG 7 – Target 7.C: Halve, by 2015 the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Worldwide 2.1 billion people have gained access to improved sanitation. Despite progress, 2.4 billion are still using unimproved sanitation facilities, including 946 million people who are still practicing open defecation. https://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/environ.shtml
- Improved sanitation facilities are defined as, facilities that ensure hygienic separation of human excreta from human contact; connection to a public sewer; connection to a septic system; pour-flush latrine; simple pit latrine; ventilated improved pit latrine. Not improved sanitation is; public or shared latrine; open pit latrine; bucket latrines (JMP Joint Monitoring Programme for Water supply & Sanitation) (UNEP, n.d.).
Recommendations
Below are selected recommendations from CARIBSAN 2008 workshop:
- Integrate sanitation into water safety plans
- Update national sanitation plans
- Strengthen health evidence base to decision-making
- Capacity building and training
- Technology and knowledge transfer
- Influencing policy, institutional and legal reform: review of legislation being done – opportunities for building sanitation into these processes
- Promoting partnerships developed – national programmes of action – plans to reduce pollution: including sewage
- Information sharing, clearing house sharing, best practices and water quality issues
- Develop and disseminate affordable, safe and culturally/affordable sanitation technologies
- Ensure integrated approach to sanitation
Exercise
Identify enabling environment for improved sanitation. The enabling environment can be assessed by looking at the following:
- What laws are necessary to provide an overall framework for sanitation infrastructure?
- What regulations are need? e.g., design standards, tariffs, discharge standards, practices of service providers, planning regulations and contracts. What approach should developed to address regulatory needs?
- What economic incentives are needed?
- What type of funding would be required and what are the possible sources of funding? Local banks, private investments, international funding agencies, is there a need to develop expertise in preparing project proposals?
- Who should be responsible for implementation, maintenance etc.?