We miss you Ton. I think that you would have gazed with eyes wide, stood with ears pricked at the farewell given to you by your family, friends and colleagues in Delft on the 30 May. We learned so much about other parts of your life; your rich and full life. A life of listening, of caring, of giving, of philosophising and of humour. You touched the hearts and minds of people in so many places, and from multiple walks of life. Thank you Ton. Thank you.

Patrick Moriaty (CEO, IRC) helped us to know more about Ton in his tribute, so allow me to borrow from him: Ton worked with IRC for more than 17 years, and was equally a leading figure in the WASH sector, a steadfast champion of the cause of sustainability and above all of an approach to development that was based on respect and support to national actors and institutions. During his time at IRC, Ton led Triple-S (Sustainable Services at Scale), RiPPLE and SMARTerWASHand supported IRC’s Ghana country team. Ton brought his original passion for film making to IRC, producing the Seventh Video in 2000, a compilation of lessons on community water management from Nepal, Pakistan, Cameroon, Kenya, Colombia and Guatemala. Ton later used clips for another video “What if?”, which illustrated the concepts behind the Triple-S initiative. Other significant works that Ton co-authored include “Doing things differently: stories about local water governance in Egypt, Jordan and Palestine” (2008) and “Community water, community management: from system to service in rural areas” (2003). In recent years Ton became a champion of sector monitoring as a critical building block for national ownership and sustainability. It was with great pride that he organised IRC’s 2013 international symposium on “Monitoring sustainable WASH service delivery” in Addis Ababa. The outputs of the symposium formed the basis for a state-of-the-art book on WASH monitoring, for which he was co-editor: “From infrastructure to services: trends in monitoring sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene services”.

Many RWSN members sent their condolences and wishes, which we passed onto IRC and Ton’s family. Thanks to all of you. There is an online condolence register on www.memori.nl/ton-schouten.

Ton’s departure as our chair has certainly been felt. However he has left his mark, fired us up with ideas, and so as we nominate a new chair in the coming months and move forwards, we will keep on carrying the bright torch that Ton handed us – particilarly of listening to RWSN members – and enabling you, the membership to engage more with one another and keep on improving water supply services in rural areas.

Dr Kerstin Danert, Director RWSN Secretariat

Registration

Register now to book your place at the Forum. Places are limited and going fast: https://rwsn7.net/participate/register/

Exhibition

We are now taking bookings for exhibition stands. Three sizes are available, starting at €2,300. If you have already registered your interest you will been contacted separately with details. Spaces are strictly limited by the space available so bookings will be first-come-first served.  Gold Sponsorship of the Forum includes a medium sized stand (3m x 3m): https://rwsn7.net/participate/exhibition/

Sponsored Seminar Available

We still have some Sponsored Seminar slots for Friday 2nd December .  If you are interested, contact Meleesa Naughton (meleesa.naughton@skat.ch )

Event Sponsors

We are very grateful to the event sponsors whose support is making this Forum possible:

If your organisation or project would be interested in becoming an event sponsor, it is a great way to contribute to the capacity building of rural water professionals and to boost the profile of your organisation, then please contact Kerstin Danert (Kerstin.danert@skat.ch).

Do you change behaviour?

We all know massive resources are invested in providing WASH facilities to ensure access for all. It is not enough to provide people with facilities––these are useless if not used properly. So WASH infrastructure and WASH products must be accompanied by behaviour change interventions or marketing activities. HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation is organising a Networking event on Behaviour Change in WASH to show the diversity of approaches and stimulate exchange.  We are looking for organizations and private sector representatives who would like to present their field experience and new approaches in a marketplace on 30 Nov.  Please contact Valérie Cavin, HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation, email:valerie.cavin@helvetas.org by 30th September by mail.

·          Africa Water Week ,  in Tanzania: featured numerous RWSN and UPGro inputs facilitated by Dr Kerstin Danert (Skat), Dr Callist Tindimugaya (MWE), Erma Uytewaal (IRC), Clare Battle (WaterAid), notably in Track 1: “Achieving universal and equitable access to water and sanitation for all”, convened by the USAID programme: “Water for Africa through Leadership and Institutional Support (WALIS)”

·          The Kampala WASH Symposium ,  in Uganda was held in collaboration with our sibling-network, SuSanA. Daniel Ddiba, wrote a good blog post afterwards: 5 take-aways from the Kampala WASH Symposium, and Harold Lockwood (Aguaconsult)

·          39th WEDC Conference , in Ghana, was successful as usual with many interesting papers presented – those relevant to rural water supply are listed in the “RESEARCH” section of this newsletter and can be downloaded from the WEDC website.

·         The RWSN Secretariat was at  Stockholm  this year, but there were two RWSN co-convened sessions – thank you to everyone involved in particular Almud Weitz, World Bank; Marieke Adank, Dr Patrick Moriarty, IRC; Cecilia Scharp, UNICEF; Harold Lockwood, Aguaconsult; Param Iyer, India; Nuredin Mohammad, Ethiopia; and Rasoul Mikkelsen, Grundfos

o    Build and Run to Last: Advances in Rural Water Services

o    WASHoholic Anonymous – Confessions of Failure and how to Reform

Between October and November 2015 the Rural Water Supply Network’s Equality, Non-discrimination and Inclusion (ENDI) theme enjoyed lively e-discussions on Reducing Inequalities in WASH. This covered practical approaches to improve participation of everyone; inclusive infrastructure designs and information, guidance and support that exist on these. Two webinars were held on these topics, with presentations from World Vision, Messiah College, WaterAid, FCG International, and the University of Technology – Sydney.

n   Download the Synthesis

The project team has conducted interviews with local government officials about their understanding of water and sanitation as human rights. We then collaborated with a creative agency to develop some exciting new materials that are designed specifically for a local government audience. These are short documents which show how the principles of human rights (accountability, equality and non-discrimination, participation, access to information and sustainability) can be applied to the day to day work of designing and delivering WASH services. The first versions that have been produced are prototypes and we now need feedback to see how they can be improved. We will shortly send them out to all the RWSN members who helped with the interviews and have already said they want to be involved. If you were not involved before but are interested now please contact louisagosling@wateraid.org orhannah.neumeyer@wash-united.org

As it names indicates, this Toolkit was developed as part of a regional activity focused on Latin America and the Caribbean and a cross-practice collaboration between the Water Global Practice and Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience Global Practice of the World Bank. The activities carried out as part of the elaboration of this Toolkit consisted in field work in seven countries including field visits to 37 Indigenous communities and interviews with 170  stakeholders (government, Indigenous organizations, civil society and technical specialists). This report provides practical guidance to project teams on how to work with Indigenous peoples in Latin America to develop sustainable WSS services. Though the experience that informed this work included not only rural, but also urban and peri-urban settings, we think this document may be of interest to those in this group.

n   Download from RWSN website

Please feel free to contact Clementine Stip (cstip@worldbank.org), Lilian Pena (lpereira1@worldbank.org), Miguel Vargas-Ramirez (mvargasramirez@worldbank.org) or Dianna Pizarro (dpizarro@worldbank.org), if you have any questions. Note that this document may soon be available in Spanish.

Hazel Jones is due to retire towards the end of this month. Hazel joined the WEDC staff over 14 years ago and has pioneered work in the design of water, sanitation and hygiene services to improve accessibility for disabled people and other vulnerable groups in low-income countries. Equity and inclusion are now mainstream issues within the WASH sector, themes which Hazel, with others, has consistently championed. If you knew or worked with Hazel, we invite you to send a personal tribute to feature in a collection of tributes we are preparing for this occasion. Please send your tribute tor.j.shaw@lboro.ac.uk

Following the success of the first two animated films (in English and French) on  “A borehole that lasts a lifetime”, “Drilling: the importance of good borehole siting”,   WaterAid, UNICEF, Skat and the National Groundwater Association have teamed up to produce two further films to support the Code of Practice for Cost Effective Boreholes:

n   Four steps to better drilling contracts

n   Why are some boreholes better than others?

The films are available in English and French to view and download from the RWSN channel on Vimeo:

n  https://vimeo.com/channels/drilling/

n  Also: Improving the Professionalism of Drilled Water Wells in Africa – Anyone Else Want to Join Us?  – Engineering for Change Blog post

“Sixty per cent of the groundwater in a river basin supporting more than 750 million people in Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh is not drinkable or usable for irrigation, researchers have said.”  A major new study has been published by a substantial team (most of whom are active RWSN members and in the UPGro programme:)

n   Read the Guardian article

n  The Journal paper:  Groundwater quality and depletion in the Indo-Gangetic Basin mapped from in situ observations ,  Nature Geoscience, A. M. MacDonald, H. C. Bonsor, K. M. Ahmed, W. G. Burgess, M. Basharat, R. C. Calow, A. Dixit, S. S. D. Foster, K. Gopal,D. J. Lapworth, R. M. Lark, M. Moench, A. Mukherjee, M. S. Rao, M. Shamsudduha, L. Smith, R. G. Taylor, J. Tucker, F. van Steenbergen & S. K. Yadav

Thank you to everyone who took part in the lively e-discussion back in July. A synthesis is in preparation and will be released later in the year.

The GRIPP partnership, led by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), will strengthen, expand and connect current groundwater initiatives. It will support the Global Framework for Action developed by the Groundwater Governance Project funded by the Global Environment Facility and implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) together with UNESCO’s International Hydrological Programme (UNESCO-IHP), the International Association of Hydrologists and the World Bank. Building on IWMI’s three decades of research, it will embed sustainable groundwater practices at the heart of natural resource management and the SDGs.

n   Visit the GRIPP website to find out more

n   Read this Guardian article

n   Download new Global Groundwater Governance documents

Developing Groundwater  provides a user-friendly guide to this key topic, bringing together for the first time the wide range of techniques required to develop groundwater for community water supplies. This practical manual gives information on effective techniques for siting wells and boreholes, assessing the sustainability of sources, constructing and testing the yield of boreholes and wells, and monitoring groundwater quality.

This book has been made available free to download with thanks to British Geological Survey, UNICEF, WaterAid and Skat, as part of the Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) collaboration on Cost Effective Boreholes (http://www.rural-water-supply.net/en/projekts/details/65). Also thanks to Practical Action and the book’s authors.”

n   Download from Practical Action

Another new free groundwater book is:

n  Integrated Groundwater Management: Concepts, Approaches and Challenges

A new resource from the Africa Groundwater Network available in English and French

n   Download from AGW-Net

André Olschewski  (Skat) who has been ably leading the Accelerating Self-supply theme since 2011, is leaving Skat to take up a new position within the Swiss water industry.  Messages of thanks and well-wishing and poured into the Self-supply group. You can read the messages from André and  Matthias Saladin , who is taking over, on the RWSN blog.

The World Bank Group is preparing for conducting scoping studies in various countries in Eastern Europe including Ukraine, Moldova and Albania to assess the scope of Self-supply as starting point to develop approaches on how to improve the level of services. Current data indicate that a very high proportion (about 30-45%) of the population still depends on Self-supply sources (www.danube.org).

The potential and practice of self-supply and rainwater harvesting were included in discussions at the RWSN Forum pre-meeting in Bangkok where representatives from 15 countries gathered to share experiences of rural water supply from across region.  There was particular interest Bangladesh, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, with a wide range of experiences.

n   Download presentations from the event from the RWSN website

Self-supply isn’t just a rural phenomenon, it is also common in urban and peri-urban areas as well, particularly where municipal piped services can’t expand fast enough or deliver an expensive, unreliable or poor quality service. A UPGro study by Dr Jenny Grönwall (SIWI) explores this issue in more detail in an area of Accra, Ghana.

n   Read more about Self-supply in Accra

The use of the TAF (http://washtechnologies.net/) has been steadily growing, with an assessment of wastewater treatment technology in Kabul, Afghanistan, by GIZ and for the RWSN Forum there have been submissions on using the TAF to assess the Blue Pump in northern Kenya, drilling in DRC and rainwater harvesting and handpump meters in Uganda. The TAF is an open source tool that is free to use and curated by Skat, and an update is planned.

In May, IRC, together with VIA Water, organized an event in the Netherlands, where renowned Dutch architect and circular economy visionary Thomas Rau talked about the “End of ownership”, or rather, manufacturers taking ownership or responsibility for their products. Catarina Fonseca (IRC) presented several examples of “end of ownership” type arrangements from the WASH sector (like The Vergnet Hydro Uduma model, the Whave approach), incorporate elements of Mr. Rau’s principles.  A 4-page briefing note introducing the ‘end of ownership’ concept and providing examples of how businesses and projects apply it in the water and sanitation sector, can be found on the IRC website.

n   Download resources from IRC  (English only)

Latin America: Agua potable y saneamiento en la nueva ruralidad de América Latina

Latin America and the Caribbean are moving towards greater urbanization, but the rural population will not disappear. It is estimated that by 2030, some countries will have greater than 30% rural population. Despite progress in the past two decades, coverage gaps between rural and urban areas and between access to water and sanitation persist. However, there are successful experiences validated in programmes in Ecuador, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru.

n   Download new report from Banco de Desarrollo de America Latina  (Spanish only)

SDC Briefing Note: How To Establish A Full Cost Recovery Water Supply System ? What Are The Key Factors For Success And Replication?

This Briefing Note outlines the results from more than 15 years of experience in both Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by the International Secretariat for Water (ISW) funded by the Swiss Agency for Development & Cooperation (SDC). The note outlines the ways in which cost recovery has been been acheived and social tariffs set locally. However when it comes to scaling up there are certainly many hindering factors, not the least being the centralised structure of the States apparatus and deciding power.

n   Download from RWSN

COMPARING WATER POINT MAPPING PLATFORMS : NEW PAPER FROM UNC

Researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) have published a paper comparing mobile survey tools, drawing on various sources of information including RWSN members through the Mapping & Monitoring group, whose input is acknowledged. The overall rank of the tools was:

1          Fulcrum

2          mWater

3          iFormbuilder

4=        Akvo FLOW

4=        Magpi

6          Survey CTO

7          Open Data Kit (ODK)

n   Read and download the paper

COMPARING WATER POINT MAPPING PLATFORMS : RWSN ONLINE SHEET

Back in 2014 many of members contributed to a google spreadsheet comparing water point mapping applications. Whilst the sheet is still regularly used we have noticed some information is outdated and recent technologies or developments have not been added. If anybody wishes, they can see or update information:

n   View online Water Point Mapping Google Sheet

The new online Africa Groundwater Atlas is an introduction to the groundwater resources of 51 African countries, and a gateway to further information. The British Geological Survey has developed the Africa Groundwater Atlas in partnership with the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH) Burdon Groundwater Network for Developing Countries, and with more than 50 collaborating groundwater experts across Africa.

n   Read more

n   Go to the Atlas

Many of the UPGro Catalysts have continued in new and exciting forms – two have received further funding from the REACH programme: AMGRAF ( Data farming – how Ethiopian farmers harvest data to help their crops ) and the  BGS Tryptophan method of measuring groundwater quality  – which has also been applied in India and included in the  HYCRISTAL Future Climate for Africa  project. The Roads for Water  work continues, with support from various funders.

n   Catalyst Synthesis updated – download here

You can now find a wealth of interviews, presentations, field vlogs and more at the UPGro YouTube Channel.  Highlights include:

n  Interviews with key African groundwater researchers: listen to their perspective and experiences

n  Presentations from the Catalyst projects, originally given as RWSN-UPGro webinars, they are now edited for easier viewing and for use in teaching and training.

n  Interviews and presentations from numerous events where UPGro researchers have been presenting their work and the issues around groundwater in Africa.

Academics can now follow the latest research findings on the UPGro project page on ResearchGate.

n Grönwall, J. (2016) “Self-supply and accountability: to govern or not to govern groundwater for the (peri-) urban poor in Accra, Ghana” J. Environ Earth Sci 75: 1163. doi:10.1007/s12665-016-5978-6

n Walker, D., Forsythe, N., Parkin, G. and J. Gowing (2016) “Filling the observational void: Scientific value and quantitative validation of hydrometeorological data from a community-based monitoring programme” Hydrology Journal,  Volume 538, July 2016, Pages 713–725

n Household access to groundwater and its implication in an urban poor community, Ghana,  by Seth Adjei (T-GroUP)

n Operational, financial and institutional considerations for rural water services: insights from Kyuso, Kenya by Susanna Goodall (Gro for GooD)

n FundiFix: exploring a new model for maintenance of rural water supplies by Susanna Goodall (Gro for GooD)

n “Los retos de las aguas subterráneas en países en vías de desarrollo” by Albert Folch (UPC) y Alvar Closas (IWMI)  (Gro for GooD)

n Koehler, J., Thomson, P., Hope R. (2016): “Mobilizing Payments for Water Service Sustainability” Book Section: Broken Pumps and Promises: Incentivizing Impact in Environmental Health, 2016, Springer International Publishing,  http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28643-3_6 pp57-76

n  Folch, A. and Closas, A. (2016) “Los Retos de las Aguas Subterráneas en Países en Vías de Desarrollo” Hidrogeología emergente. FCIHS 2016. ISBN 978-84-921469-3-2 pp.57-76

Africa Water Week

UPGro had an active presence in several sessions at the  6th Africa Water Week  in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The next event will be in Gabon in 2018 and we will aim to make groundwater a higher priority theme.

IAH Congress

Many UPGro researchers will be attending the  IAH Congress  in Montpellier at the end of September to present their work, so there will be a 1-day UPGro programme coordination workshop.

A research team, led by Prof. Alan MacDonald of BGS, has been awarded research funding by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) for a study entitled “Monitoring the impact of the 2015/16 El Nino on rural water insecurity in Ethiopia: learning lessons for climate resilience“

Read more…

As part of our mission to connect research with policy and practice, UPGro is proud to become a Bronze Sponsor of the 7th RWSN Forum, which will be held in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire at the end of November this year. On Friday, 2nd December it is planned to have a whole day on groundwater research and use in collaboration with the British Geological Survey, theUniversity of Milano Bicocca, the US National Groundwater Association andWater Mission.

Over £500,000 has been awarded to 12 exciting Catalyst Projects working across 11 countries. The ambitious one-year projects complement and expand the scope of REACH and have been chosen for their novel science ideas and potential for impact. Read more

Dr Rob Hope presented the exciting work from the UPGro/REACH research they is being done in Kenya: Performance-based finance for drinking water security and Dr Katrina Charles presenting the REACH approach to Scales of water security

2016 is an important year for the programme as we set up and start research activities in eight Water Security Observatories in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Kenya. A brief overview is provided on the website:reachwater.org.uk/research/where-we-work/

RWSN IN NUMBERS

RWSN membership has reached  8,669 people from 149 countries  LinkedIn group membership is up to 3,203 . At the beginning of 2012 there were around 1,500 RWSN members, so thank you to all for your continued support and commitment to improving rural water supply services.

The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) offers fellowship to young scientists in developing countries to enable them to spend three to 12 months at a research institution in a developing country other than their own.  The purpose of these fellowships is to enhance the research capacity of promising scientists, especially those at the beginning of their research career. The deadline for applications is 1st October 2016. To be eligible, one has to be an early stage career scientist, hold at least an MSc or equivalent degree, be citizen of and be employed by a developing country research institution. Preference is given to young scientists at the beginning of their research career and those from the Least Developed Countries.  More information can be found here.

WEDC 2016 PAPERS

The 2016 WEDC Conference was held in Ghana early this year, bringing together leading practitioners and researchers from across Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH). As always, all the papers are made available online, but if you are looking for those that are relevant to rural water supply, we have produced this collation:https://rwsnblog.wordpress.com/2016/09/06/wedc-2016-rural-water-papers

JOURNAL PAPERS

You can find the latest in rural water supply academic research on the RWSN blog .

Highlights include:

n Self-supply as an alternative approach to water access in rural scattered regions: evidence from a rural microcatchment in Colombia

n Access to groundwater and link to the impact on quality of life: A look at the past, present and future public health needs in Mzimba District, Malawi