Strengthening rainwater harvesting as a lasting solution to conflicts and Climate Change adaptation in Rwanda
By Ange de la Victoire DUSABEMUNGU
One of the most common causes of conflict between neighbors is the inability to harvest rainwater from household level as sometimes that leads to the point where rainwater destroys a neighbor’s properties or damages other public infrastructure.
When we talk about rainwater harvesting, we mostly look at the water coming down on the roofs of the houses where we live or work.
Rainwater harvesting is an activity one should think about before building a house or installing any other infrastructure.
Often you will find marshland farmers complaining of flooding problems that are often detrimental to crops in the field.
This is mainly due to the fact that the residents from the upper side are not harvesting proper rainwater because as it goes downside to the valley, it is going to damage the farmers’ crops hence leads to the expensive food on the market.
The issue of rainwater harvesting is not only about the rich or the poor, but should also go hand in hand with all of us because even though it is not widely discussed it is one of the most controversial issues in the neighborhood which create conflicts in most cases.
As the days go by, so does housing development. It is recommended that this development be accompanied by efforts to prevent rainwater-related disasters in order to protect the environment and avoid conflicts between neighbors caused by the non-harvesting of rainwater that contributes to the destruction or damage.
Water use experts believe that rainwater harvesting contributes to lowering the cost spent for payment of public water bills every month and preventing wastage of water because there is so much to do with harvested water without the need to use the public water supply and that is money saving.
Normally, rainwater can be used for household cleaning, garden watering and much more.
Efforts should also be made to better capture rainwater as well as digging water holes everywhere that will end up attracting accidents because this is also mostly considered as soil degradation while the later (soil) is the sole infrastructure in which we live.
The National Strategy for Transformation has set out as one of the priorities for the next 6 years “Sustainable Management of Natural Resources and Environment to Transition Rwanda towards a Green Economy”.
Nationally recognized
One of the key interventions to deliver on this priority is to increase storage of water with particular focus on Rain Water Harvesting (RWH) that provides benefits of climate adaptation, water storage that provides opportunities for increasing access to clean water for domestic use and improving health and sanitation, reducing the burden on women in particular who are predominatly engaged in drawing water from unsanitary sources far removed from homes, improving education opportunities for girls in particular, small scale irrigation for the rural poor farming community and disaster risk reduction (DRR).
A number of initiatives have previously been carried out to deliver on this priority and they have adequately informed the potential scale up of this intervention.
A specific project was financed by the national fund for environment and climate change (FONERWA) and has since demonstrated positive results as well as potential for scale up in delivering on the following outputs.
- Strengthening the existing loan scheme on RWH facilities;
- Supporting a subsidy & loan system basing on Ubudehe categorization;
- Disseminating very low cost (artisan) RWH techniques for rural poor households;
- Constructing RWH systems for selected public buildings and integrated collective household systems.
The current proposal is targeting the scale up of two of the interventions viz: i) Disseminating very low cost (artisan) RWH techniques for rural poor households and ii) Constructing RWH systems for selected public buildings and integrated collective household systems.
Additionally, two outputs namely the rehabilitation and protection of RWH structure and knowledge and capacity developed to facilitate policy and planning for local and national level scale up are being considered as part of the application to effectively support scale up of the RWH.
The approach of the program is to draw from progressive experiences from the pilots implemented at various scales around the country and incorporate improvements with updated technologies and consolidate into a coherent national program.
This program that targets climate adaptation and enhancing resilience of Rwandan households and institutional infrastructures by addressing water stress and access for both small scale irrigation and other domestic uses will greatly benefit from expansion and dissemination of the RWH techniques and implementation arrangements that have proven successful to date.
