Global Waters Stories – November 2019: Celebrate World Toilet Day

Global Waters Stories – November 2019: Celebrate World Toilet Day

World Toilet Day 2019: These Countries are Making Sanitation Gains with USAID’s Help
As we celebrate the transformative public health impacts of improved sanitation this November 19, USAID takes you from Ethiopia to Indonesia in this photo essay to showcase how innovative thinking, government action, and private sector participation have helped generate some of the greatest recent sanitation success stories around the world.

Strengthening Urban Indonesia’s Water and Sanitation Systems – USAID is working with Indonesia’s government and private sector to tackle the challenge of untreated waste through the regulation of sludge removal and provision of financing for septic tank construction.

Podcast: 2019 Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking Water Report – Global Waters Radio presents the WHO’s Bruce Gordon and USAID’s Oliver Subasinghe discussing this report’s key takeaways and how its data help inform the Agency’s approach to WASH investments

Read the complete issue.

Global Waters – July 2019

Taking the Pulse of a Water Lifeline to Hundreds of Millions

Asia’s great mountain ranges feed vast river systems that deliver snow melt, glacier ice melt, and rainwater to millions of people in downstream communities.

But these resources are declining. USAID–supported efforts to unlock their secrets is helping prepare these communities for a more water-variable future. Read more.

Global Water and Development Report Released

USAID’s annual Global Water and Development Report provides funding data and spotlights country activities. A new companion page tracks how the Agency delivers results to millions.

Raising Voices to Save Water in the Ararat Valley

To address groundwater loss in Armenia, PURE Water promotes civic engagement, good governance, and increased transparency of water management policies and systems. Read more.

Saving Livelihoods One Drop at a Time

The Lebanon Water Project is helping the country better manage its water resources through small grants that improve the quality and quantity of water available to parched farmers. Read more.

Check out Recent Issues of Water Currents

For the latest water-related research, resources, and news, check out recent issues: Handwashing Research | Peri-Urban Sanitation. Or visit Globalwaters.org for back issues.

Link to the complete issue.

Global Waters – May 2019 issue

The latest edition of Global Waters Stories from the USAID Water Office is out now:

• Menstrual hygiene promotion empowers girls and women in Ghana
• A podcast with water expert and engineer Eric Viala about water challenges in the Sahel
• Harnessing the power of private sector partnerships to improve urban water security in the Philippines and more.

Be sure to explore the latest issue.

USAID’s Global Waters – February 2019

USAID’s Global Waters – February 2019

The Infrastructure Upgrade, Reimagined
In Peru, a new cross-sector initiative supported by USAID and the Government of Canada is moving toward an expansive vision of 21st-century water infrastructure that includes natural ecosystems, ancestral approaches, and people themselves.

Turning on the Water
In northeast Syria, USAID is collaborating with local partners to restore essential infrastructure such as pumps and wells, providing clean drinking water to more than 300,000 people.

Global Waters in Focus
Take an in-depth look at the Securing Water for Food Grand Challenge for Development, an international partnership that has worked in 35 countries to accelerate innovation in agriculture.

New updates are regularly added to Globalwaters.org. You may have missed:

• A podcast on how to tackle the global sanitation crisis
• A webinar looking back on USAID/India’s finance and government reform efforts in the water sector
• Responses and takeaways from the Globalwaters.org user survey
• A new microsite with an updated collection of resources from USAID’s Sustainable Water Partnership
• The latest USAID in the News

Global Waters – Turning on the Water: USAID Collaborates with Local Partners to Restore Water Access to Northeast Syria

Turning on the Water: USAID Collaborates with Local Partners to Restore Water Access to Northeast Syria. Global Waters, February 8, 2019.

“It really is an exciting thing to turn back on the water,” says USAID’s Development Advisor David Isaak. “It gives communities some sense of normalcy, that things are coming back to life.”

Before the outbreak of war in 2011, millions of Syrians had their water consistently delivered through a vast network of pipes and thousands of large-scale pumps. Nearly all Syrians enjoyed access to potable water, and massive man-made canals irrigated the arid northeastern countryside, which facilitated a productive agricultural economy.

USAID’s Syria Essential Services (SES II) project helped rehabilitate this well in southwest Syria and installed solar panels to power the pumps. Photo credit: USAID/SES II

The conflict took a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, often deliberately as a tool of war: aerial campaigns and/or improvised explosive devices targeted miles of water networks and destroyed thousands of water pumps. Other water pumps were simply abandoned after the massive civilian exodus.

Read the complete article in USAID’s Global Waters Stories.

Global Waters – World Toilet Day 2018

Global Waters – World Toilet Day 2018

This issue has articles on:

Backyard Cooperation Leads to Wastewater Treatment – With help from USAID, households in the Dominican Republic are turning to small-scale constructed wetlands to improve wastewater collection, treatment, and disposal.

Podcast: Tackling the Global Sanitation Crisis – Rolf Luyendijk and Portia Persley—thought leaders in the water and sanitation sectors and members of the Toilet Board Coalition—discuss the importance of improving sanitation this World Toilet Day.

A Shared Vision to Keep the Water Flowing in Nepal – A community-driven approach is helping one village in Nepal improve its access to and management of drinking water.

The River Belongs to the People Who Live There – Gordon Mumbo brings a lifetime of experience to help cultivate transboundary cooperation along the Mara River Basin

Read the complete issue.

Mobile Communities in Ethiopia Seek Fixed Solutions to Their Water and Sanitation Challenges – Global Waters

Mobile Communities in Ethiopia Seek Fixed Solutions to Their Water and Sanitation Challenges – Global Waters, July 24, 2018.

In many respects, Ethiopia’s lowlands represent the final frontier for the country’s ambitious plans to improve water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) coverage through its One WASH National Program. 

These harsh, arid lands are home to predominantly pastoral communities that roam with their livestock in search of water and grazing lands. Water sources are few and far between, and even when available often do not provide safe drinking water.

Open defecation is the norm for a mobile population that lacks a fixed address upon which to build longer-lasting sanitation infrastructure.

Adding to these challenges are the pressures of regular droughts, depleted groundwater tables, and a lack of institutional capacity on the human and data side.

Read the complete article.

Celebrate World Water Day: Global Waters Stories – March 2018

World Water Day 2018: Unlocking Nature’s Potential to Create a Water-Secure World – Travel from Guatemala to Indonesia in our photo essay showcasing how USAID’s support for preserving natural ecosystems is bolstering public health and laying the foundation for a more water-secure world.

Kenya Shows How New Water Strategy Will Lead to Self-Reliance.

RESILIM: Addressing Water Shortages in Southern Africa – USAID is helping improve shared management of water resources in four countries along the Limpopo River through an innovative transboundary project

Read the complete issue.

 

Salamatu Garba on the Continuing Impact of Water and Development Alliance in Nigeria

Salamatu Garba on the Continuing Impact of Water and Development Alliance in Nigeria. Global Waters, September 22, 2017.

“The whole success of this project was because of the dignity it brought to the community….women now command respect. Women in the community have dignity. The girls now go to school.” 

Photo Credit: Salamatu Garba

Salamatu Garba is making waves across Nigeria. As the Executive Director of the Women Farmers Advancement Network (WOFAN), she has spent 25 years working to empower Nigeria’s rural women and is coming off an especially big year in 2016 — she became an Ashoka Fellow for Nigeria (designating her as a global change leader) and was nominated to the steering committee of the Netherlands-based Women for Water Partnership thanks to her work improving rural water, sanitation, hygiene, and food security.

In her recent conversation with Global Waters Radio, Garba remembers the moment her life’s mission became clear, in the early 1990s. “I stumbled across one of my village women — pregnant, with loads of wood on her head, coming from the farm [with] some livestock — and I stopped to chat with her,” she recalls. “And she told me the life of a woman is nothing more than being subservient to a man, give birth, get pregnant, and that is it until God takes your life.” Garba’s interaction with that woman — whom she later learned died during childbirth — remained seared in her memory and drove her to found WOFAN to address the plight of Nigeria’s rural women and advocate for community improvements that would enhance their quality of life.

Read the complete article.

Global Waters Radio: Establishing a Sustainable Market for Water Purification Tablets in Ghana

Global Waters Radio: Establishing a Sustainable Market for Water Purification Tablets in Ghana. Global Waters, July 18, 2017.

“We feed ourselves out of the sale of Aquatabs — so financially, Aquatabs has helped given us a very sustainable job, and we are proud of it.” 

Ernest Saka Ansong is managing director for Health Top Up Services, a private Ghanaian company that serves as Aquatabs’ official importer. Photo Credit: Health Top Up Services

Aquatabs are one of the world’s most popular water purification tablets, produced by Medentech, a company specializing in manufacture of disinfection products.

Through partners, more than 11 billion liters of water were treated with Aquatabs worldwide in 2016.

First introduced to the Ghanaian market roughly 10 years ago by the USAID Ghana Sustainable Change Project, the tablets remain in high demand today — more than 4 million tablets were sold in Ghana alone in 2015, with similar sales figures in 2016.

Why so popular after all these years? First and foremost, affordability — but also a proven ability to bolster community health, and reduce the prevalence of dangerous waterborne illnesses like cholera.

Read the complete article.