Originally published on Transformative Cities

An estimated 52% of Bolivia’s population have no access to sanitation and 80% of wastewater is not treated before re-entering the environment. The Water and Sanitation for All project aimed to guarantee the right to sanitation in the San Pedro Magisterio neighbourhood by successfully building and running a wastewater treatment plant and strengthening community management of the entire water cycle through the neighbourhood’s Cooperativa de Agua San Pedro Magisterio.

Pollution in Cochabamba’s river reached such high levels in 2012 that the government declared it an “environmental disaster”. The Water and Sanitation for All project was born from a demand and a request from a community: the San Pedro Magisterio cooperative felt the need to treat domestic wastewater in its area to avoid polluting the Rocha River and the environment.

Assemblies with all cooperative members were held to discuss the technical design of the water treatment plant, improvements to domestic use of the sewerage system, and the introduction of a new tariff structure guaranteeing the system’s economic sustainability – all of which encouraged the community to take ownership of the initiative. The cooperative committed to taking on the running of the treatment plant once built, and environmental awareness activities were held in the local school.

But it was not all plain sailing. The municipality, through its water operator, attempted to sabotage the project, criticizing the technical design of the plant and refusing to issue the environmental permits required to execute the project. It also tried to divide the community.

But the community’s unity and determination overcame this, challenging the state-municipal authorities by defending their right to manage water as a community, establishing alliances (with other neighbourhoods and public servants) to resist political pressure, and strengthening their participatory and transparent internal decision-making mechanisms. The project is now responsible for treating the wastewater from 300 families, and for improvements to the hygiene and sanitary conditions in the San Pedro neighbourhood.

“The collective (community-based) management of the basic public service is certainly transformative and inspiring, and it deserves worldwide attention. It has the potential of redefining the meaning of “public” as truly commons/common goods.”

– Evaluator Lorena Zarate

Would you like to learn more about this initiative? Please contact us. Or visit fundacionabril.org/ and plataformaapc.org/

Transformative Cities’ Atlas of Utopias is being serialized on the P2P Foundation Blog. Go to TransformativeCities.org for updates.

The post Cochabamba, Bolivia: Community-led response to water pollution crisis appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The oceans were the original global commons, shed and navigated for ages. But new technologies have added numerous challenges to sustaining our oceans: offshore oil drilling, deep-sea mining, and overfishing. However, it’s crucial that water, both freshwater and saltwater, remains a commons and held in the public trust, because access to clean and affordable water is a basic human right.

A widespread approach to delivering water to cities consists of establishing a municipal entity, under direct or indirect local governmental control, that collects water dues from all customers (residential as well as businesses). Water rates are determined through a political process, and are intended to provide affordable water supply and sewage treatment while covering the costs. Public water supplies of this kind are often highly successful, especially in countries where there are effective methods to keep local government accountable to its citizens. However, in some cases, municipal water utilities may become inefficient (providing a service of low quality or at high cost) if insufficient incentives are built into the system to ensure that the service is continually upgraded. In extreme cases, municipal utilities may fall seriously behind in provisioning growing cities, or may provide jobs as a form of political patronage.

One type of water distribution, beyond public and private, is a cooperative system, where the distribution system is owned by its customers. The existence of this alternative is too often ignored, but it is by no means rare. For example, in the U.S., there are over 3,000 rural water cooperatives, which were set up since the New Deal in order to cheaply build up and maintain a water supply infrastructure in the rural areas of the country.

Regardless of the ownership of a water utility (public, private, or cooperative), a utility may return polluted water to a river or the sea — especially if downriver users are not able to make an impact on decision-making. This points to the need for larger communities to assert their rights to clean water. —Emily Skeehan and Nikolas Kichler

1. Tarun Bharat Sangh: Fostering Community-driven Solutions to Secure Water Access and Rejuvenate Rivers

India makes up around 18 percent of the global population, and yet only has access to 4 percent of the world’s drinkable water resources, according to CNN. Since the 1980s, both rural and urban areas in the country have faced drinking-water shortages and crop failures. This scarcity is exacerbated by river pollution associated with sewage disposal and industrial waste. To address this crisis, in 1985, Rajendra Singh and others formed the local nongovernmental organization Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS, or Young India Organization) in Alvar, a rural district in Rajasthan.

TBS has worked with rural villagers to revive the use of traditional water-harvesting solutions. In particular, they used “johads” (small earthen reservoirs) to harvest rainwater in a way that reduced evaporation losses to substantially replenish local aquifers. People also shifted to organic farming techniques to make more efficient use of water. TBS advocated for these and other methods of water management as a way to bring about a culture of self-sufficiency to local farming communities. The River Arvari Parliament expanded on this objective. Following the revival of the Arvari River in 1990, representatives from the area’s 72 villages formed the transparent, community-driven “river parliament” to maintain the health of the river. To date, Rajasthan communities have created and managed more than 11,000 johads, replenishing more than 250,000 wells. Within 28 years, seven river systems that had been dried up for 80 years have been revived. —Nikolas Kichler

2. Resident Development Committees: Community-led Management Over Local Water Supplies

Among the African nations, Zambia is one of the most rapidly urbanizing countries in the continent. In its capital, Lusaka, 60 percent of the population live in unplanned settlements that are an urban and rural hybrid. This has led to extensive administrative challenges over clean water and public sanitation. In response, the Lusaka Water and Sewage Company, the Lusaka City Council, and various nongovernmental organizations worked together to develop Resident Development Committees (RDCs). The RDCs provide legal entities for local residents to foster cooperation with unplanned neighborhoods, thereby allowing planning, construction, and maintenance of water utilities to become self-organized and co-managed through them. Financial responsibilities, such as fee collection, are also under their jurisdiction. Over time, the RDCs have become the primary managing units for local collective decision-making over water issues, and have sustained a regular flow of information, transparency, and accountability to the communities they represent. Many neighborhoods now have access to a reliable and largely self-sustaining source of clean water. The benefits of RDCs for unplanned communities have been so convincing that formally planned areas are also advocating for the same model. Learn more from the review of Bangalore and Lusaka case studies, a paper on groundwater self-supply in Zambia, and this article on Zambia’s water service gap—Nikolas Kichler

3. depave: Communities Turning Pavement Into Green Public Space

Paved surfaces contribute to stormwater pollution, by directing rainwater with toxic urban pollutants to local streams and rivers. This, in turn, degrades water quality and natural habitats. Since Portland receives a lot of rain, impervious pavements are especially problematic for the city’s stormwater management. Two friends from Portland thought of a straightforward solution to this problem: remove as much impervious pavement as possible. They organized their first official depaving event in 2008. Since then, they formed depave, a nonprofit organization that promotes the removal of pavement from urban areas to address the harmful effects of stormwater runoff, as well as to create green public spaces. depave seeks out groups that are already community-oriented, such as schools and faith-based groups, and encourages them to work together on the same project. depave has coordinated over 50 depaving projects in Portland. Eric Rosewall, depave’s co-founder, reports the organization has depaved more than 12,500 square meters of asphalt since 2008, diverting an estimated 12,000 cubic meters of stormwater from storm drains. Over the years, depave has grown to support depaving across the Portland metro region and beyond, through their depave network training services. —Eric Rosewall (depave) and Adrien Labaeye

These three short case studies are adapted from our latest book, “Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons.”

Photo by *SHERWOOD*

The post How 3 community organizations are asserting their right to clean water appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Jakarta’s governors have traditionally been (quietly) supportive of ending water privatization in the city, and in 2013, the governor of Jakarta heeded residents’ calls and declared a plan to take over water services from the private sector. Public water company PAM Jaya demanded a contract renegotiation with the private water operators, and the provincial government of Jakarta announced a plan to purchase private water operators’ shares. In 2013, the provincial house of representatives approved a budget for PAM Jaya to proceed with share repurchase.

One particularly effective strategy in November 2012 involved residents, represented by legal aid organisation LBH Jakarta, filing a citizen lawsuit against water privatization in Jakarta. Amrta Institute supported the challenge with evidence for use in court. This long and successful legal challenge played a major role in maintaining political pressure.

The labor union’s demonstration in front of Palyja’s office, in the elite buildings of Central Jakarta, April 2011

The backdrop to this – two decades of failed water privatization in Jakarta and half the population having no piped water – led the Amrta Instite to run public media campaigns, produce popular publications about the issue, and make documentaries.

At first most people were not aware that water problems were the result of privatization, and that the solution was to return water services to public management. But now we have decisions from three courts supporting public water management; the Constitutional Court decision, Central Jakarta District Court decision and Supreme Court decision. In October 2017, the governor told the media that he will implement the court decision.

A woman who was washing in Penjaringan, North Jakarta, admitted that the cost to buy water consumed almost 70% of her husband’s income.

“The most impressive thing is that the initiative did not give up fighting against systematic/structured powers – from domestic to international, from governments to corporations – which look impossible to challenge.”

– Satoko Kishimoto

Would you like to learn more about this initiative? Please contact us.

Or visit amrta-institute.org

Transformative Cities’ Atlas of Utopias is being serialized on the P2P Foundation Blog. Go to TransformativeCities.org for updates.

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