Water stress and conflicts
Doña Paulina Condori lives in the Atalaya neighborhood of El Alto, an Altiplano city with more than one million inhabitants, four thousand meters high. “I came to the city when in 1993 the drought put our survival at risk in the field.” This destination is shared by Paulina with thousands of inhabitants of El Alto. Aymara peasant families, plagued by the lack of rain, left the rural provinces of the department of La Paz to come to the city. But due to global warming and climate change, the drought came after them. Increasingly, people in El Alto as well as in the hills of La Paz, areas of steep slopes, suffer water stress. In 2016, the shortage of water became dangerous, with rationing of drinking water supply by the public social company for drinking water and sanitation, abbreviated EPSAS.
A fifth of the water taken by the two million inhabitants of La Paz and El Alto comes from the melting of the glaciers of the Andean mountain range; but these snow-caps, due to global warming, cover less and less demand. Water purification is another problem because, due to the lack of rain, EPSAS extracts water from lagoons and deep wells that show pollution caused by mining, as in the Milluni area. This problem is becoming more acute as new mining ventures enter areas that serve as reservoirs of drinking water. In the future, this conflicting situation between water for life and mining for extractive development will take on more strength.
Water harvest
In the peasant communities of the Altiplano it is very common to collect water during the short period of rain in drums, buckets and other containers that are at hand. But with migration to the city, people have put this practice aside. Red Habitat – RH, a nongovernmental organization, supported by Misereor and other agencies is managing to rescue the rainwater harvest in the city. Training courses for interested people from the districts of Cotahuma and Max Paredes of La Paz and several neighborhoods in El Alto provide knowledge about the phenomenon of climate change, possible ways of adaptation and mitigation as well as prevention and risk reduction. Particularly the populations that live on the slopes of La Paz are constantly exposed to the risk of landslides. They are mainly women who attend not only the courses but the implementation of what they have learned in their neighborhoods. Maggy Palacios, RH communicator explains: “More than 90% of the people who participate in our activities are women; that’s why we often talk about women on the hillsides.” The adaptation has a woman’s face.
Visiting Doña Eusebia Vargas in the neighborhood September 14th in El Alto, she shows the installation that, with the support of RH, she has achieved on her site to harvest the rainwater. The rain that falls on the roof of her house is conducted by gutter and pipes to two simple sedimentation chambers, passing through a filter and from there to a reservoir tank. A solar panel generates energy and stores it in a battery, allowing the pumping of the water by means of a small pump to a second elevated tank. The toilet and the laundry are supplied with rainwater; the plants and the small garden too. During the rainy season and while the tank still has water harvested, the consumption of drinking water supplied by EPSAS is greatly reduced; also the monthly payment for this concept. There are families that thanks to these rainwater harvesting systems at home have reduced their water bill by half; the saving of up to ten dollars per month is noticeable in the tight family economy. This saving effect, not only in terms of water but also economically is very relevant. The cost to install a rainwater harvest system amounts to 1,600 Bolivianos (equivalent to 230 dollars); taking into account that not every month there is rain, a family in less than 4 years manages to recover its investment by installing a water harvesting system.
Solar energy and a hot shower
Paulina Condori shows with pride and tears in her eyes her bathroom with shower. “For the first time, I, my son and his family have a bath and a hot shower”; with temperatures below freezing during winter nights it is easy to imagine what it means to have a shower with a water heater while most houses in El Alto do not have a bathroom and toilet. The electric shower demands electricity from the public network but with the solar energy of the panel, Paulina illuminates her dwelling, operates the pump and feeds her small television. Families who have benefited from rain harvesting systems combined with a solar panel report that their electricity bills have fallen substantially. The cost of installing a solar panel, battery and pump is still high, about $ 800. But in a future, with panels at a lower cost and above all legislation that obliges electricity companies to accept to also power their network with solar energy generated at homes, which would mean to ignore the battery, the investment per family could lower enough so that families can afford these facilities out of their own pockets.
Numa Lázaro, president of the Neighborhood Board Porvenir and the Inter-Neighborhood Committee has opted for an alternate way to have a hot shower at home. On the roof of his house he placed a solar water heater that supplies the shower and kitchen sink with hot water. The cost, with less than $ 300, is reasonable and affordable for many families.
RH has subsidized the installation of the systems to women and their families who have actively participated in the courses. They and their families contributed with labor as well as construction materials. The systems installed are of a pilot nature and arouse interest in the neighborhood as well as visiting relatives. Doña Eusebia shares her experiences: “The relatives that visit me in my home want to know every detail of the water harvesting system. They get happy and want to install simple systems in their homes. For the house that I am building, I have decided to take advantage of the entire surface of the roof to harvest rainwater and store it in a tank buried in my patio. With my panel and the pump I will raise the water to an elevated tank. This way I will be able to supply toilets and laundry all year round with rainwater, even in dry weather. ”
The long road of political and public advocacy
RH has managed to interest the plurinational government of Bolivia on the subject of sustainable use of rainwater in housing. The guide that the institution has developed helped the State Housing Agency to incorporate the subject into its policies. The first step is already given; but hard work continues to achieve that the country´s and local governments in their municipalities invest public resources in the improvement of housing. The pretext for not doing so is a legal detail since by law the public sector cannot make investments in the private sphere of citizenship. In the framework of public policies that favor the resilience of the neighborhoods from the optimization of the use and exploitation of the water resource, it is necessary to dismantle outdated schemes and politically open roads to the future.
What I appreciate I take care of
The technical maintenance of solar panels with batteries as well as water harvesting systems is often a headache. The experiences of the systems installed with an operation after three years show a lesson learned: what I appreciate I take care of. The facilities are easy to use and maintain; but the most important detail is the interest and importance that families give to their small systems. The solar panels are cleaned every month, the same with regard to the filter and sedimentation chambers and before the rainy season, the roof is visited to clean the surface where the rain is harvested. Adaptation and resilience goes hand in hand with the increase of quality of life and savings of water, energy and money, as well as in the change of habits. Women, thinking of their families, are aware of this.
From public schools and laundries
The educational unit Juana Azurduy de Padilla, located in the 4th district of El Alto, has a thousand students. RH has recently installed a water harvest system with a 3,500-liter capacity tank. The sinks are fed with harvested water. The cost for the complete installation (panel, pump, pipe, sinks etc.) amounts to 3 thousand dollars. The water saving during the months with rain is 500 liters/day; if the toilet battery were to be fed with the system, the savings would be doubled. If all the more than 460 public schools in El Alto had this simple rainwater harvesting system, the feasible drinking water savings would be approximately 23 thousand m³ per year. “It is a manageable investment for the education sector. This is why we continue to work on raising awareness among the mayor’s office and its authorities”, explains David Quezada, HR director.
In the El Alto neighborhood of September 14th, the water well that had served its inhabitants for years as a source of water was abandoned by the community due to the growing urbanization of the area and consequently due to water pollution. The Neighborhood Council, pushed by the women of the neighborhood and supported by RH, rescued the well. The built pilot module consists of a mouth-tap, pipeline, storage tank, solar panel, pump and elevated tank. In this way the public laundry was born, which has several small tubs for washing clothes as well as bleachers and shelves for drying clothes. During the weekend, the neighbors go massively to the laundry. The meetings of the Neighbor Board are held in the same place, taking advantage of the stands as a small platform. Doña Catalina Mamani, neighbor of the neighborhood has already copied the concept and has a small laundry in her yard, fed with harvested rainwater.
Decentralized drinking water
Many water springs are born on the slopes of La Paz. Water in these steep areas can easily cause landslides with huge tragedies. During the rainy season, the risk of landslides increases as the areas do not have storm drainage systems. The villagers carry out small engineering works to prevent the rain from becoming water currents dragging everything. Traditionally, the inhabitants of these sectors captured water from springs for domestic use. It deals with artisanal catchment and distribution systems. On the slopes of the city there are around fifty water committees; most of these systems lack facilities, tanks and distribution networks that prevent the filtration of water to the subsoil, generating the risk of landslides. Proper chlorination of non-potable water is another bottleneck. RH has started work with several of these water committees, supporting the improvement of facilities such as tanks, sedimentation chambers and simple chlorination equipment.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus water committee operates in the Max Paredes district. 250 neighborhood families do not receive their water from EPSAS but from their neighborhood water committee. The two water springs that supply the neighborhood are located on the land of the local parish; an agreement between the committee and the church guarantees access to water. The flow reaches 35 liters per minute allowing the supply of drinking water throughout the year for more than a thousand people as users. Each family pays a modest fee of approximately half a dollar per month to the committee. Not all water committees have large flows in their slopes. In the Nagasaki area of the Cotahuma district, the women of the water committee say that the three water springs reach a flow of two liters per minute. The 120 user families have decided to accumulate the spring water during the week to fill their tank of more than 10 m³; On Sundays, laundry day and when the whole family is at home, the water supply is covered one hundred percent by the spring water system.
Messages to the Future
1
Due to the interest and initiative of women, actions are born that increase the resilience of entire neighborhoods in the face of risks and water stress, applying the care paradigm in their territories.
2
The water harvest goes hand in hand with improvements in the home, allowing a better quality of life for the families.
3
Advocacy actions are essential for public policies to complement the efforts to mitigate and adapt the population instead of hindering them.
4
The generation of adaptation and prevention capacities in the face of climate change also encourages the change of practices and habits for the benefit of sustainable water management.
The text was prepared, based on on-site conversations by Jorge Krekeler, facilitator commissioned by the AGEH and Misereor and agreed with the people visited. Thanks to Paulina Condori and Luciano Condori from Atalaya neighborhood, Juan Alberto Tarque, Catalina Mamani and Eusebia Vargas from the September 14thneighborhood, to the residents of Porvenir neighborhood, to the Water Committees of Sacred Heart of Jesus of the Max Paredes district and Nagasaki of the Cotahuma district and to the women and men of the Inter-neighborhood Committee for risk management, with its president Numa Lázaro. To the institution Red Habitat with its director David Quezada and his team with Mariela Montoya, Maggy Palacios, Gabriela Cornejo Noemi Cuper and Guillermo Calisaya many thanks for having facilitated contacts, visits and interviews.
Authors:
- Jorge Krekeler / jorge.krekeler@posteo.de
Design:
- Nicole Maron
Photos:
Jorge Krekeler
Contact information regarding the documented experience:
Contact information regarding the documented experience:
Red Hábitat,email: tareha@entelnet.bo
www.red-habitat.org
Edition:
June 2019
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