Your search found 4 records
1 Howard, G.; Nijhawan, A.; Flint, A.; Baidya, M.; Pregnolato, M.; Ghimire, A.; Poudel, M.; Lo, E.; Sharma, S.; Mengustu, B.; Ayele, D. M.; Geremew, A.; Wondim, T. 2021. The how tough is WASH framework for assessing the climate resilience of water and sanitation. npj Clean Water, 4:39. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41545-021-00130-5]
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H050682)
(0.70 MB) (716 KB)
Climate change presents a major threat to water and sanitation services. There is an urgent need to understand and improve resilience, particularly in rural communities and small towns in low- and middle-income countries that already struggle to provide universal access to services and face increasing threats from climate change. To date, there is a lack of a simple framework to assess the resilience of water and sanitation services which hinders the development of strategies to improve services. An interdisciplinary team of engineers and environmental and social scientists were brought together to investigate the development of a resilience measurement framework for use in low- and middle-income countries. Six domains of interest were identified based on a literature review, expert opinion, and limited field assessments in two countries. A scoring system using a Likert scale is proposed to assess the resilience of services and allow analysis at local and national levels to support improvements in individual supplies, identifying systematic faults, and support prioritisation for action. This is a simple, multi-dimensional framework for assessing the resilience of rural and small-town water and sanitation services in LMICs. The framework is being further tested in Nepal and Ethiopia and future results will be reported on its application.
2 Nijhawan, A.; Howard, G.; Poudel, M.; Pregnolato, M.; Lo, Y. T. E.; Ghimire, A.; Baidya, M.; Geremew, A.; Flint, A.; Mulugeta, Y. 2022. Assessing the climate resilience of community-managed water supplies in Ethiopia and Nepal. Water, 14(8):1293. [doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/w14081293]
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H051116)
(1.25 MB) (1.25 MB)
Understanding the resilience of water supplies to climate change is becoming an urgent priority to ensure health targets are met. Addressing systemic issues and building the resilience of community-managed supplies, which serve millions of people in rural LMIC settings, will be critical to improve access to safe drinking water. The How Tough is WASH (HTIW) framework to assess resilience was applied to community-managed water supplies in Ethiopia and Nepal to assess the effectiveness of this framework in field conditions. The resilience of these water supplies was measured along six domains—the environment, infrastructure, management, institutional support, community governance and supply chains—that can affect how they respond to climate change effects. We found that the HTIW framework provided an objective measure of resilience and could be used to rank water supplies in order of priority for action. We also found that systemic issues could be identified. The tools and methods used in the framework were easy to deploy by field research teams. The water supplies studied in Ethiopia and Nepal had low to moderate resilience to climate change. Service management and institutional support were weak in both countries. The data from Ethiopia and Nepal suggests that many water supplies in rural and small-town communities are unlikely to be resilient to future climate change without increased investment and support. The use of simple frameworks such as HTIW will be important in supporting decisions around such investments by identifying priority communities and actions.
3 Eticha, M.; Geremew, A.; Dirirsa, G.; Bayu, K.; Girma, H.; Mengistu, D. A. 2022. Household water treatment practice and associated factors among households dependent on unimproved water sources in Ameya District, Oromia, Ethiopia. Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, 12(5):432-442. [doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/washdev.2022.034]
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H051206)
(0.40 MB) (408 KB)
Globally, about 435 million people depend on unimproved drinking water sources, and 144 million people still rely on surface water. Specifically, a significant part of the population in Ethiopia depends on unimproved water sources. Studies have examined household water treatment practices in the country, but there is limited research regarding the population that depends on unimproved water sources. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate household water treatment practices and related factors for the households that depend on unimproved water sources in the Ameya district of the Oromia Regional State in Southwest Ethiopia. A community-based, cross-sectional study was used to assess the water treatment practices and related factors for the households that use an unimproved water source in the Ameya district of the Oromia Regional State in Ethiopia. The study used a multistage sampling technique and included a total of 413 households. Data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 26 statistical package. A multivariable logistic regression was applied to identify the factors related to household water treatment practices at a 95% confidence interval (CI). Variables with a p-value of less than 0.05 in the multivariable regression were considered to be significantly related to the water treatment practice. The current study showed that 125 (30.3%) of the households that used unimproved water sources practiced household water treatment at the household level. These water treatment methods include boiling (60.8%) the water or using cloth filters (23.2%) or chlorine-based products (13.6%). When considering the training and formal education of the respondents, the water treatment practices were significantly related to the respondents’ water treatment training (adjusted odds ratio (AOR) = 2.99; 95% CI 1.97–4.94) and educational status, specifically secondary education (AOR = 1.61; 95% CI 1.02–2.93). Less than one-third of the households that depend on unimproved water sources treated their water prior to drinking. Providing training to teach individuals how to treat household water is essential to improving water treatment practices.
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H052794)
(0.62 MB) (636 KB)
Climate change threatens the safety of water supplies globally, but small water supplies in rapidly growing and urbanizing towns in low- and middle-income countries are especially at risk. Despite the efforts of the Government of Ethiopia, research shows that that small-town water utilities in Ethiopia are poorly equipped to prioritize developing and maintaining climate-resilient water services. We applied the How tough is WASH framework for climate resilient water supplies to ten town water utilities in Eastern Ethiopia to identify their strengths and weaknesses in preparing for climate change. We found reports of weak institutional support from service authorities and exclusion of climate risk management from trainings, which cascades down to service providers in the form of lack of emergency response, inadequate staffing and financial mismanagement. This is consistent with previous studies on sustainability of town water utilities, and highlights the applicability of this tool into existing monitoring frameworks that have been proposed for town water utilities in Ethiopia. We also modified the How tough is WASH framework to capture these findings and better reflect the complexity of a utility-managed piped water supply.
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