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Alan Stinchcombe gravatar image

Hi Claire,

I wish you well in your project, but I'm not sure that there is any single issue that "requires the most attention", since communities' environmental and economic challenges are so varied.

For example, there are water-challenged communities (even in rainforests!) where water quality testing and treatment may have relatively low priority, even for drinking water, because access to any relatively clean groundwater is the highest priority for improving health and hygiene and there are neither government nor community funds. This won't be true for communities with more resources and education which already have water, but it is contaminated.

Therefore, you may have to settle for an issue that evidence indicates is the greatest challenge for communities in one particular setting.

As Cor suggests, unless the community already has expertise in maintaining agricultural equipment, even a VLOM pump may not be sustainable for lack of spares and expertise.

I am trying to assist a hunter-gatherer community that barely participates in the cash economy, in its dry-season quarters in southern Cameroon, three days travel from the nearest international airport. My focus has been on an (expensive & dangerous to dig) dug well with:

  • a secure well-housing,
  • a (sustainable!) bucket & windlass and
  • a siphon mechanism for emptying the bucket while maintaining bio-security (probably sustainable only if cheaply mass-produced - my prototype uses a re-engineered toilet flushing siphon and is still awaiting field testing)

Thank you for engaging with the global challenge,

Alan Stinchcombe