Nepal: SAPPROS provides hybrid systems to meet drinking and irrigation needs

Support Activities for Poor Producers of Nepal (SAPPROS Nepal) exists to develop self-reliant, grassroots institutions that empower poor, rural households to self-govern and manage community issues. Its programme strategy includes developing infrastructure, particularly drinking water and irrigation systems, in Nepal's most remote and socially disadvantaged communities. It also strongly advocates micro-irrigation as a significant strategy for poverty alleviation in Nepal in the mid western and far western. In these regions, SAPPROS has initiated 231 community-based drinking water supply systems, the majority of which are hybrid systems to meet drinking water and irrigation needs.

The principal water and sanitation problems it encounters include:

- Poverty lays deeper than the small farms that everybody thinks of as the poorest, a segment of the poorest migrate every three months, constantly in search of food.

- Lack of improved sanitation seems to be the major constraint in these remote areas. But is this a wonder, when even the people in the capital city of Kathmandu fail to adopt safe sanitation practices?

Development is possible in rural areas if there are three characteristics: grassroots organisation; transparency in all activities and provision of public auditing system; and means to build capacity of the community and guide and facilitate the community in the construction of productive infrastructure.

Source: ADB, Water Spotlight, June 2005

Keywords

• Gender
• Participatory Management