Sustainability of rural water supply systems in Honduras by involving technicians in applied field research

In Honduras, Operation and Maintenance Technicians (or TOMs, for the abbreviation in Spanish) are responsible for providing on-going support to community-managed rural water supply systems. They do so by paying regular monitoring visits to the communities in their area of work, training water committees and providing technical assistance. Through the collaborative programme between IRC and RAS-HON (the Water and Sanitation Network of Honduras), the TOMs have now also become involved in applied field research on support to sustainability.

One of the areas of research has been multiple-use of water. Most of the rural water supply systems in Honduras are de facto used for domestic and productive use. Yet, as this practice has never been officially recognised, the TOMs haven’t been able to provide support to water committees in regulating these uses. Applied research was undertaken by the RAS-HON, together with IRC, to further document actual practices around multiple-use of water and analyse the impact of the practice on performance and sustainability. In total the TOMs studied 14 communities, spread over 5 departments, together with technicians working for NGOs. The results of the field work were analysed by the entire team.

Multiple-use is about changing perspectives

The study revealed that indeed multiple-use is happening nearly universally resulting in high economic benefits, amongst others for small peasant farmers. The physical set-up of the systems and available water resources in most cases also allowed for such use. The most important finding was that, where such uses are regulated, for example through an internal by-law or through differential payment, this could contribute to sustainability of services and equity in terms of benefits. By having been exposed to this field research, the technicians are aware of the support they can provide to committees in drawing up internal regulations on multiple uses. Above all, it has opened their eyes. As Jony Hernández, one of the TOMs commented: “Multiple-use services are all about changing perspectives. First, we would see someone irrigating some tomatoes, and we would say that he is wasting water. Now, we see the same situation, but from the perspective of the user, and we say that he is making a good and economic use of water”.

Next: documenting transparency

A second field research is now starting involving the same technicians. That research focuses on documenting good practices on transparency in community management of rural water supply. The objective of documenting these practices is including it in the training module of the TOMs, who provide training to water committees. This in turn, is expected to contribute to more sustainable water supply services.

Being involved in the research doesn’t only help developing the knowledge base of the TOMs, but also helps them analysing the wealth of field experiences they have, and developing new knowledge and insights out of those. As one of the participants commented: “The workshop programme was really full. I don’t think we would have gotten as much out of it, if we didn’t have so much field experience and knowledge as we have. But, it was thanks to the participatory methods in the workshop, that this knowledge could come out”.