Developments in climate resilience practices and products during my years in SUSWA

Contract coming to an end, I feel an urge to reflect on the past couple of years spent as the so-called climate change and disaster specialist for SUSWA. The original interest in this job for me was that I had a long experience working in the water sector in remote rural Nepal in various roles, and hence had lots of ideas for developing certain specific aspects of implementation in the field. I had seen the issues coming up related to, e.g., water source depletion and natural hazards occurring in our area of work. However, my role never really enabled enough time and resources to dig into these rather serious and decisive subjects for the sustainability of the water services.

Therefore, I am grateful that SUSWA gave me this opportunity by hiring me as the Climate Resilience and Disaster Risk Response Specialist. I now have a chance to put my effort and focus on the areas of need. These areas of need included developing a more systematic modality for accounting for nature-based solutions, i.e., bio-engineering and spring shed management approaches to tackle the problems of source depletion and natural hazards, caused by extreme weather events. My idea was to broadly capacitate the staff and to provide them with much/needed guidance in the form of field manuals.

Furthermore, I had observed the struggles cold winters bring about in the remote villages in the high mountains at altitudes crossing three thousand meters above the sea level, including freezing of the pipelines and sources. I wanted to develop a targeted instruction manual for these areas.

Another area of development was the efficiency of water use in the areas of water scarcity that could be managed by integrating the ideas of Multiple Use Water Services (MUS) into the water supply. I was involved in developing a new MUS guideline to support this thinking in the field work.

Some other developments that I was able to bring about included updates on the capacity-building modality of water safety planning, as I really wanted to integrate disaster response planning into the water safety plan.

Finally, I was really into developing something less technical and more broadly accessible materials that could be used in the training for the village people, even if their literacy rate and level of education would be low, and the village has no access to modern amenities such as electricity. I developed a training material for this situation, considering climate change and disaster management in the form of an illustrated flipchart.

I have enjoyed my time with the project staff, many of whom have become my close friends. I especially enjoyed the time I spent in the field in the remote mountains to observe and understand the challenges, such as winter operations and the weather extremes they face in the most difficult living circumstances. With these remarks, I hope the materials developed will be of use and joy for SUSWA and the whole sector working on implementing water supply and sanitation in Nepal.