Water International

River and water education as a requirement in developing countries rural areas

--Manuscript Draft--

Full Title: River and water education as a requirement in developing countries rural areas

Manuscript Number:

Article Type: Viewpoint

Keywords: WASH (safe water sanitation and hygiene); river education; environmental
subsidiarity; water custodian; INDRHI

Abstract: Public drinking water policies in developing countries have focused on investing to
improve access to drinking water and sanitation (WASH). This article suggests that we
should also begin to focus our attention on river care education, understanding it as an
interdisciplinary subject that should be taught at two levels, formal education in primary
and secondary schools, mainly in rural areas, as well as in informal at a community
level. The ability to provide inexpensieve easy-to-use tools to measurie the properties
of water will be a key theme for this educational approach.

Order of Authors: Pablo Martínez de Anguita, Ph.D.

Nuria Navarro

Powered by Editorial Manager® and ProduXion Manager® from Aries Systems Corporation
Manuscript - with author details

River and water education as a requirement in developing countries

1
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3 rural areas
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6 Pablo Martínez de Anguita and Nuria Navarro
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10 Escuela Superior de Ciencias Experimentales y Tecnología, ESCET; Universidad Rey
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12 Juan Carlos; Móstoles, Spain.
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15 Corresponding author e-mail: Pablo.martinezdenguita@urjc.es
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 River and water education as a requirement in developing countries
1
2
3 rural areas
4
5
6
7
8
9
10 ABSTRACT
11
12 Public drinking water policies in developing countries have focused on investing
13 to improve access to drinking water and sanitation (WASH). This article suggests
14
15 that we should also begin to focus our attention on river care education,
16
17 understanding it as an interdisciplinary subject that must be taught at two levels,
18 formal education in primary and secondary schools, mainly in rural areas, as well
19
20 as in informal at the community level. The ability to provide inexpensive and easy-
21
22 to-use tools to measure the properties of water will be a key theme for this
23 educational approach. Health and hygiene (WASH) in developing countries have
24
25 focused on investing to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation. This
26
27 article suggests that we should also begin to focus our attention on river care
28 education, understanding it as an interdisciplinary subject that must be taught at
29
30 two levels, formal education in primary and secondary schools, mainly in rural
31
32 areas, as well as in informal at the community level. The ability to provide
33 inexpensive and easy-to-use tools to measure the properties of water will be a key
34
35 theme for this educational approach.
36
37
38 Keywords: WASH (safe water, sanitation and hygiene), river education,
39
40 environmental subsidiarity, water custodian.
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52 Introduction
53
54
55 Water is probably the strongest link between human life and nature conservation. We dare
56
57
58 to say that in a mountainous water basin, if all is well with the water, all the rest of the
59
60 ecosystem will go well. Water is the greatest connection and one of the greatest indicators
61
62
63
64
65
 of our relationship with nature. At the same time water basin pollution management is
1
2 closely related to human health. Waterborne diarrhea is the second leading cause of death
3
4
5 among children aged under 5 years in low-income countries (828,651 per year) causing
6
7 nearly 50,000 daily diseases (WHO 2019). Also, WHO considers malaria and dengue
8
9
10 that causes 354,239 deaths per year as diseases coming from inadequate water resource
11
12 management.
13
14
15 In developing countries water originates in mountain basins where, in general, poor
16
17
18 peasants live. Their biggest concern is to survive, growing beans and corn, for example.
19
20 Rivers are a source of drinking and irrigation but, at the same time, a way to get rid of
21
22
23
garbage easily. Rural inhabitants, as well as city dwellers, do not understand the
24
25 properties of water and the consequences of dumping their waste into the rivers. There is
26
27 a total lack of “water and river education” in every country where we have conducted
28
29
30 water research. Part of the problem is that, traditionally it has been very difficult to easily
31
32 measure water properties and to establish links between these properties and consumption
33
34
35 as well as with the environmental impact of poor management.
36
37
38 Let us offer an example of this inability to understand the nature of water. Poor peasants
39
40 know that when a grain of coffee becomes red it is time to harvest it. Agriculture, at its
41
42
43 basic form, in this sense is an easy to learn and transmit technique. Silviculture is a little
44
45 more difficult, but some experienced peasants are able to distinguish when a tree can be
46
47
48 harvested without having a negative effect on the forest. But unfortunately, water
49
50 management is a blind spot for most people. Rural people cannot tell whether water it is
51
52
drinkable or not. It cannot be seen with the eyes directly. Water must be taken to an
53
54
55 expensive laboratory far away, and the results come back much later. This leads to the
56
57 local conclusion that water cannot be managed other than to chlorinate it “just in case”,
58
59
60 and this does not always happen.
61
62
63
64
65
 In the other hand, public policies in safe water, sanitation and hygiene (collectively known
1
2 as WASH) in developing countries are crucial for human health and well-being. Still
3
4
5 millions of people globally lack adequate WASH services and consequently suffer from
6
7 or are exposed to a multitude of preventable illnesses (WHO 2019). But again, as most of
8
9
10 public policies in developing countries, and even on developed ones, assume that water
11
12 is always going to be dirty, instead of trying to educate the rural population on protecting
13
14
15
their clean water, the only thing they can do related to WASH policies is helping
16
17 communities on chlorinating water.
18
19
20 Rural water education has been considered too complicated and expensive, and the local
21
22
23
need for clean water too relevant to focus policies in local education. Action –which
24
25 means infrastructure- is required instead.
26
27
28 We can understand the severity of the problem with the current example of COVID-19.
29
30
31
Let´s imagine a country where to know if you have COVID-19 or not, you need to take
32
33 an expensive test far away from home whose results will be known in five days. Can we
34
35 establish an effective preventive policy? Now imagine a place where everybody can
36
37
38 know, in real time, the state in his health. If we extend the immediate knowledge of our
39
40 own health, or the ecosystem health (whose best indicators in a mountainous water basin
41
42
43 can be found in the quality of the water of the creeks), we will be empowering local rural
44
45 poor communities regarding their health instead of waiting for the government to solve
46
47
48 the problem, which is normally very weak regarding the environment and do not have the
49
50 capacity to enhance rural environmental policies. This does not mean that we do not need
51
52
public infrastructure (we need hospitals for COVID-19, for example), but an approach
53
54
55 based in subsidiarity can give a more efficient understand, especially when current
56
57 telecommunication (phones and apps) allow the communication of the information of the
58
59
60 problem to create efficient and quick solutions (Martínez de Anguita and Carrero, 2020).
61
62
63
64
65
 This is what it is so important to empower local poor communities to know about the state
1
2 of their waters according to two basic principles: subsidiarity and education.
3
4
5 Environmental subsidiarity is the key (Martínez de Anguita et al, 2014). Water care must
6
7 start at the local level, at the level of the community. Local peasants have the right but
8
9
10 also the duty to care for their water. But in order to fulfill their task they need adequate
11
12 tools and technical preparation.
13
14
15
16
17
18 Environmental subsidiarity for water management
19
20
21
22
Subsidiarity can be defined as the political and moral principle that envisions that
23
24 “everyone must be given maximum scope to exercise their own free will, and so achieve
25
26 his or her own fulfillment by exercising all power in a society at the lowest and most local
27
28
29 level compatible with the common good’’ (Caldecott, 2003). Subsidiarity implies that
30
31 matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent
32
33
34 authority, while a central authority performs only those tasks that cannot be performed
35
36 effectively, efficiently and equitably at a more immediate or local level (Carozza 2003).
37
38
39
The principle of ‘‘environmental subsidiarity’’ implies promoting systems that, where
40
41 possible, enable people to enact their own forms of pro-social and proenvironmental
42
43 behavior through voluntary, not coerced, cooperation (Martínez de Anguita et al 2014).
44
45
46 Subsidiarity as a right and a duty requires therefore higher political and community
47
48 institutions that should not alienate the local individual but to support him.
49
50
51 This principle, applied to communities and their environment, has many implications. We
52
53
54 will underline two: co-decision and education. Applied to environmental management,
55
56 subsidiarity implies that the State should in one hand encourage society, and specially
57
58
59 communities, to become responsible for the conservation of their ecosystems – water
60
61
62
63
64
65
 included -, and thus for its sustainable management at the same time it should provide the
1
2 support and tools for doing it when required. And the main tool is education.
3
4
5
6
7
8
9 River and water education
10
11
12 This education must be based “from the assumption that, as long as something is not
13
14 measured and quantified, nobody cares about it”. (DPHD 2020). Without measuring
15
16
17 water properties, no real knowledge on water can be transmitted, and therefore rivers
18
19 cannot have clear qualitative and quantitative indicators not just of the drinkability, but
20
21
22
also of nature and biodiversity state of its surrounding basin. Therefore, one thing is
23
24 necessary, to spread water education, especially river education among poor rural
25
26 communities, focusing in two groups: children, through formal primary and secondary
27
28
29 educational curricula; and informal, throughout the work with communities, especially
30
31 with the “boards of water” when they already exist in the communities. These boards of
32
33
34 water ought not be, as is mainly the case nowadays, just a delegation of the community
35
36 that simply chlorinate the sources of drinkable water,and look out for man-made
37
38
39
infrastructure. They must become “water custodians” in all of their aspects, not just in the
40
41 reception of treated water when this is the case for the community. They must understand
42
43 the water basin as a whole. Obviously when these water boards do not even exist, it is a
44
45
46 primary priority to help communities to develop one.
47
48
49 Coming back to the first area, “formal water and river education at school”, it is essential
50
51 to introduce this subject in the curricula of students – specially the rural children - with a
52
53
54 practical approach. From age five, children could learn how to measure the quantity of
55
56 water that rains at their local schoolyard with a plastic bottle by cutting the upper cone of
57
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59 the bottle and inverting it to make a pluviometer (figure 1). At eight years old, they could
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 understand what a water basin is, and probably multiply the estimated rainfall by the
1
2 estimated water basin surface, and at ten years old, they could measure the flow in the
3
4
5 river and compare these basic estimations. But hydrological education must not only be
6
7 a question of quantitative flow, but of measuring with simple estimators the water quality
8
9
10 in the rivers of the community at different moments of the year. Dragged solids in the
11
12 river, amounts of different types of insects on the surface of the water or under the river
13
14
15
stones, are primary indicators that even if they are not exact, will leave a mark in young
16
17 children of what a river’s life is about. Obviously, beyond this aspect of hydrological
18
19 education, we are conscious of the need for more adequate and accurate tools to improve
20
21
22 river water management. What we have mentioned are simple examples.
23
24
25
26
27
28 [Figure 1 near here]
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34 While working with rural communities we have realized that the main problem that is
35
36
37 holding back their empowerment is the lack of cheap instruments to measure water
38
39 quality. We consider the case of Dominican Republic and the management of water under
40
41
42 the principle of subsidiarity as the most advanced experience in the developing world:
43
44 Rural Communities (through their Boards of Water) are empowered by the Instituto
45
46
47
Dominicano de Recursos Hídricos (INDRHI) to measure regularly the water quality of
48
49 their river and sources with the help of a water measuring kits (figure 2) that are given to
50
51 the communities along with specific training for handling it, and sending the results via
52
53
54 phone app to the INDRHI.
55
56
57
58
59
60 [Figure 2 near here]
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 1
2
3 This “Vigilantes del agua” (water custodians) program is a perfect example of how to
4
5
empower local communities through the principles of subsidiarity and education. The
6
7
8 State supports the local responsibility of the communities, who are the group with the
9
10 main interest in having clean water. They are encouraged to act, and if the problem is
11
12
13 beyond them, then, the State is invited to act (figure 3). This case shows how innovation
14
15 is not just about purifying the water but keeping it clean through the work of the main
16
17
18 actors, the local communities.
19
20
21
22
23
24 [Figure 3 near here]
25
26
27
28
29
30 Tools for water and river education
31
32
33 This is the direction in which we should expand water education rural policies, to provide
34
35
36 local communities with adequate tools to become protagonists of the conservation of their
37
38 water basins. And this requires cheap and easy to use tools. Unfortunately, the Dominican
39
40
41 Republic kit cost around $1500/unit per year. A basic objective should be to decrease this
42
43 price to $50/unit. One of the most expensive tools used is the Escherichia coli detector
44
45
46
kit. In order to solve this problem, we are trying to find a simple and economical
47
48 methodology to facilitate the detection of microorganisms present in water for human
49
50 consumption due to fecal contamination, mainly coliform bacteria, including E. coli. The
51
52
53 presence of fecal contamination in drinking water leads to the appearance of diseases in
54
55 humans that can be serious. The aim is to find a culture medium in which the bacterium
56
57
58 develops, and their presence or absence is detected in that medium. The proposal aims to
59
60 carry out various tests of bacterial growth in culture media which are easily accessible
61
62
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 and available to the inhabitants of rural areas. The characteristics of coliform bacteria
1
2 have been considered in the selection of these media. In the laboratory, we have
3
4
5 developed a simple and economical methodology for detecting coliform bacteria and E.
6
7 coli based on milk. The method is based on total coliform bacteria ferment lactose
8
9
10 incubated at 35 °C -nearly human body temperature -, and fecal coliform bacteria
11
12 (including E. coli) also at 44 °C, for 24 to 48 h, resulting in the production of acids and
13
14
15
gas. We have tested this methodology in rural communities in the Dominican Republic
16
17 and Honduras (using a home-made incubator made with a portable refrigerator and a light
18
19 bulb, that could be in the future substituted by human heat) with promising results, so we
20
21
22 are on the right track to replace expensive kits with cheap and commonly used mediums.
23
24
25 There are many other indicators of water quality that require research to become
26
27 accessible to provide rural communities adequate knowledge about their water but we are
28
29
30 convinced that we are on the right track. Simplified science, at the service of the poor, to
31
32 empower them with the knowledge they need to handle their water, not only by purifying
33
34
35 it but in order to understand the wider bond with the water basin, a basin that is normally
36
37 the natural conservation and sustainable resources management unit in rural areas
38
39
40 (especially in mountainous ones).
41
42
43 By working on school curricula for hydrological and river sciences and introducing
44
45 advances in the creation of water management kits for communities, we believe we can
46
47
48 empower communities to exercise their right and responsibility to care for their local
49
50 water, and even in the future to ask local and national governments, not only a fair help
51
52
to fulfill their duty, but even for compensation and recognition as their work helps other
53
54
55 water beneficiaries downstream enjoy a cleaner and safer water. These types of
56
57 recognitions and compensations, including payments for ecosystem services, create a
58
59
60 virtuous circle where it is not just technically feasible but economically efficient to care
61
62
63
64
65
 for water, expanding the care upstream to the whole water basin where a community lives
1
2 and downstream for other neighbors and cities.
3
4
5
6
7
8
9 Conclusions
10
11
12 We strongly believe that both the methodological approach based on subsidiarity and
13
14 education, as well as the technological one that we have developed can be valid methods
15
16
17 to support community empowerment through easy to use tools applied to water
18
19 measurements and therefore to river protection education. The challenge is huge, but we
20
21
22
are convinced that we have a path to spread water and nature conservation in a very
23
24 natural way, through their principal protagonists, local communities that need their water
25
26 more than any other but lack the knowledge to care for it correctly. Their empowerment
27
28
29 through adequate educative and technical tools is a new challenge. More research is
30
31 required to ease measurements techniques available to poor populations as well as to
32
33
34 create cheap and numerous kits and spread valid methodologies to help local communities
35
36 to recover the control the once had over their water resources before the industrial
37
38
39
revolution changed many water management patterns.
40
41
42
43
44
45 Acknowledgments
46
47
48 We want to express our gratitude to Valentine Firmenich and her family for supporting
49
50 our research and to Antonio Benete, director of CESAL NGO who allowed us to visit
51
52
53 their water management experiences in Dominican Republic and Honduras. We are
54
55 specially in debt with Mr. Juan Saldaña, director of the program “Cultura del Agua” of
56
57
58 the Dominican Institute of Water Resources (INDRHI), who gave us the clues to
59
60 understand how to focus rural river education.
61
62
63
64
65
 1
2
3
4
5 References
6
7
8 CALDECOTT, S. (2003). Catholic social teaching: A way in. CTS. London.
9
10
11 CAROZZA, P. (2003). Subsidiarity as a structural principle of international human rights
12
13
14
law. American Journal of International Law, 97, 38–79.
15
16
17 DPIHD (Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development). (2020) “Aqua fons
18
19 vitae”. Orientations on water. Vatican City.
20
21
22 MARTÍNEZ DE ANGUITA, P. AND CARRERO, J. (2020) Empoderamiento de
23
24
25 comunidades para mejorar la calidad del agua. Montes, 141(3), 58-61.
26
27
28 MARTINEZ DE ANGUITA, P., MARTÍN, M.Á. and CLARE, A. (2014) Environmental
29
30 Subsidiarity as a Guiding Principle for Forestry Governance: Application to Payment for
31
32
33 Ecosystem Services and REDD+ Architecture. J Agric Environ Ethics, 27,617–631.
34
35 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-013-9481-8
36
37
38 WHO (World Health Organization) 2019, Water, sanitation, hygiene and health: a
39
40
41 primer for health professionals. Geneva (WHO/CED/PHE/WSH/19.149). License: CC
42
43 BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.
44
45
46
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48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
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65
 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9 Figure 1. Measuring the rainfall with easy tools.
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27 Figure 2. Water measurement kit for communities from INDRHI.
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54 Figure 3. Centralized information at INDRHI of community water measurements on
55
real time. When local communities denounce illegal dumping to the rivers they monitor,
56
57 INDRHI can sends police to places where water does not follow the right standards.
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Manuscript - anonymous

River and water education as a requirement in developing countries

rural areas

ABSTRACT
drinking water policies in developing countries have focused on investing to
improve access to drinking water and sanitation (WASH). This article suggests that
we should also begin to focus our attention on river care education, understanding
it as an interdisciplinary subject that should be taught at two levels, formal
education in primary and secondary schools, mainly in rural areas, as well as in
informal at a community level. The ability to provide inexpensive easy-to-use tools
to measurie the properties of water will be a key theme for this educational
approach.

Keywords: WASH (safe water sanitation and hygiene), river education,

environmental subsidiarity, water custodian.

Introduction

Water is probably the strongest link between human life and nature conservation. We dare

to say that in a mountainous water basin, if all is well with the water, all the rest of the

ecosystem will go well. Water is the greatest connection and one of the greatest indicators

of our relationship with nature. At the same time water basin pollution management is

closely related to human health. Waterborne diarrhea is the second leading cause of death

among children aged under 5 years in low-income countries (828,651 per year) causing

nearly 50,000 daily diseases (WHO 2019). Also, WHO considers malaria and dengue
that causes 354,239 deaths per year as diseases coming from inadequate water resource

management.

In developing countries water originates in mountain basins where, in general, poor

peasants live. Their biggest concern is to survive, growing beans and corn, for example.

Rivers are a source of drinking and irrigation but, at the same time, a way to get rid of

garbage easily. Rural inhabitants, as well as city dwellers, do not understand the

properties of water and the consequences of dumping their waste into the rivers. There is

a total lack of “water and river education” in every country where we have conducted

water research. Part of the problem is that, traditionally it has been very difficult to easily

measure water properties and to establish links between these properties and consumption

as well as with the environmental impact of poor management.

Let us offer an example of this inability to understand the nature of water. Poor peasants

know that when a grain of coffee becomes red it is time to harvest it. Agriculture, at its

basic form, in this sense is an easy to learn and transmit technique. Silviculture is a little

more difficult, but some experienced peasants are able to distinguish when a tree can be

harvested without having a negative effect on the forest. But unfortunately, water

management is a blind spot for most people. Rural people cannot tell whether water it is

drinkable or not. It cannot be seen with the eyes directly. Water must be taken to an

expensive laboratory far away, and the results come back much later. This leads to the

local conclusion that water cannot be managed other than to chlorinate it “just in case”,

and this does not always happen.

In the other hand, public policies in safe water, sanitation and hygiene (collectively known

as WASH) in developing countries are crucial for human health and well-being. Still

millions of people globally lack adequate WASH services and consequently suffer from

or are exposed to a multitude of preventable illnesses (WHO 2019). But again, as most of
public policies in developing countries, and even on developed ones, assume that water

is always going to be dirty, instead of trying to educate the rural population on protecting

their clean water, the only thing they can do related to WASH policies is helping

communities on chlorinating water.

Rural water education has been considered too complicated and expensive, and the local

need for clean water too relevant to focus policies in local education. Action –which

means infrastructure- is required instead.

We can understand the severity of the problem with the current example of COVID-19.

Let´s imagine a country where to know if you have COVID-19 or not, you need to take

an expensive test far away from home whose results will be known in five days. Can we

establish an effective preventive policy? Now imagine a place where everybody can

know, in real time, the state in his health. If we extend the immediate knowledge of our

own health, or the ecosystem health (whose best indicators in a mountainous water basin

can be found in the quality of the water of the creeks), we will be empowering local rural

poor communities regarding their health instead of waiting for the government to solve

the problem, which is normally very weak regarding the environment and do not have the

capacity to enhance rural environmental policies. This does not mean that we do not need

public infrastructure (we need hospitals for COVID-19, for example), but an approach

based in subsidiarity can give a more efficient understand, especially when current

telecommunication (phones and apps) allow the communication of the information of the

problem to create efficient and quick solutions (Martínez de Anguita and Carrero, 2020).

This is what it is so important to empower local poor communities to know about the state

of their waters according to two basic principles: subsidiarity and education.

Environmental subsidiarity is the key (Martínez de Anguita et al, 2014). Water care must

start at the local level, at the level of the community. Local peasants have the right but
also the duty to care for their water. But in order to fulfill their task they need adequate

tools and technical preparation.

Environmental subsidiarity for water management

Subsidiarity can be defined as the political and moral principle that envisions that

“everyone must be given maximum scope to exercise their own free will, and so achieve

his or her own fulfillment by exercising all power in a society at the lowest and most local

level compatible with the common good’’ (Caldecott, 2003). Subsidiarity implies that

matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent

authority, while a central authority performs only those tasks that cannot be performed

effectively, efficiently and equitably at a more immediate or local level (Carozza 2003).

The principle of ‘‘environmental subsidiarity’’ implies promoting systems that, where

possible, enable people to enact their own forms of pro-social and proenvironmental

behavior through voluntary, not coerced, cooperation (Martínez de Anguita et al 2014).

Subsidiarity as a right and a duty requires therefore higher political and community

institutions that should not alienate the local individual but to support him.

This principle, applied to communities and their environment, has many implications. We

will underline two: co-decision and education. Applied to environmental management,

subsidiarity implies that the State should in one hand encourage society, and specially

communities, to become responsible for the conservation of their ecosystems – water

included -, and thus for its sustainable management at the same time it should provide the

support and tools for doing it when required. And the main tool is education.

River and water education

This education must be based “from the assumption that, as long as something is not

measured and quantified, nobody cares about it”. (DPHD 2020). Without measuring

water properties, no real knowledge on water can be transmitted, and therefore rivers

cannot have clear qualitative and quantitative indicators not just of the drinkability, but

also of nature and biodiversity state of its surrounding basin. Therefore, one thing is

necessary, to spread water education, especially river education among poor rural

communities, focusing in two groups: children, through formal primary and secondary

educational curricula; and informal, throughout the work with communities, especially

with the “boards of water” when they already exist in the communities. These boards of

water ought not be, as is mainly the case nowadays, just a delegation of the community

that simply chlorinate the sources of drinkable water, and look out for man-made

infrastructure. They must become “water custodians” in all of their aspects, not just in the

reception of treated water when this is the case for the community. They must understand

the water basin as a whole. Obviously when these water boards do not even exist, it is a

primary priority to help communities to develop one.

Coming back to the first area, “formal water and river education at school”, it is essential

to introduce this subject in the curricula of students – specially the rural children - with a

practical approach. From age five, children could learn how to measure the quantity of

water that rains at their local schoolyard with a plastic bottle by cutting the upper cone of

the bottle and inverting it to make a pluviometer (figure 1). At eight years old, they could

understand what a water basin is, and probably multiply the estimated rainfall by the

estimated water basin surface, and at ten years old, they could measure the flow in the

river and compare these basic estimations. But hydrological education must not only be

a question of quantitative flow, but of measuring with simple estimators the water quality

in the rivers of the community at different moments of the year. Dragged solids in the
river, amounts of different types of insects on the surface of the water or under the river

stones, are primary indicators that even if they are not exact, will leave a mark in young

children of what a river’s life is about. Obviously, beyond this aspect of hydrological

education, we are conscious of the need for more adequate and accurate tools to improve

river water management. What we have mentioned are simple examples.

[Figure 1 near here]

While working with rural communities we have realized that the main problem that is

holding back their empowerment is the lack of cheap instruments to measure water

quality. We consider the case of Dominican Republic and the management of water under

the principle of subsidiarity as the most advanced experience in the developing world:

Rural Communities (through their Boards of Water) are empowered by the Instituto

Dominicano de Recursos Hídricos (INDRHI) to measure regularly the water quality of

their river and sources with the help of a water measuring kits (figure 2) that are given to

the communities along with specific training for handling it, and sending the results via

phone app to the INDRHI.

[Figure 2 near here]

This “Vigilantes del agua” (water custodians) program is a perfect example of how to

empower local communities through the principles of subsidiarity and education. The

State supports the local responsibility of the communities, who are the group with the
main interest in having clean water. They are encouraged to act, and if the problem is

beyond them, then, the State is invited to act (figure 3). This case shows how innovation

is not just about purifying the water but keeping it clean through the work of the main

actors, the local communities.

[Figure 3 near here]

Tools for water and river education

This is the direction in which we should expand water education rural policies, to provide

local communities with adequate tools to become protagonists of the conservation of their

water basins. And this requires cheap and easy to use tools. Unfortunately, the Dominican

Republic kit cost around $1500/unit per year. A basic objective should be to decrease this

price to $50/unit. One of the most expensive tools used is the Escherichia coli detector

kit. In order to solve this problem, we are trying to find a simple and economical

methodology to facilitate the detection of microorganisms present in water for human

consumption due to fecal contamination, mainly coliform bacteria, including E. coli. The

presence of fecal contamination in drinking water leads to the appearance of diseases in

humans that can be serious. The aim is to find a culture medium in which the bacterium

develops, and their presence or absence is detected in that medium. The proposal aims to

carry out various tests of bacterial growth in culture media which are easily accessible

and available to the inhabitants of rural areas. The characteristics of coliform bacteria

have been considered in the selection of these media. In the laboratory, we have

developed a simple and economical methodology for detecting coliform bacteria and E.

coli based on milk. The method is based on total coliform bacteria ferment lactose
incubated at 35 °C -nearly human body temperature -, and fecal coliform bacteria

(including E. coli) also at 44 °C, for 24 to 48 h, resulting in the production of acids and

gas. We have tested this methodology in rural communities in the Dominican Republic

and Honduras (using a home-made incubator made with a portable refrigerator and a light

bulb, that could be in the future substituted by human heat) with promising results, so we

are on the right track to replace expensive kits with cheap and commonly used mediums.

There are many other indicators of water quality that require research to become

accessible to provide rural communities adequate knowledge about their water but we are

convinced that we are on the right track. Simplified science, at the service of the poor, to

empower them with the knowledge they need to handle their water, not only by purifying

it but in order to understand the wider bond with the water basin, a basin that is normally

the natural conservation and sustainable resources management unit in rural areas

(especially in mountainous ones).

By working on school curricula for hydrological and river sciences and introducing

advances in the creation of water management kits for communities, we believe we can

empower communities to exercise their right and responsibility to care for their local

water, and even in the future to ask local and national governments, not only a fair help

to fulfill their duty, but even for compensation and recognition as their work helps other

water beneficiaries downstream enjoy a cleaner and safer water. These types of

recognitions and compensations, including payments for ecosystem services, create a

virtuous circle where it is not just technically feasible but economically efficient to care

for water, expanding the care upstream to the whole water basin where a community lives

and downstream for other neighbors and cities.

Conclusions

We strongly believe that both the methodological approach based on subsidiarity and

education, as well as the technological one that we have developed can be valid methods

to support community empowerment through easy to use tools applied to water

measurements and therefore to river protection education. The challenge is huge, but we

are convinced that we have a path to spread water and nature conservation in a very

natural way, through their principal protagonists, local communities that need their water

more than any other but lack the knowledge to care for it correctly. Their empowerment

through adequate educative and technical tools is a new challenge. More research is

required to ease measurements techniques available to poor populations as well as to

create cheap and numerous kits and spread valid methodologies to help local communities

to recover the control the once had over their water resources before the industrial

revolution changed many water management patterns.

Acknowledgments

We want to express our gratitude to Valentine Firmenich and her family for supporting

our research and to Antonio Benete, director of CESAL NGO who allowed us to visit

their water management experiences in Dominican Republic and Honduras. We are

specially in debt with Mr. Juan Saldaña, director of the program “Cultura del Agua” of

the Dominican Institute of Water Resources (INDRHI), who gave us the clues to

understand how to focus rural river education.

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Figure 1. Measuring the rainfall with easy tools.

Figure 2. Water measurement kit for communities from INDRHI.

Figure 3. Centralized information at INDRHI of community water measurements on

real time. When local communities denounce illegal dumping to the rivers they monitor,
INDRHI can sends police to places where water does not follow the right standards.