Strengthening drinking water safety and security in Vanuatu: lessons from Fiji and Solomon Islands

Two young children pumping water into a bucket from the community water point on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu (International WaterCentre / Regina Souter)

Through Water for Women's Innovation and Impact grants, research partner, International WaterCentre and Griffith University is expanding their Pacific Island Community Water Management Plus (PaCWaM+) project to Vanuatu. In partnership with The University of the South Pacific and the Vanuatu Department of Water Resources (DoWR) they will share lessons learnt and tools developed in Fiji and Solomon Islands with communities in Vanuatu.

In Vanuatu, though groundwater is commonly used, a comprehensive and accurate database of the quality, quantity and location of water resources does not yet exist¹. A study by The University of Technology, Institute of Sustainable Futures found that 86% of urban households, and 34% of rural households in Vanuatu rely on groundwater. 

Groundwater will play a significant role in Vanuatu's future water use and climate change adaptation strategies. What we do on the surface matters underground - in many places, human activities over-use and contaminate groundwater. Safely managed and inclusive water and sanitation services and systems are integral to protecting groundwater from contamination, and also ensuring that access to these precious water sources is equitable and sustainable.

Community water management is common across the Pacific, drinking water safety and security planning (DWSSP) is the Government of Vanuatu’s preferred approach to building community capacity to ensure safe and secure water supply, an approach that is implemented both by the government and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs).

Supported by the Australian Government, the Water for Women PaCWaM+ research project in Fiji and Solomon Islands has gained insight into the kinds of support required by communities to strengthen community water management outcomes, and developed new approaches for governments and CSOs to implement alongside existing approaches. This new project is piloting and evaluating some modifications to Vanuatu’s DWSSP, drawing on the PaCWaM+ project lessons and experience.

This is timely, as the Department of Water Resources has made some modifications to their DWSSP and is planning another review. They have expressed a keen interest to learn lessons from the PaCWaM+ activities in Fiji and Solomon Islands.

This project seeks to share and apply key lessons from the PaCWaM+ research project to the Vanuatu DWSSP process through targeted, complementary activities. So far, many of the challenges in ensuring safe, resilient and sustainable water for communities in Fiji and Solomon Islands are also found in Vanuatu. Development of a DWSSP+ PaCWaM approach for Vanuatu provides opportunities to address three key community water management challenges:

1. The strongest levels of social cohesion and agency are often found at zone/area levels and tribes/families rather than at the community-wide level
2. Water Committees come-and-go, shrink-and-expand, often failing within a year or two after establishment
3. Collective action is required but not always achieved. All water users – everyone in the community, not just the community water management group – have a responsibility to operate and manage the water system.

An improved DWSSP will contribute to economic and health security of Vanuatu’s rural populations. Together with the DoWR and other local WASH actors, the project will ground-truth the above challenges in the Vanuatu context, localise the activities accordingly, and trial them.

This Innovation and Impact project leverages the PaCWaM+ project research by extending its impact in a focused way, to a contextually similar setting, thereby contributing to WASH systems strengthening and evidence-based policy and practice.

^1. Carrard, N.; Foster, T.; Willetts, J. Groundwater as a Source of Drinking Water in Southeast Asia and the Pacific: A Multi-Country Review of Current Reliance and Resource Concerns. Water 2019, 11, 1605. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11081605 [Footnote 81]