74 Protec ting Communit y Water
Look for solutions within the community
Throughout history, every community has developed ways to find, transport,
and protect water. People have used sticks (called divining rods) to find water,
invented devices for lifting and moving water, built many kinds of structures
to capture the rain, and planted trees to protect water sources and watersheds.
They have also made agreements to help neighboring communities share water.
Protecting water and preventing conflicts over water can help to preserve
water resources for future generations, even as we learn new ways to collect
and treat water to make sure it is safe and abundant.
Villagers teach development workers
A group of development workers came to a mountain village in Colombia to
help the villagers fight diarrhea by protecting their water sources. When they
visited the village spring, they saw that cattle and soil erosion were damaging
the spring. The development workers suggested 2 simple solutions: Put up a
barbed wire fence to protect the spring, or graze the cattle elsewhere.
The villagers did not like these ideas. They predicted that the barbed wire
would be stolen before long, and they did not have enough land and money to
make proper cattle pastures. But seeing the problem, they
came up with a solution that would
work. They organized a work day
when everyone from the village
came out to plant prickly plants
upstream from the spring. This
forced the cattle to drink water at
lower places along the river, and
solved the problem for the village.
A Community Guide to Environmental Health 2012