Thursday's workshop "Water resources and urbanization" 11.11.10

Hello,

Thursday's workshop was about Water Resources and Urbanization, with participatory approach. The case we had to deal with was Phonm Pehn in Cambodia. The workshop was held by Dr. Ulla Heinonen from Aalto University / Lifelong Learning Institute Dipoli Water & Development Research Group. We were split to five stakeholder groups: Urban slum (village 1), poor village in the otskirts of the city (village 2), garment factory, water supply company and a local NGO. I was in group representing village 2. We also had individual roles in the stakeholder groups, I was a cattle owner. We first had to describe what kind of persons we were and how lack of fresh water affects us. I imagined I was around 40 yers old man, with around 10 children who help to take care of the cattle so they can not go to school. Lack of water affects me in many ways, since the cowns don't have enough water to drink or grass to eat and my family doesn't have proper drinking water. The next task was to plan the water management in the village for the following three years. It was told that the near by garment factory uses the same ground water as us, so the amount of ground water is decreasing. Our plan was to get water piping to our village, at  first connection for the whole village and later individual connections. Our plan in order to reduce the price was to involve in the building of the water piping. The payment would be collective, our village chief taking care of the collection of the money. We would also test the ground eater quality with the help of NGOs and demand that the factory doesn't take that much water that the ground water level changes. In the end we heard everybody's viewpoints. The garment factory was aware of our situation and they wanted to help us by considering other sources of water than the ground water. The local NGO was also very helpful and they said they would campaign to get a sustainable solution for all stakeholders. The water supply company was willing to build the connection for us if we could help in the construction.
In reality, I think that the situation is more complicated and the stakeholders don't necessarily have common goals as our groups had. The lecturer also reminded that there is often a conflict of interest between people inside same stakeholder group.