Catalog

Tapping Innovation
ADB Review [ December 2006 - January 2007 ]

Big ideas worth testing on a smaller scale get a boost from a special fund

By Cezar Tigno
Consultant web writer for www.adb.org/water

For 2007, about $600,000 is available in grants to nongovernment organizations (NGOs), local governments, and Asian Development Bank (ADB) project staff who want to test promising new solutions at the community-level.

KEEPING IT SIMPLE The Lilo-an local government opted for a rather simple aerobic wastewater treatment technique known for its low operation and maintenance efforts and costs, which a cooperative of market vendors oversee.

ADB's Pilot and Demonstration Activities (PDA) fund provides grants, usually of about $50,000 each, for testing ideas that are both innovative and replicable on a larger scale. By testing innovation on a small scale first, the fund hopes to provide largescale projects with fresh ideas that come with the benefit of lessons learned and recommendations.

Since 2002, the fund has financed 28 projects worth $2.1 million. Fifteen have been completed. PDAs have been proposed and approved in every subregion of Asia and the Pacific. The majority of PDAs—11—have been approved in Southeast Asia, 7 in South Asia, 4 in the Pacific, and 3 each in East Asia, Central Asia, and West Asia.

The subject of PDAs varies widely, but the majority have dealt with institutional reforms (10), policy reform (7), and public awareness (5). The other PDAs have focused on women, the poor, and technology. Sometimes the PDA involves technology or approaches tested elsewhere but needing to be tested in a specific location, or those involving nuances. Certainly, wastewater treatment plants are no innovation. And the principles of integrated water resource management have been around for decades. Yet the PDA fund supported two such projects recently because they brought the tested innovations to new contexts.

Smart Sanitation

Once known for its pristine sands, the beaches of Lilo-an, Cebu in Central Philippines provided the local economy with a steady supply of tourists for restaurants, souvenir shops, and beach vendors.

Then came the slime and stench. Newspaper headlines, such as "Dirty Beach Water Unfit for Swimming," spelled doom for Lilo-an's dependence on beach tourism.

The Lilo-an Public Market became the primary suspect as investigations into the pollutants revealed liquid extracts from vegetables, fish, and meat. Wastewater from the market's public toilets was also found to be flowing untreated into the sea. Coliform bacteria that thrive on these kinds of wastes rose to alarming levels.

The local government, with the help of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, applied for PDA funding to build a wastewater treatment plant. But not just any plant. On less than $50,000, the local government built a plant that uses a "rotating biological contactor" to intercept wastewater from the public market and households through Lilo-an's existing canal system. It removes all toxic elements before releasing the sanitized water safely back into the ocean.

Another innovative feature of the Liloan treatment facility is that it is decentralized. A cooperative of market vendors and residents learned how to operate and maintain the plant through training seminars. The PDA also financed workshops that fed them ideas on how to quickly and easily raise funds to recover the plant's cost within 10 years.

"I still can't believe that we are able to own and operate a wastewater treatment facility—the first of its kind in northern Cebu," Lilo-an Mayor Maria Sevilla says.

Weekend tourists are returning to Liloan's beaches, bringing hopes of a thriving tourism industry.

Conflict Management

MARKET CULPRITS Investigation into Lilo-an's seaside pollution detected extracts from vegetables, fish, and meat. The suspect list narrowed sharply to the public market, where about 120 vendors make their living.

It is usually not a good idea to meddle in other people's business, especially when there is potential for conflict. But other people's conflict is precisely the business of Thailand's Bang Pakong River Basin Committee.

By looking after the river's health, the water management experts on this committee must settle intense conflicts between shrimp, fish and agricultural farmers, factory owners, tourism promoters, and large residential communities. Their uses of the river often compete, leaving someone with too little or too dirty water—depending on how influential they are.

The river basin committee received PDA funding to develop a way of resolving conflicts between the river's users. The committee started by holding consultations with different groups about their uses and level of understanding of basin issues. Workshops were also held to address misunderstandings and educate users about the river.

"We need to increase people's awareness so we can address the river basin's problems," said committee member Suaydee Chamroon. "The different users of the river have to come together and find a solution."

Together, they agreed with the committee to use the "Water Evaluation and Allocation Program," or WEAP system, for managing the basin. The WEAP system is a computer software program that helps groups like the Bang Pakong River Basin Committee balance supply and demand issues.

The software system will provide the committee with three essential tools: a water balance database, for maintaining water demand and supply information; a scenario generation tool, for simulating water demand, supply, runoff, stream flows, storage, pollution generation, treatment and discharge and in-stream water quality; and a policy analysis tool for evaluating a range of water development and management options, taking into account the competing uses within a water system.

The committee also established an independent network for users to share information and experiences and resolve conflicts through focus group discussions, workshops, training, and dialogue.

The committee will soon begin formally testing the WEAP system. Already, though, the government committee has earned respect among user groups for taking these initial steps and treating them as co-managers of the Bang Pakong.

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