Water for All
Affordable technologies that can raise the yields of small farmers are essential for increasing food production, poverty alleviation, and economic growth in the poorest countries. Small farmers, most of who live on rain-fed lands, make up the great majority of the world’s extremely poor people. Raising their yields requires water management strategies such as rainwater harvesting, affordable drip irrigation and pump technologies, and farming techniques that reduce water needs while increasing yields. Low-cost community-based technologies are essential to meeting the UN's poverty reduction goal of halving the number of people without access to safe water and basic sanitation.
Around the world, NGOs and community activists are taking steps to bring clean water and low-tech irrigation to poor communities. Says Rajendra Singh, whose organization has helped build rainwater harvesting structures for thousands of poor farmers in arid Rajasthan, India: "Our struggle is not only against dams, our struggle is to meet the needs of the people."