Revive traditional rainwater-harvesting and recharge structures through village labor and ownership

#00193

Villages build and own earthen johads, contour trenches, sand dams, infiltration canals and ponds with NGO facilitation. Cheap per structure and compounding at catchment scale, but success hinges on hydrogeological siting, maintenance institutions and demand rules.

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Kitui County, Kenya

Failed

NGOs and donors with local communities (96 percent of dams donor-funded) · since 1995 · Region

Kitui County hosts over 1,000 sand dams built since the 1990s across seasonal riverbeds — the world's densest concentration — making it the best-documented test case for sand dam performance at scale. Independent survey…

Sand dams in Kitui Countymore than 1,000dams

Surveyed dams supplying no water in dry periods (Frontiers in Water 2021)65 percent of 52dams

Overwhelmingly donor grants (96 percent donor-funded) · 2 sources

Huarochirí and Canta provinces, Peru

Success

Campesino communities with Aquafondo, The Nature Conservancy and CONDESAN · since 2015 · Region

Amunas are pre-Inca infiltration canals in the Peruvian highlands that divert wet-season streamflow onto permeable slopes, where water infiltrates and resurfaces downslope months later, extending dry-season availability…

Amunas rehabilitated86km

Estimated annual rechargemore than 15 millionm3/yr

MERESE mechanism: approximately 1 percent of Lima water tariffs earmarked for upstream ecosystem services · 1 source

Maharashtra, India

Partial

Paani Foundation (Satyamev Jayate Water Cup) with participating villages · 2016–2019 · Region

From 2016 to 2019 the Paani Foundation ran the Satyamev Jayate Water Cup: 45-day competitions in which villages raced to build watershed structures (contour trenches, bunds, ponds) through shramdaan (voluntary labor). P…

Villages participating in Water Cup116 (2016) → approx. 4,400 (2019)villages

Claimed water storage created (promoter figure, no independent statewide evaluation)approx. 55 billionlitres

Paani Foundation with village voluntary labor (shramdaan); parallel state program Jalyukt Shivar spent approx. Rs 9,634 crore of public funds

Alwar district, Rajasthan, India

Partial

Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS) with village communities; led by Rajendra Singh · since 1985 · Region

Since 1985, Tarun Bharat Sangh facilitated village-built earthen recharge ponds (johads) across Alwar district, Rajasthan. The model requires 25–33% village labor/cash contribution per structure to anchor ownership. Typ…

Structures examined by independent Sida evaluation (2003)576structures

Cost per johad30,000 to 100,000INR

NGO and donor funds with 25 to 33 percent village contribution per johad · 1 source

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