I am developing a water conservation program with a remote Aboriginal community in the desert of Central Australia. The community has incredibly high water use, put with no penalty for 'wasting' water there is no incentive to save it.
The government utility provider spends large sums of money on water production each year, and so has an obvious incentive to improve efficiency. Metering and charging individual houses is not legally possible however. Instead, we are hoping to develop local ownership of water resources by employing local 'Water Rangers' to report and fix leaks, improve basic infrastructure, lead community education etc.
If successful, We are proposing a percentage of cost saving to the govt utility be reinvested back into the community, to fund the water ranger positions, but also to part fund a shared community aspiration - a water efficient water 'spray park'. (At present a large amount of water is wasted in summer water play as there is no pool or water hole).
Does anyone have experience or examples of the effectiveness of communal or shared incentives as compared to individual or personal ones?
Jess Abrahams
Project Officer, Sustainable Community Development
Live & Learn Environmental Education
Australia
Saving water in Australian Desert
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Jess,
Aren't your Aboriginal communities far more attuned to community values and ownership that the rest of us usually are? Is there a way to tap into that, and their identification with the land? Or is this just Western romantic mythology?
Robert Rowell
educator
United States