Swiss Parliament Gets Irrigated
Drip Irrigation in Front of Swiss Parliament
by Urs Heierli
SDC – the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and is using the occasion to launch an initiative to educate the public about its work. As the Global Water Initiatives Division of SDC has launched a major cooperation program with iDE, SDC has included information about more efficient irrigation systems targeted to reach the poor. As part of a rotating exhibition in major Swiss cities, an iDE Family Nutrition Kit was shown as a model and attracted quite some interest. In late May, the exhibition was in Berne on the Federal Plaza, just in front of the Swiss Parliament. The Swiss parliament has recently increased the development aid budget from 0.4 to 0.5% of GDP and a major focus of the increased resources will be targeted to water projects. There is an increasing awareness that global water scarcity will severely affect all societies if “business as usual” policies are pursued. iDE has a lot to offer in this domain: affordable drip and sprinkler irrigation systems and other productive water technologies for small farmers provide really interesting solutions.
iDE’s SDC-supported program “Scaling up productive water technologies” will develop dissemination programs in several regions, including Central America (Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and later Mexico), West Africa (Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Chad) and Asia (Kirgizstan, Vietnam). Together with the Gates Foundation, It also supports the global dissemination of productive water technologies.
In addition, iDE is launching a “Fair Trade Water project” funded by the Sustainability initiative of the Swiss retail chain COOP aimed at increasing the water efficiency of Fair Trade Cooperatives in Central America. COOP is the second largest retail chain in Switzerland and was selected as the world’s most sustainable retail chain, especially for the chain’s attention to the farmers who supply them. This project will be operating in Central America and will deliver affordable irrigation to small farmers belonging to Fair Trade cooperatives, with a special focus on diversification.
