research

Uganda

The relationship between poverty, health, environmental conditions, and access to vital resources such as water can be understood in the context of people's livelihoods. The Hima, pastoralists in southwestern Uganda, exemplify this relationship. The Ugandan Government has undertaken a process of providing land and settling these formerly nomadic people in an effort to modernize their way of life and stem environmental degradation.

With her feet suspended from the ground, this child is using her entire bodyweight to pump a borehole in one of the villages.

Whereas the pastoralists once employed spatial mobility to access communal resources as part of their livelihood strategy, they now have to adapt to restricted land and beginning May, 2006, research was carried out in three villages in Nyabushozi County, Kiruhura District in Southwestern Uganda to look at how livelihood, settlement and poverty policy have impacted access to water.

A woman retrieving water for domestic use from a Government Valley Tank, which is also used to water livestock.

Few poverty studies relate to water in Uganda or use primary data from communities to link through to district and national policies. Work addressing domestic and livestock water use in such a defined population is unique and will have wider relevance to improved poverty reduction strategies.

It is hoped that the outcome of this research will establish a basis for a Ugandan government and pastoralists' stakeholder dialogue and provide a better understanding of livelihood and settlement impacts on water access in order to address growth and settlement pressures on water resources and what governance arrangements are required to encourage sustainable livelihoods. By providing a better understanding of the impacts of livelihood and settlement on access to water, service delivery can be tailored to ensure that needs, particularly of the rural poor, are appropriately addressed.

A private farm pond used for both domestic and livestock uses.

View of a child retrieving water for domestic use from a private farm pond, which is also used for livestock watering.

Uganda School children surround Sylvia Struck, one of IPWR's research fellows. Ms. Struck is from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine at the University of London and has been doing water research in Uganda's villages since she received a grant from IPWR in 2006.