Sustainable Solutions: Learning from Rural and Indigenous Water and Sanitation Practices in Latin America and the Caribbean

Sustainable Solutions: Learning from Rural and Indigenous Water and Sanitation Practices in Latin America and the Caribbean

Tambourine Innovation Ventures (TIV) is currently engaged in a significant project with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) titled "Integrating Rural and Indigenous Water and Sanitation Knowledge and Practices for Sustainable Development in Latin America and the Caribbean." This initiative is a cornerstone in our efforts to drive sustainable development by merging traditional knowledge with contemporary practices, explicitly targeting the enhancement of resilience and equity in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services across rural and Indigenous communities in the region.

Our project's central objective is to document, systematize, and integrate Indigenous and rural WASH knowledge to ensure that development efforts remain sustainable and culturally appropriate. We are preparing to collaborate closely with local stakeholders to capture and systematize this invaluable knowledge, focusing on leveraging it to improve WASH services in the targeted communities universally. Our planned implementation involves extensive reviews of academic, cultural, and community-based literature on rural and Indigenous WASH management.

As a result of our literature review, we have identified numerous adaptive water stewardship and sanitation solutions deeply rooted in the cultural and spiritual traditions of rural and indigenous populations. These practices preserve biodiversity and provide models for equitable water governance. TIV’s experts are compiling and systematizing these practices into a comprehensive framework demonstrating their effectiveness and sustainability, providing a blueprint for integrating these practices into broader WASH frameworks. This systematic approach will harness the ancestral knowledge detailed in the case studies from our literature review to address modern WASH challenges effectively. Field studies of remote rural communities in Colombia and Panama will complement these reviews to gather firsthand information from selected rural and Indigenous communities within the region.

This initiative demonstrates TIV's commitment to sustainable development, with a particular emphasis on underserved communities. By incorporating traditional insights into contemporary WASH frameworks, we establish the foundation for transformative enhancements in water and sanitation services, ensuring they are culturally informed, equitable, and sustainable.