Motors are used for many purposes today and consume an estimated 40-50% of India's electricity. Is there a need to become efficient?

They also are used heavily for water, starting in Bangalore in 1894 and now used commonly in borewells across the countryside. Does the industry bear any responsibility for declining groundwater levels?

A short tour through Bangalore's water history that is closely tied to the motor industry ends with the question: what does the future look like?

The article starts and ends with the question: can our society change?

Shorter version without images published in AIEMMA (All India Electric Motor Manufacturer's Association), September 2008.

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After experiencing one round of the application review process, I have some suggestions on improving it.

To keep these dialogues concise and to the point I tend to believe that the key solution lays in the project proposal and applications. These may have to be presented by adopted concise and comprehensive standard format, containing specific parameters of a perfect projects definition that match adopted standard selection and prioritization criteria. These parameters and criteria would necessarily derive from adopted underlying general domestic water supply & sanitation development policy principles. The same parameters may form the basis for monitoring verifiable indicators respectively evaluation.

For example: currently stakeholder information is not clearly and explicitly spelled out.

I welcome a discussion on this topic.

Maarten

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Climate change is affecting rainfall intensity. Do rainwater harvesting systems need to adapt as the intensity increases and possibly the gap between rainfalls?

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When we use our water to bathe and clean we put stuff (cleaners, solvents, chemicals) in it. Our used water flows into our drains and into other eco-systems where other life-forms see this flow as their incoming supply. Thus what we put in impacts others. We can minimize these impacts if using ahimsa (non-violence) as a guiding principles.

Ahimsa is core tenet of Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and most religions.

Published in Jain Spirit in 2002, this essay is about understanding the downstream impacts of our water usage at home and how to minimize them using Jainism principles. Applies to most spiritual traditions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism. Essay appears even more relevant today as places like India use more and more household chemicals and pesticides (even those deemed too toxic and banned in the west).

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The Narmada dam has the support of the vast majority of the Jain community in India, but the project violates the major tenets of Jainism.

A look at the dam from the perspective of various Jain principles (applies to Hindu and Buddhist and most religious principles too).

A shorter version was published in 2001 in Jain Spirit and a version with a different introduction published in Sutra in 2008.

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The June 2008 application review cycle generated a heavy flood of emails. How can we handle it and how we can change it in the future?

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The first ever African Women and Water Conference was amazing! Set at the Greenbelt Center, home of Nobel Laureaute Wangari Maathai's Greenbelt Movement to plant trees to improve the environment. Hers is a potent story of a female living her beliefs, despite the myriad challenges she faced in doing so. She has created real change in Kenya and is an inspiring example for all women.



The African Women and Water Conference was an incredible gathering of 30 women from all over Africa. All of these women were eager to learn, so that they could return to their communities and share what they learned here with their friends and family. Everyone was industrious and intelligent and welcoming. The schedule was packed with activities, from 7 AM to 10:30 PM but this didn't deter anyone! Every new thing they could learn, the women were inquisitive and present. Between activities, they broke into song and dance, which always helped to get the blood flowing again. They learned new technologies and how to implement them, how to write business plans, how to test if water is safe to drink, how to make and use Solar Cookits and how to use PWX, among many other things.



PWX: Because of the packed schedule, I gave a short introduction on Day 2 of PWX. In the evenings of Days 2-5, I sat down with each participant to further explain the Peer Water Exchange. I got the sense that only 2 pairs will have real challenges because they don't use computers frequently. Luckily, though, both of these pairs have office mates that they said are savvy enough to participate in their place. I've sent everyone home with handouts explaining PWX and the BioSand filter trainer, Mariah, is going to visit each pair during this year for follow-up support. The rest of the women were excited at the prospect of joining a global network and that the application is standard.

I heard some horror stories: Pastoral women having nowhere to urinate and waking up at 4 AM to go collect water and relieve themselves. Then by midday having to again walk out into the desert at a distance from their family to lie down just to relieve themselves, then returning ashamed and having to change their now soiled dress. Water privatization making water inaccessible to most because it raises prices. Male water vendors dominating the communal water points, so women have to wait in line for too long. Women getting beaten when they go home because they wait so long that it appears to the husbands that they're cheating on them. Desperate women exchanging sex for water to avoid the line. Every single women agreed, and took for granted, that water is women's responsibility and that it's a problem.

We learned about the importance of investing time to teach a community how to use new technologies. Example, (one of the trainers an incredible woman aptly renamed on the first day) Mama Solar's son cut headlights out of her first Solar Cook-it to make a toy truck. (This is a solar cooker simply made of carboard and one side is reinforced with aluminum foil or a reflective surface.) On the last day, we went to see a Sand Dam built by the Greenbelt Movement six years earlier. At our closing reception the night before, Wangari Maathai told us she'd just seen pictures of the current state of the Sand Dam. She was discouraged when she shared this with us, because they're barely functioning – the community hasn't taken the extra steps to own the project and maintain them. The project has essentially failed.

The importance of working with grassroots women who are usually left out of the real discussions in development was reinforced throughout the conference. One of the greatest things about PWX is that it is trying to solve this problem and I'm looking forward to supporting this transition as much as I can. Thanks BPR!

The Peer Water Exchange finds a new home in a community appropriately named Laughing Waters.

PWX now operates out of one the most operationally eco-friendly buildings in Bangalore.

The building runs on solar power (18 photo-voltaic solar panels) and there are two cascaded solar water heaters.

The water system is the most interesting and features:

• - a 17,000 liter underground rainwater harvesting tank
• - a biosand filter for drinking water
• - four recirculation/reuse systems to maximize use and reuse of water
• - bathrooms featuring 4 input water lines: drinking water, regular water, hot water, and grey water
• - a grey water system from the washing machine that goes to flush the toilets
• - grey water systems for irrigation of roof garden.

The first piece of 'furniture' purchased was a composting bin!

Then 12 trees were planted, 9 of them fruit trees.

PWX-central is trying to walk the talk and also providing carbon offsets to Blue Planet Run.

Of course you can track down PWX-central on the PWX map! www.peerwater.org/map.