Back to news
31 Jul 2015 | News

Hope for Kyaung Taung’s water woes

1 min Read

70% Complete

The village of Kyaung Taung in the Inle Lake area in Myanmar sits atop a hill overlooking Heho city. And this hamlet with 80 households has a problem: it is plagued by severe water shortage. The woes of Kyaung Taung do not end here. The village wears a bald look, having lost all its forests.

However, these are not new stories.

Farmer U Nyein Kyaw, 57, recalls people facing severe water shortage in the village ever since he was 20 years old. “Even then people spent hours every day fetching water from Nyaung Kya pond during the dry season,” he says.

According to a village baseline report, Kyuang Taung receives one of the lowest rainfalls in the whole of southern Shan State. And the bad news is that this is declining every year.  Some farmers say the water in Nyaung Kya pond is also decreasing by the year.

Farmers attribute water scarcity in Kyaung Taung to increasing population growth and denuded forests. They say many organizations helped them find solutions but none have had lasting results.

According to U Nyein Kyaw, twenty years ago, UNDP supported the village build community tanks. Similarly, the Inle Literature, Culture and Development Association (ILCDA) with UNDP Inle Lake Conservation and Rehabilitation Project provided water tanks and filters in 2012. Today, two new community tanks to harvest rainwater are under construction with support from the EU-funded Himalica Initiative.

It was observed that some tanks require major repairs. If old tanks are repaired and the new ones get running, Kyaung Taung probably would have solved its water problem.

However, U Nyein Kyaw says repairing old tanks and building new ones alone will not solve the problem. “We need to operate the system efficiently,” he says. “And that’s what we didn’t have in the past.”

Now that the village has a permanent water user committee formed early this year, there are hopes that Kyaung Taung will finally have effective water governance. While there is no single model of effective water governance, a system must fit environmental, cultural, social, and economic contexts of the place.

Stay current

Stay up to date on what’s happening around the HKH with our most recent publications and find out how you can help by subscribing to our mailing list.

Sign Up

Related Contents

Continue exploring this topic

29 Mar 2015 News
Workshop on Application of Geospatial Technology in Climate Change Research

  In March 2015, the Cryosphere Initiative of ICIMOD and the Centre for Climate Change & Spatial Information (CCCSI) of Sherubtse ...

13 May 2019 News
UIBN – India Chapter discusses data gaps and collaborative research

In a bid to address these very regional issues, provide solutions to policy and decision makers, and further encourage collaborative ...

River Basins in the Age of Federalism

Effective management of river basins for multiple benefits, such as the availability of water for domestic use, agriculture, and energy, ...

22 May 2015 News
Team Kathmandu inspires

‘Tracking and Sensing through Android Robotics’ from Kathmandu’s 2015 NASA SpaceApps Challenge was named the 'Most Inspirational' in Global Competition ...

9 Jun 2021 News
New book announcement – Environmental Humanities in the New Himalayas: Symbiotic Indigeneity, Commoning, Sustainability

The active research-teaching community of the Himalayan University Consortium, co-led by Dan Smyer Yü, Yunnan University, Erik de Maaker, Leiden ...

10 Nov 2022 News
ICIMOD Mountain Chairs discuss water, energy, and food security in the Eastern Himalayas

Dr Jyoti Prakash Tamang (ICIMOD Mountain Chair 2019–2021, Sikkim University, India) hosted Dr Christopher Scott (ICIMOD Mountain Chair 2020–2022, Penn ...

13 Jul 2015 Atmosphere Initiative
ICIMOD supports helicopter relief and rescue missions

Within hours after the earthquake struck Nepal on 25 April 2015, help from overseas started arriving at Kathmandu airport. Soon ...

18 Dec 2015 HKPL
Regional consultation on Karakoram-Pamir-Wakhan Landscape Initiative

A regional consultation workshop on programme development for Karakoram-Pamir-Wakhan Landscape Initiative jointly organised by the Wakhan Corridor Initiative and the ...