Regarding water, some 84% of the un served live in rural areas (UNICEF 2008). To improve thissituation the number of decentralised supply systems such as wells and hand pumps need to increase.With technologies normally chosen progress with increasing coverage is slow but by applying innovativelow-cost water technologies, so called Smart tecs, access to more and safe water, especially in ruralareas, could drastically increase. Recent innovations have reduced the cost of water technologies forwells, boreholes, pumps, storage, recharge, irrigation, and water treatment by 30-70% as compared toconventional options and have increased sustainability. One example is the Rope pump of which nowsome 80.000 are installed worldwide and used by some 3 million people. The introduction of this pump inNicaragua started with 1 million dollars development aid, through which the yearly GNP of Nicaraguaincreased by 10 million dollars. The shift from piston pumps to rope pumps doubled rural water supply inless than 10 years, 3 times faster than countries with conventional hand-operated piston pumps. Surveysindicate that families that purchase a $70 Rope pump increase their annual income by $2202. The largescale dissemination of new small-scale technologies, has a huge potential to improve rural water supply,increase food security and reduce rural poverty.
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