Written by Dr Mark Love
Research conducted as part of PaCWaM+1 sought to answer the question: Do churches have a role to play in supporting community-based water management in the Pacific and, if so, what might this look like? Based on formative research in Solomon Islands and desk-top reviews of other Pacific Island Countries (PICs), the answer was “Yes, they do” and various options of what this might look like were identified.
With the support of the Australian Government’s Water for Women Fund, the International WaterCentre (IWC), Griffith University and Solomon Islands National University (SINU) have been undertaking action research with the Anglican Church of Melanesia (ACOM), United Church (UC), South Sea Evangelical Church (SSES) and Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) churches in the Provinces of Isabel and Western.
Last year, IWC / SINU conducted workshops with 26 leaders from different church denominations in Solomon Islands, supported by senior environmental health inspectors from the relevant Provincial Environmental Health Division/RWASH. During the workshops, participants developed Action Plans and committed to undertaking numerous actions to improve community water management in their respective communities.
In June and July this year, Collin Benjamin and Sheilla Funubo, under the guidance of Dr Hugo Bugoro and Nixon Panda (SINU), completed monitoring of these Action Plans. The results are promising, supporting “proof of concept”. Highlights include:
- Conducting community awareness about water management (sometimes using the “Water is Everyone’s Business: video)
- Re-establishing water committees
- Introducing or re-vitalising water fees
- Conducting fundraising for water system improvement
- Improving rubbish collection and disposal in the village
- Cleaning tap-stands and dams more frequently
- Undertaking repairs
- Priests’ integrating water stewardship messages into sermons.
In terms of meeting the specific targets as laid out in each of the Action Plans, most communities were sitting on between 40-70% completion rate.
“Before, you would see empty plastic bottles and detergent containers lying around the stand taps. Now, you hardly see them” (Titiro, Isabel)
The Oceanic region is known as “the most solidly Christian part of the world,” with over 90% of Pacific Islanders identifying as Christian. Churches and church-related organizations (faith-based organizations or FBOs) play a crucial role in the region’s history, culture, and politics. In rural Solomon Islands, church leaders, along with customary institutions like chiefs and cultural norms, shape the patterns of daily life. As George Hoa’au has noted, “The church has a very special kind of respect within villages; people don’t see the member of parliament every day, they see the pastor and priest every day.” Church-related groups are typically the most active institutions at the village level, providing many of the services typically associated with the state in Western contexts.
Some of the church leaders involved in the workshops undertook actions in all the communities they oversee (up to 6 villages), demonstrating the institutional reach and scalability of the church.
Churches are not a magic bullet, but they are an active, influential and overlooked WASH ally in the Pacific region. The early results of this research suggest that FBOs constitute an important “plus” that can help support the community-based water model at the rural level. Government and other actors still have an important role to play but whilst the community-water management model remains the dominant approach in the region churches can, and should, be engaged with more by development partners and governments seeking to improve rural WASH in PICs
Fig. 1. Tap-stand, Baolo village, Isabel
Fig. 2. Sheilla Funubo interviews a member of the Mothers Union as part of the monitoring research in Buala village, Isabel
