Safe Water: Kayonza District Borehole Project

With South Pole, Wyld purchased and retired carbon credits from this project to help offset 2021 operational greenhouse gas emissions.

Project Standards: Gold Standard | Location: Rwanda, Africa

Description

The quality of water in Rwanda is typically not safe to drink; for clean water, families must either boil it over inefficient wood-fuelled fires or travel long distances. The burden to source water, sometimes hours each day, or suffer respiratory illnesses from inhaling smoke from the indoor fires, especially impacts women and children. This project restores and repairs existing boreholes to provide clean drinking water to Rwandan communities, removing the need to boil water for purification. Each borehole is up to 100 meters deep, and can be operated with a simple hand pump. The boreholes will be maintained over the project lifetime.

Impact

By providing access to safe water to communities, this project sparks a chain of positive benefits. Children do not have to spend as much time gathering water or firewood, so they can dedicate time to studying. Families’ resources are freed up as they don’t have to spend money or time on firewood, instead, they can take part in other income-generating activities, household tasks or taking care of each other. Water-borne and respiratory diseases are reduced thanks to better sanitary conditions and less indoor smoke. By removing the need to boil water the project significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions as well as deforestation pressures on surrounding forests where firewood is sourced. - source: South Pole

Project Impact & Related Sustainable Development Goals (SDG):

• SDG 1: 68,000 people benefit from the project, improving the livelihoods of communities

• SDG 6: 50 million liters of clean water is supplied by project boreholes annually

• SDG 13: 140,000 tonnes of CO2e mitigated on average annually by removing the need to boil water on wood fires for purification

• SDG 15: 85,000 tonnes of wood saved, relieving pressures on surrounding forests