We are a Swiss NGO headquartered in Geneva. We promote rainwater as a sustainable resource. IRHA are committed to evolving integrated, sustainable living practices. Cultivating resilient ecosystems and careful resource use assists communities in adapting to climate change.

3:19 March 22, Celebrating World Water Day!

Rainwater: A Precious Resource

This week, we applaud the launch of the UN’s World Water Development Report, 2019: Leaving No One Behind. We share this report’s aim of ensuring that safe drinking water and sanitation are available to all people. We support its call to ensure equitable access to water for agricultural production, and to safeguard internally displaced peoples' and refugees' rights to clean drinking water supplies.

World Water Day also provides a chance for us to honour one of our planet’s most wonderous compounds. Since IRHA focuses on rainwater, for World Water Day we look to poetry to celebrate this vital resource. Rainwater deserves our respect and attention. Noticing rainfall patterns can make us aware of the rate at which water is supplied to our regions, during a particular season. Thus, we migth adopt our use, accordingly. The rain always meets us, as we go about our daily activities, changing our surroundings and our mood. Poets including Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams and Alice Oswald draw our attention to the phenomenon of falling rain drips. In celebrating World Water Day, we turn to their rain poems to value rainwater all the more. Please do get in touch, if there is another rain poem you love!

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Introducing IRHA

Profiling our Country-Based Collaborators

On World Water Day, we are celebrating our local partners: Sumaj Punchay, APAF and Kanchan Nepal. These are exceptional organisations, who share our dedication to rainwater harvesting.

Our programmes could not run without the collaboration of such highly engaged, local NGOs, who have a crucial understanding of their respective region’s water needs. They help us implement rainwater harvesting, through joint projects broadly aligned with the social philosophy of Buen Vivir.

Echoing this movement’s values, our joint projects often promote collaborative consumption and a sharing economy; for example, the collective tending of crops for consumption and sale. They also adopt an ethos of harmonious living with the natural environment. Finally, adopting another characteristic of this movement, our joint projects further intercultural exchange, through dialogue and praxis that respects diversity (Gudynas, 2011). We learn much from our collaborators’ local knowledge, and celebrate them today! > Read More

Eduardo Guynas, ‘Buen Vivir: Today’s Tomorrow’ Development 54:4 (2011) 441-447.

Rainwater Advocacy

Harvesting Beautiful Raindrops

Our 'Capillary Action' Programme

As a Geneva-based, international NGO our mission includes advocating for the social and ecological value of rainwater harvesting. As we draw on our grassroots, project level experience in our advocacy work, we refer to it as ‘Capillary Action’.

Our ‘Capillary Action’ includes attending events including ones held by the UN's Economic and Social Council. It also involves working with local schools, to teach children the value of rainwater harvesting. Last week, we visited the primary school, La Découverte, in Mies, Switzerland. We spoke to children, who had been busy making their own water filters before we met. To teach them how precious rain is as a drinking water resource, we shared a poem about a little girl, who drank rainwater that was harvested in a Nepalese disaster relief camp.

JOIN THE ALLIANCE

International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance

IEH 2, Ch. de Balexert 9, 1219, Châtelaine - Genève

Tel +41 22 797 41 57 secretariat@irha-h2o.org

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