The EncASa Oaxaca 2018 project started with the goal of both providing 1,000 households with access to a basic electricity service and implementing a pilot to bring access to water, sanitation and cook stoves to more than 50 households. Today, the distribution of solar home systems to provide access to electricity is advancing and almost 140 families have joined to get access to drinking water, appropriate sanitation and safe cooking offered by the pilot. The users themselves choose these systems within those offered in a catalogue of technologies, according to their habits and other factors, such as existing infrastructure or the climate in their communities. This catalogue includes several systems of water catchment –based on improving existing infrastructures, rainwater catchment or well pump–, water purification –filtration, ultraviolet light or chlorination– and sanitation –dry toilet or artificial wetland–, as well as some types of cook stoves with chimney.

The users have mainly requested for the dry toilet, a sanitation system that is appropriate for areas with water scarcity, such as the state of Oaxaca where the population face recurring droughts. The dry toilet makes unnecessary the water for flushing such as an ordinary toilet, while it is as hygienic as the latter due to the use of a drying mixture –lime and soil– that avoids odours, insects, disease contagion… In addition, this system reuses the excrements –grey water– by separating the urine from the faeces so as to use both as fertilizer: the first one, after having been stored for a short period and then diluted; the second ones, after some months of composting in the chambers where they are stored and that are the base of the toilet cabin. The dry toilet, such as other systems of the catalogue requiring building, is executed by the users themselves under the supervision of acciona.org that trains them to perform that activity, as well as to maintain the systems.

That is, EncASa Oaxaca promotes a sustainable development through the access to basic services. It continues the positive impact of Luz en Casa with the provision of access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy that makes easier performing productive, educative, recreational and family activities, the access to information and communication, savings, as well as improving the health and the environment. It also adds the access to equity drinking water and appropriate sanitation, which allows reducing more risks to the health of users, who improve their water supply sources and save water by using sanitation systems, such as the dry toilet that make farming easier with the reuse of grey water within an environment of recurring drought. This makes EncASa Oaxaca a tool of increasing the resilience and adaptation to climate change.

The achievement of those results and impacts would be impossible without the necessary technical, managerial, economic and institutional resources that the public-private partnership for development driving EncASa Oaxaca provides. It is formed by acciona.org, the Government of the State of Oaxaca, through its Infrastructure and Sustainable Territory Development Secretary –so called SINFRA–, the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation –so called AECID– and the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation –so called AMEXCID–.

acciona.org and the Sustainable Development Goals

The access to basic services provided by EncASa Oaxaca impacts positively on the economy, society and environment of the beneficiaries of this action, which is aligned with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) included in the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda.

At acciona.org we work to bring access to energy, water and sanitation to very low-income people who live not being included in any plan of extension of those service, for which we apply technological and managerial innovation criteria. Thus, we contribute to achieve the SDG directly related SDG6 on water & sanitation, SDG7 on sustainable & affordable energy, and SDG9 on resilient infrastructures and promotion of innovation. That contribution is part of the ACCIONA commitment to the SDG’s.

We also favour the achievement of other SDG’s through the positive impacts of our activity resulting in reduction of poverty, improvement of health, education, equality, work, etc., as well as through the collaborative view with which we execute our actions, such as the public-private partnership for development that carries out EncASa Oaxaca.

More info: https://acciona.org/mexico/encasa-oaxaca