4 - Workshop on Water Resources

In this session we did a role-playing workshop about water resources around Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Various players related to water resources were represented by the groups, including villages, a clothing factory, the water managemnet board and an NGO. I was in "Village 1," an inner-city community with no piped water. I was playing the role of a father of 6. Within the village, we had conflicting interests, for example with a private water vendor who wouldn't want to see piped water coming in. I was saying that I wanted piped water, since it would be cheaper and with a large family we could hardly afford private water. In order to compromise with the private water suppliers, our plan was to request that piped water supply would be slowly phased in; i.e. first a central water depot, then after a while individual supply for each household. This would give people time to adjust to the changes. It was interesting to think that even though getting piped water seems like something everyone in the village would want, there could be still be conflicting interests.

For our "3-year plan," our first priority was to have some community meetings to make sure everyone in the village is informed about what's going on, and we also needed to find out what exactly our legal status was, i.e. if we could stay on the land long-term. This tenure consideration wasn't obvious at first but was very important, because in case we weren't there officially, we could perhaps include tenure discussions with our efforts to obtain piped water from the government.