Contribution project

Clean water for healthy families in Kenya

Kenya, Western Kenya

ClimatePartner ID: 1008

Project details

Clean drinking waterGet to know the project

The project gives many households in rural Kenya easy and cheap access to clean drinking water. In order to kill germs, people had to boil the water and used a lot of firewood. The water filters do not need any electricity or operating materials. Thanks to the project, the amount of firewood required is reduced, leading to significant CO₂ savings. Contaminated drinking water poses a significant risk to the health of rural communities in Kenya. According to the World Health Organization, diarrhoeal diseases are the third leading cause of death for children and adults. The project improves people's health by providing clean drinking water and at the same time avoiding smoke from cooking.

3.6 million people in Western Kenya currently have water treatment units and use them regularly. 3,169 water treatment units and 4,175 filters were replaced between November 2012 and January 2014.

2,073,328 t CO₂Estimated annual emissions reductions

Project Standard

The project contributes to the the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals

How does technology for clean drinking water help fight global warming?

According to UNICEF, 2.2 billion people worldwide lack reliable access to safe and clean drinking water – 26% of the global population. Women and girls often must travel long distances to collect water from the nearest water point. To make the water safe for use, it is typically boiled over open fires using wood, which generates carbon emissions and harmful smoke. Additionally, the collection of firewood contributes to deforestation.

Climate projects for clean drinking water offer practical solutions. Water can be treated chemically (e.g., with chlorine-based purifiers), mechanically (e.g., with water filters), or through tapping groundwater from wells. For this, wells must be repaired, maintained, or newly installed, as only functioning wells provide clean drinking water. These solutions grant even remote villages access to safe water.

Such projects also reduce carbon emissions by eliminating the need to boil water and help combat deforestation. The clean drinking water projects in ClimatePartner's portfolio are registered with international standards.

The project aims to contribute to these United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Project facts

Climate projects generally fall into one of three groups: carbon reduction, carbon removal, or carbon avoidance. Carbon reduction projects reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced by a specific activity (e.g., improved cookstoves). Carbon removal projects remove carbon from the atmosphere by sequestering it in carbon sinks (e.g., reforestation). Carbon avoidance projects avoid greenhouse gas emissions entering the atmosphere (e.g., protecting forests from deforestation with REDD+ projects).

All climate projects are based on international standards. They set processes and requirements which carbon projects must fulfill to be recognised as a proven method of reducing carbon emissions.

Climate projects demonstrably reduce, remove, or avoid greenhouse gas emissions. This is achieved with various technologies, ranging from nature-based solutions to social impact projects and renewable energies.

Most standards on the voluntary carbon market list their projects in public registries. The registries are used to store project data and track issuances and retirements of verified emission reductions. The registry ID can be used to identify projects in the standard registry.

Check out this project

Climate projects go through third-party validation and verification. Verification happens regularly after each monitoring period. A validation and verification body checks and assesses whether the values and project activities stated in the monitoring report are correct and verifies them. As with validation, visits to the project site are often part of the process.

Climate projects go through third-party validation and verification. Validation happens early in the project life cycle and ensures that the project design is in line with current processes and requirements. This phase often also involves field visits with on-site interviews and analyses. Auditors are accredited, impartial assessors who have to be approved as a validation and verification body (VVB) by the standards body.

This figure shows the estimated annual emission reductions calculated before the project started. The actual number of emissions saved in each monitoring period may differ. The background to this process is that in order to be registered as a climate project, the project operator must submit the calculation of the estimated emissions savings using the ex-ante methodology in a Project Design Document (PDD), which is similar to a business plan. This calculation is validated by an independent auditor. The values determined in the PDD are recalculated during regular monitoring periods based on actual project performance, documented in a monitoring report, and verified again by independent auditors at the end of the monitoring period to ensure a robust process. Independent verification thus provides ex-post verification of actual emission reductions. Verified emission reductions are not distributed until the savings have actually been made.

* For certified projects only: the project-related information on this page is based on the documents in the register.

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