The Ecological Management Foundation (EMF) is a public benefit charity in the water sector, dedicated to improving access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities in developing countries.
Broad impact
Since its foundation by Allerd Stikker in 1990, EMF has built a solid track record in initiating water solution projects, raising public awareness and stimulating innovative water technologies.
EMF identifies, promotes and incubates small-scale projects that are innovative, practical, solution-oriented, and have a broad impact on the target country.
Themes
EMF's projects and activities target three themes:
- Blue Energy: technologies that use a minimum of energy and can be widely deployed locally to provide large numbers of people access to clean water
- Blue Highway: efficient and reliable community and or entrepreneur-run distribution channels that get products to end users at affordable prices
- Blue Gold: appropriate instruments for financing distrubution channels and end users.
The Ecological Management Foundation (EMF) is dedicated to tackling the world's growing water scarcity problem and to providing the poor in developing countries with clean water and sanitation facilities. EMF identifies, promotes and pioneers small-scale projects that are innovative, practical, solution-oriented, and will have a broad impact in the target country. In particular EMF explores the possibilities of new desalination techniques. Much of EMF's work is in partnership with organisations around the world dedicated to the same cause.
Main activities
EMF' s activities concentrate on three areas: desalination technologies, global water scarcity, and cooperation with international partner organisations.
Desalination technologies
EMF initiates and promotes small-scale, ecologically and economically sound desalination technologies. EMF is convinced that by 2020 desalination installations will increasingly deliver high quality water from brackish and sea water at a cost price comparable with or lower than that conventionally produced from ground and surface water. Read about EMF's desalination activities.
Combatting water scarcity
EMF fights world water scarcity by initiating and fostering appropriate technical, commercial, financial and social innovations in developed and developing countries. EMF currently heads a groundbreaking project in Bangladesh that is set to provide safe drinking water for 24 million inhabitants of areas affected by serious arsenic contamination and salinity problems.
International partnerships
EMF works closely together with many international partner organizations dedicated to improving global access to clean water and sanitation. One example is EMF's collaboration since 2010 with the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) in its Water Schools Program. Its mission is to promote sustainable clean water, sanitation facilities and hygiene in faith-related schools.This will lead to a reduction in water-related school absenteeism and, in the long run, to a community-wide reduction in water-borne disease.
Documentaries
EMF started making documentaries in 1999 as a supporting activity, to raise public awareness to the issues it addressed. Since then EMF has continued to explore and initiate documentaries in the field of water, poverty and microfinance, in cooperation with professional filmmakers. EMF's documentaries include The Blue Gold, a 6-part series on water that was broadcast on Dutch television in 2009.
