The targeted community is situated in Champhone District, Savannakhet Province, Lao PDR, it is about 14 kilometers southeast of the district administrative center, the village is organized into two distinct residential clusters, locally namely as Khoum: NonKhay and Pakouay. This cluster plays a critical role in shaping local resource distribution, spatial accessibility to water bodies, and decentralized community decision-making frameworks.
Demographically, the village establishes a compact highly dense rural settlement, comprising a total of 154 households. There are 749 residents, included women of 364 persons (approximately 48.6% of the total population). Hence, the balanced gender distribution underlines the importance of integrating gender-responsive methods into local climate adaptation strategies. In particular, as women are frequently the key person of domestic water security and household health in rural community.
Socio-economically, the community shows a high degree of vulnerability and economic insecurity. There are total of 43 families representing approximately 28% of the village's total households are officially classified as living below the poverty line according to national multidimensional poverty index. This economic precarity is additional reflected in the community's baseline financial system of measurement, which the average annual income is estimated at 2,000,000 LAK per capita.
Domestic water insecurity constitutes a severe and prevalent structural barrier within the target community. Currently, only 43 households possess the financial capacity to rely on commercially purveyed 20-liter bottled water as their primary source of potable drinking water. The overwhelming majority of the population is forced to depend on untreated, highly vulnerable environmental sources, including seasonal local streams, exposed natural springs, and unconfined shallow aquifers.
Consequently, the net volumetric supply of safe water allocated for essential drinking, food preparation, and basic sanitation tasks is critically deficient [20].
This reliance on insecure surface and groundwater water bodies exposes the community to acute seasonal variations in water quality, compounding local public health risks through potential bacterial and sediment contamination.
A baseline site assessment was conducted prior to the intervention revealed on18 groundwater boreholes installed across the two residential clusters, 83.3% has fallen into complete disorder, only three boreholes fully work.
As a direct consequence of this severe infrastructure shortage, the average domestic water consumption within the community has contracted to a marginal 10 to 15 liters per capita per day.
The current consumption rate falls drastically short of the 50 to 100 liters per capita per day benchmark mandated by the World Health Organization (WHO) necessary to assurance baseline personal hygiene, health protection, and domestic security. This severe volumetric deficit not only elevates the burden of water-related diseases but also suspiciously increases the time and physical labor expended by community members particularly women and youth in sourcing water from distant and alternative supplies.
Rice productivity within the targeted village is constrained, with annual crop yields predominantly rainfed lowland rice stagnating at a critically low baseline averaging between 1.1 and 2.0 tons per hectare. This yield falls intensely below national averages.
The occurrence of salt formations and coupled with inconsistent water tables, drives soil salinity. This salinity uses severe impact on crops, inhibiting root water uptake and inducing toxic ion accumulations that dramatically reduces survival [21,22].
Accordingly, the community is trapped in a chronic cycle of food insecurity and acute seasonal shortages. Because local aggregate rice production routinely fails to satisfy basic household subsistence requirements, the community faces a structural "rice gap" a period of several months each year where domestic grain reserves are entirely exhausted [23,24].
During these lean months, families are forced to pivot toward negative coping strategies, including the liquidation of modest livestock assets, high-interest micro-loans, or cutting back on daily nutritional intake. This persistent caloric and financial strain transforms food from a basic stability metric into a continuous daily crisis.
This systemic agricultural deficit does more than undermine immediate nutritional health; it severely erodes the foundational pillars of community-based climate change adaptation and structurally caps local resilience [25].
To discourse these deeply interconnected hydrological, agronomic, and socioeconomic challenges, this study a comprehensive framework designed to safe equitable and highly sustainable access to vibrant sub-surface water resources. Rather than acting as a temporary relief measure, the planned development of managed groundwater infrastructure functions as a transformative intervention to improve localized climate readiness, mitigate seasonal water scarcity, and support the long-term food security and climate-resilience of rural livelihoods [26]. By steadying the volumetric availability of water for both domestic consumption and off-season agricultural production, the study seeks to break the structural cycle of poverty and resource reduction that currently caps the community's adaptive capacity.
Beyond the immediate structural and engineering interventions within the targeted site, the initiative is built upon a robust, multi-tiered knowledge exchange model designed to maximize regional impact. The project actively facilitates structured peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and cross-learning exchanges regarding localized governance, equitable water allocation, and infrastructure maintenance best practices among adjacent communities experiencing similar hydro-climatic vulnerabilities, Moreover, to ensure the sustainability of the project's interventions and to contribute to the broader scientific and policy discourse, the research team is committed to a transparent and comprehensive dissemination strategy. The empirical data, technical designs, socio-technical outcomes, and community-led governance frameworks generated throughout this intervention will be systematically shared with public stakeholders, regional development agencies, and national policy architects [27,28].
This intentional data-sharing pipeline transforms a localized field intervention into a scalable blueprint. Providing open-access methodologies and verified field insights directly empowers sub-national and national authorities to integrate community-based groundwater management paradigms into decentralized Socio-Economic Development Plans (SEDPs) across Lao PDR
The paradigm of Community-Based Climate Change Adaptation for Sustainable Water and Food Security (CBC2ASWFS) serves as both the foundational conceptual architecture and the practical operational framework driving this research [29]. Rather than treating climate resilience as an abstract policy objective, this integrated model functions as a systematic, field-tested methodology designed to directly secure, optimize, and sustain community-level water resource access and food production systems [30].
The systemic interaction, structural components, and operational pathways of this community-led adaptation model are schematically illustrated below in Figure 1, mapping out how localized governance transforms climate vulnerability into resource stability.
Water and Food Security Nexus Framework Diagram
To accurately recognize an immediate priority of the local population concerning water and food security, the research team, collaboration with district relevant authorities and leadership from the NonKhay cluster (Khoum), which conducted a several intensive community consultation meetings and public hearings [31]. To supplement these consultations and gain more deeper understanding of current socioeconomic conditions and future livelihood needs, therefore, qualitative data were collected employing Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) [32,33]. KIIs were purposively directed to key community leaders, including the village head, representatives from the Women’s Union, Youth Union, and the leader of the Pakouay cluster. Concurrently, FGDs were facilitated with broader community members to capture diverse local perspectives and co-design sustainable livelihood interventions [34,35].
During community consultation meetings and public hearings, stakeholders focused primarily on two critical spatial decisions: 1) identifying optimal locations for groundwater extraction, and (2) determining the site for the public village pond [36]. Through this participatory approach, there are two available borehole sites which were selected to secure a groundwater supply. The first borehole is located adjacent to the village community hall, while the second is situated near the central residential hub of the village.
Consequently, the research team, district authorities, and community representatives conducted field investigations to validate and finalize the two borehole locations. The selection criteria prioritized sites capable of yielding a sufficient and stable groundwater supply throughout both the wet and dry seasons, while ensuring acceptable water quality parameters (specifically avoiding high salinity zones). Geographically, the study area is considered by severe seasonal drought, primarily driven by an important deficit in annual cumulative rainfall, as illustrated in Figure 2.
Groundwater Drilling and Water Quantity Test
Public pond Infrastructure and Site Preparation