For much of her life as a farmer, water meant waiting for Pema Zangmo.
During the dry winter months in Tempakha Village in Bhutan’s Punakha district, irrigation water was scarce. Farmers sometimes waited more than 12 days for their turn. Bringing water to the fields meant digging trenches from mountain sources or physically carrying it over long distances.
Today, 23-year-old Pema can start the flow of water with a tap on her mobile phone.
The transformation is part of a solar-powered irrigation initiative that is doing more than easing one of farming’s most demanding tasks. By training women to operate and manage the technology, the project is also challenging a longstanding gap between those who do much of Bhutan’s agricultural work and those who traditionally have access to agricultural technology and decision-making.
According to Bhutan’s Industry Census Report, women account for more than half of the country’s agricultural workforce. Yet their participation in decisions over the technologies intended to improve farming has often remained limited.
In Tempakha, an experiment in renewable energy and women-led water management is offering a different model.
From hours of labour to a tap on a phone
Pema left school shortly after class seven to help support her family. Growing up in a household of ten, farming became an early and enduring part of her life.
Irrigation was among its hardest demands. Pema and her father could spend more than four hours a day bringing water from streams to their fields, repeating the process 20 to 25 times during a growing season.
“Before the solar system was installed, farming was very difficult, especially during the winter season because the water was limited, and we had to get the water from distant sources, and we had to wait more than twelve days for our irrigation turns,” Pema said. “And we had to dig trenches every year to bring water from the mountain to the field.”
That routine began to change in May, when a solar-powered lift irrigation system was installed under the Women’s Empowerment through Renewable Energy Powered Decentralised Lift Irrigation Systems, or WERELIS, Project.
Instead of depending on manually transported water, the new system pumps it directly to the agricultural fields using solar energy. Its operation can also be controlled remotely through a mobile application.
The technology has changed Pema’s role as much as it has changed her daily workload.
Her community nominated her to operate the system for the newly established Tempakha Water Users’ Association in Chhubu Gewog. She received hands-on training in its operation and basic maintenance, including cleaning solar panels and identifying minor technical faults.
She is also responsible for managing the water distribution schedule among the eight households using the system, ensuring farmers receive their allocated share.
The ability to control the pump remotely means she no longer needs to spend hours travelling back and forth simply to manage irrigation.
“After the installation of the solar system, our farming has become easier. We don’t have to worry about water,” Pema said. “Farmers get water when I press a single button in my mobile app. We no longer have to carry the water physically, so we can get water efficiently, and we can even plan our farming activities with greater confidence.”
Nine households are benefiting from the project. But its significance extends beyond the amount of water reaching their fields.
Putting technology in women’s hands
At the heart of WERELIS is a question increasingly relevant to agricultural development: if women are doing much of the farming, are they also being included in decisions about the technology transforming it?
The project has sought to make that participation deliberate. Women are taking central roles in the water users’ association and assuming responsibility for operating, monitoring and managing equipment—areas from which they have often been excluded.
“Data shows that more women are doing the farming, but they don’t have access to technology; they don’t even know, and they are not part of some of these groups who are making the decisions on the technology,” said Sarala Khaling, Head of Resilient Economies and Landscapes at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).
“They need the technology most, but they are not included in the decision-making around that technology.”
Khaling said the experience of WERELIS demonstrates what can happen when that gap is addressed.
“Yes, women can be a user of technology, they can monitor technology, they can use it, they can be part of the design, given the opportunity,” she said.
The approach combines two development challenges that are particularly significant in mountain communities: improving access to reliable irrigation while expanding the role of women in decisions over agricultural resources and technology.
Solar-powered lift irrigation can also reduce dependence on physically demanding methods of moving water while using renewable energy to pump supplies from sources that might otherwise be difficult for farmers to access.
A model with wider ambitions
Supported by the International Development Research Centre and ICIMOD, the initiative is also intended to generate lessons that could be applied elsewhere across the Hindu Kush Himalaya.
The project was among the initiatives discussed at a regional forum held in Thimphu this week, as policymakers and development organisations considered ways to expand renewable-energy solutions for agriculture.
Bhutan is already exploring how the approach can be taken beyond the initial project sites.
The Department of Energy is working towards scaling up the model with funding from the Government of India through Project-AID assistance.
“For areas like Punakha and Wangdue, we have conducted detailed feasibility studies across seven sites, and then the Department of Energy is undertaking the implementation of two sites,” said Rigzin Pelzang, Engineer with the Department of Energy under the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources.
Further assessments are also underway.
“We have started conducting detailed feasibility studies with support from ICIMOD across 10 sites in Bhutan. We plan to implement this in one of the sites in the current fiscal year,” Pelzang said.
If those efforts expand, the implications could go beyond installing more solar pumps. The experience in Tempakha suggests that the way such systems are introduced—and who is trained to manage them—can be as important as the technology itself.
For Pema, the impact is already tangible.
The hours once spent fetching and directing water can be used elsewhere. Irrigation has become more predictable. Farming activities can be planned with greater confidence. And instead of simply receiving the benefits of a new technology, she has become one of the people responsible for making it work.
The contrast is striking: a young woman who once carried water to her fields now controls its flow from a mobile phone.
In that shift lies a broader possibility for Bhutan’s agricultural future—one in which renewable energy does not merely reduce the physical burden of farming, but gives the women who sustain it a greater role in managing the technologies reshaping rural life.
