Borehole Resuscitation and Maintenance
Several years of droughts has led to a number of rivers and boreholes in the project area to dry up all this due to Climate Change. Water has become a challenge for both Fauna and Flora. The human being has faced serious challenge of water shortage due to climate change.
The Kariba REDD+ project is operating in rural areas where most people rely on water from rivers and dams of which most of these have dried up. At household level, the duty of fetching water is mainly left for the women and the girl child which brings a heavy toll on the female gender.
The Kariba REDD+ project has found water provision to be a very critical component of the project in the fight against climate change as water itself provides life to everything on this planet earth. The project started by embarking on a massive re-habilitation of over 250 boreholes across the project. Boreholes have been re-habilitated at schools, clinics, business centres, villages and community nutritional gardens. Further boreholes have been added through drilling new boreholes now equipped with solar pumping systems and also upgrading some of the existing bush pump boreholes to solarisation for easy access to the precious liquid.
Water harvesting through dam construction has also been taken on board as witnessed by the assistance given to the construction of the Mumupata dam in Siabuwa, Binga which now holds sufficient surface water for both humans and livestock throughout the season. There has also been a massive water canal channeling from the Mapongolo hills in Negande, Nyaminyami to the communities under Chief Negande. The communities under Chief Sinansengwe, Binga who live just below the Chizarira National Park have equally benefitted from also water channeling from a spring on top of a hill down to the communities.
The project will continue to find ways of providing water to the communities until every household has access to water from a distance of less than a kilometre.
It is interesting to note that on most of the boreholes repaired some had not be function for over 1o years and most people have been travelling for over 5kms to get the precious liquid and from unsafe water sources such as open wells and water points where people and animals have been sharing the commodity. We now have over 85,000 people positively impacted both directly and indirectly through this water rehabilitation exercise by the Kariba REDD+ project. Besides new boreholes now being drilled, the repair and maintenance of old existing boreholes is still ongoing.
The below maps show borehole activities undertaken in the Kariba REDD+ project
