Increasing Human Adaptation to Climate Variability using traditional Water Harvesting (case study: Darfur-Sudan)

The greatest misfortune about climate, is that in countries where this phenomenon will be faced with worse consequences, they are among the poorest. The study area within the Darfur and timeframe, based on rainfall data is obtained the range of abnormalities, and fluctuations in precipitation data from 1950 to 2010. Averages are taken of gridded rain gauge precipitation anomalies in the NOAA Global Historical Climatology Network. The data for the Sahel in this data set are raw precipitation stations and have not undergone any homogeneity adjustments. The averaging region was chosen from a rotated principal component analysis of African precipitation by Janowiak (1988). This paper described a dire situation in Darfur where climate change, rapid population growth and environmental degradation led to competition for dwindling natural resources and a water crisis٫ the importance and role of social factors and climate on water harvesting is strictly emphasized.That crisis in turn has contributed to the recent conflict which erupted in 2003, resulting in the deaths of tens if not hundreds of thousands of Darfuris and currently about 1.8 million internally displaced persons. However according to Chamber’s study In the meantime, farmers act as teachers and indigenous knowledge as part of their power is very reasonable and these skills that enable them to appropriately deal with challenges in their everyday life but in Darfur, Priority to farmers and villagers was not merely a practical approach towards the development of water harvesting. In rainfed agriculture, farmers know a few traditional systems that collect and gather rain water, but in Durfur’s water crisis various programs have been started by several world government agencies, development projects, and NGOs to design and develop improved water harvestingsystems. It was realized then that much further work needed to be done in this area. This paper presents experiences to attention of those responsible for the development of water harvesting in difficult physical environments where the sustainability of water systems and its retaining for humans requires special attention within the locality where the resource base are at unusual risk. water harvesting could be an important tool to improve yields in drought–prone zones which produce less than the subsistence requirements of the local inhabitants. Thus full attention will be given to techniques involving simple structures which can be constructed by resource –poor farmers

کلیدواژه ها:

sustainable development ، water harvesting ، Darfur ، water crisis ، traditional knowledge