Rainwater harvesting and the millennium development goals

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the blueprint for the world to accelerate development and measure progress was adopted by Heads of State in the year 2000. It contains a set of time bound and measurable goals and targets for com - bating poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women. Goal 7 – Ensure Environmental Sustainability, focuses on water. However, all the MDGs depend on the availablity of water in acceptable quality and adequate quantities to meet their targets. It is predicted that one-third of the population in developing countries will face water scarcity by 2025, with severe water deficits being experienced in West Asia, North Africa, the Indian Punjab, the central plains of China, as well as several regions in Latin America. Most of these regions are located in arid and/or semi-arid belts, where rainfall is low and erratic, with much of the precious water getting lost as surface runoff into the seas and oceans. At the same time it courses flooding and destruction. There is urgent need to reduce the water loss by applying rainwater harvesting. Rainwater harvesting is the collection, storage and productive utilization of rainwater. It reduces surface runoff and prevents soil erosion, thereby contributing to environmental conservation. Rainwater harvesting is not new. There is evidence of its existence about 4000 years ago in Palestine and Greece. In ancient Rome, residences were built with individual cisterns and paved courtyards to capture rainwater to augment water from city’s aqueducts. As early as the third millennium BC, farming communities in Baluchistan and Kutch impounded rain water and used it for irrigation. In Tunisia, jessours have been used for centuries to collect run-off from long hillslopes. Farmers build earthen dams across the valley floors to trap the run-off water and silt. In the desert areas of Arizona and northwest New Mexico, floodwater farming has been practiced for at least 1000 years. In the “Khadin” system of India and the spate irrigation system of the Great Horn of Africa, floodwater is impounded behind earth bunds, and crops then planted into the residual moisture when the water infiltrates.

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