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“Water is Gold”: Strengthening the Resilience of Cape Verde’s Water Sector

Building new water infrastructure in Santo Antão

Every three days, a truck arrives in the village of Lagoa. It is a water tanker, doing the circuit to municipalities across the island of Santo Antão, in Cape Verde, providing people with the only source of potable water. Families line up for their share of water – no more than 50 liters. As this is not nearly enough for most families, women and children tend to spend 2-3 hours daily to fetch as much as a small container of 20 liters of water from wells, up to 7kms away.

Cape Verde has been making advances towards economic development for its people, since it graduated from its status as a Least Developed Country. The government has introduced critical economic reforms, maintaining economic stability and generating GDP growth. It is also implementing poverty alleviation programmes and is close to achieving its Millennium Development Goals.

Despite this progress, Cape Verde’s development is under threat from the impacts of climate change. Climate impacts such as rising temperatures, reduction in rainfall, droughts and floods are severely affecting the country’s water sector. Within the next few decades, the changing climate is expected to cause seasonal water shortages at a number of economically important sites.

Climate risks to freshwater resources is recognized as one of the most significant constraints on Cape Verde’s development. Through the participatory, national adaptation planning process (NAPA), the Cape Verdean people have identified water resources management as the highest national priority.

Water scarcity affects the livelihoods of local people, who live exclusively off rain-fed agriculture and rearing livestock. “Here the water is like gold, especially for herders,” explains a local leader from Lagoa, Alcídio Pinto. “We often see our animals dying of thirst from lack of water, especially in warmer periods of the year.”

In response to the concerns about water resources, the UNDP is working with the Cape Verdean government to take strategic adaptation actions to reform the water sector. Addressing the priorities identified in the national adaptation plan, the intervention lays the foundations for sustainable water resource management under conditions of climate change.

The intervention includes demonstrations of small and medium-scale adaptation measures to increase water security. Their purpose is to create conditions that facilitate learning across the country, as local communities replicate successful initiatives beyond the pilot areas.

One such success is seen on the island of Santo Antão, where the project built infrastructure to reroute water over a considerable distance from a spring to a newly built reservoir. Nearly 2,000 people in the nearby villages of Companhia and Lagoa now benefit from the dramatic increase in water supply from just four to 200 cubic meters. This project is intended to support domestic use only but locals are hopeful that, if used efficiently, there will be water left over for irrigation. The increased water security has already shown positive impacts on living conditions, as it is used in household consumption and supporting the breeding of domestic animals.

The project has value for families at a deeply personal level. Paula Monteiro, Community Development Technician on the project, notes its impact on children: “Their dream,” she says, “is to fill a glass of water from a tap to drink, to switch on the tap in the bathroom to take a bath.” Local beneficiary Manuel Pinto is hopeful that this dream will be realized: “If later we can channel the water into houses and even use the leftovers in agriculture … that will be a dream come true.”

Project: Building Adaptive Capacity and Resilience to Climate Change in the Water Sector in Cape Verde

Implementing Partners: Government of Cape Verde

Funding: Global Environment Facility’s Least Developed Countries Fund 

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