Improving access to clean water for better healthEritrea is highly vulnerable to droughts, floods, soil erosion, desertification, and land degradation. Suffering from Africa’s highest levels of food insecurity and malnutrition, this situation is expected to be exacerbated by climate change. For many rural communities, the struggle to find safe drinking water can take a major part of a family‘s resources. Usually, the burden falls on women and children to collect water, walking a great distance from home. Water drawn from pools or rivers is often contaminated with potentially lethal bacteria. Thus, to make water safe to drink it needs to be boiled.
This project helps to identify and repair broken boreholes in the Zoba Maekel district, located in the Central Region of Eritrea, showing high levels of poverty. Many boreholes are owned by community-based organizations (CBOs) and have broken down because maintenance programmes have been poorly managed, or proved too expensive. This project supports communities in renovating their boreholes so that they deliver clean water and breakdowns are quickly fixed.
How does technology for clean drinking water help fight global warming?Two billion people in the world have no access to clean drinking water. Many families have to boil their drinking water over an open fire, resulting in CO
2 emissions and deforestation. Where water can be cleaned chemically (e.g. with chlorine) or mechanically (with filters), or where groundwater can be provided from wells, these CO
2 emissions can be avoided. Clean drinking water projects in the ClimatePartner portfolio are registered with
international standards.
