Why don't we invest in Rainwater harvesting techniques to control calamities?

Water resources management is a crucial issue in Rwanda because it has been carried in isolation with other resources of which uses equally impact on the availability of water. Although the country is endowed with abundant surface and groundwater resources, the effective and management of this resource has remained critical. One of the main challenges in managing the Rwanda water resources is related to land and ecosystem degradation, forests, wetlands, savannah, etc.

                                             

The above mentioned factors are aggravated by demographic pressures that implies the constant land development, and new land reclamation in order to warrant the food security. At the same time, floods occur regularly due to lack of good water containment techniques, yet shortage of water has become great issue due to many factors including climate change.

All of this has prompted the government to devise a regulatory mechanism to improve water management and minimize the consequences of calamities including regularly occurring floods.

Currently the Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs (MIDMAR) urged all Rwandans and development partners to take the lead in preventing and fighting disasters.

In one hand the disaster management body which was established faced a lot of challenges, especially landslides and floods which destroyed people’s property and even claimed lives across the country.

On another hand, disasters are natural. For instance floods may be caused by heavy rains which resulted in outflow of water from lakes or rivers. Landslide can be caused by the type of soil. However human activities can be included in above mentioned calamities. These include for example: unsustainable housing, lack of adequate techniques of harvesting rain water in their respective homes, deforestation and so many other causes which lead to the degradation of environment.

Today I am focusing on flood control, It is clear that if citizens adopt different ways of floods control, maybe there will be a time when there is significant reduction of numbers of houses and materials ruined, death reported, and many things include less of landslide being reported.

In my opinion, I am sure that adoption of rain water harvesting facilities would help to minimize the quantity of soil we lose every year when there occurred soil erosion. The small amount of soil which leaves our homes during rainy season can be saved for example by using a one aquatank facility to harvest water from the toles of our homes.

 Planting trees is one of the techniques to curb soil erosion and landslide. May be if we do not want large trees to occupy large space on our small lands, why don’t we plant agro forestry species like mango trees for example which serve not only for the purpose of environmental protection but also ensuring food security in our homes?

Controlling floods is not an easy task, but the combination of rain water harvesting system, canalization of water and afforestation programs would indicate positive results in controlling all environmental hazardous though it is not a hundred percent in check but on a significant scale.

So let us all actively participate in the search for solutions to these disasters and make sure that we are managing them efficiently and contributing to sustainable management of environment not only for present generation but also for future generations.