Drought resilience - Technical solutions

Managing and adapting to drought can be done by using small-scale technical solutions to access, store, treat, distribute, and productively use water. These technologies help increase the availability of water, are suitable in drought prone areas, and show the best methods on how to make water systems more resilient to drought.

The list below are technical measures to increase the resilience of WASH systems.

Infiltration ponds

Natural rock catchment and Open water reservoir

Rooftop rainwater harvesting

Traditional hand-dug wells

Surface water: Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR)

• Infiltration ponds
• Contour trenches
• Bunds
• Gully plugs / check-dams
• Leaky dams
• Controlled flooding / irrigation
• Drip irrigation
• Well shafts & boreholes

Surface water: ground catchment & storage

• Natural rock catchment and Open water reservoir
• Natural or artificial ground catchment and Lined sub-surface tanks
• Natural ground catchment and Open water reservoir
• Catchment and storage dams

Surface water: other catchment & storage

• Rooftop rainwater harvesting
• Dew collection and storage
• Fog collection and storage

Shallow groundwater

• Traditional hand-dug wells
• Riverbed hand-dug wells
• Riverbed infiltration galleries
• Infiltration wells
• Spring water sources
• Groundwater - Sand_dam
• Controlled flooding / Spreading basins
• Subsurface harvesting systems

General tips

• Concrete production and drought
• Desalination / Evaporation
• In pictures: Niger's hunger-fighting trees. A photographic explanation of how the moringa tree is drought-resistant and providing a consistent food supply.