Charaterization and Impact Assessment of Water Harvesting Techniques: A Case Study of Abreha Atsbeha Watershed, Tigray, Ethiopia

Background

This report gives a comprehensive overview of water harvesting techniques in a community called Abreha we Atsbeha in Tigray, Ethiopia.  This community was awarded the UN Equator Prize for their restoration work in 2012.  In addition to providing a detailed historical, demographic, ecological, and hydrological description of the site, the authors also detail the major water harvesting techniques employed, including: bench terracing, stone bunds, stine bunds with trenches, soil bunds with trenches, semi-circular stone bunds, percolation ponds check dams, shallow wells, diversion heads, and hand dug wells. 

Conclusions & Takeaways

The paper explains that all of this infrastructure is built by hands, typically through volunteer labor, which the authors qualify according to gender and quantify in terms of labor costs.  The authors list improved crop production, irrigation development, livestock production, domestic water supply, and land rehabilitation as positive impacts associated with these techniques, disaggregated by their placement in the water shed, and concludes by attributing the overall success of these projects to the "strong commitments and extraordinary exemplary leadership of the community."