GroFutures: Groundwater Futures in Sub-Saharan Africa

撒哈拉以南非洲地下水期货(GroFutures)项目将汇集一个由来自非洲和欧洲的经验丰富的物理和社会科学家组成的跨学科团队，以产生新的科学证据和方法，使地下水能够被可持续和公平地利用，并通过改善获得饮用水和家庭用水以及农业生产用水的途径，改善撒哈拉以南非洲贫困人口的生活。由于南沙地区是一个小农地区，农业常年可持续用水是该地区减贫战略的核心组成部分。GroFutures还认识到保护维持河流、湖泊和湿地的地下水排放的数量和质量以及从这些排放中获得的好处(如鱼类、水电)的重要性。在为期一年的催化剂资助下，GroFutures团队将与埃塞俄比亚、加纳和坦桑尼亚的政府水利部合作，进行一系列试验性研究，以表征和量化一系列潜在发展方案下地下水需求的季节性变化，包括增加地下水用于灌溉以及选定盆地的城乡供水。在这项试验性研究中，还将通过审查气候与半干旱(坦桑尼亚中部)和季节性潮湿(乌干达北部)环境中地下水补给之间的关系，评估雨水补给地下水供应的指示性变化，这些环境有长期的观测记录。评估的重点将是观察到的对降雨强度变化的补给反应，在这些不同的气候条件下，气候变暖的世界预计降雨强度将增加。在这项催化剂资助下进行的研究的一个重大创新是开发和试验了一种新的可用水指标，首次明确考虑了地下水资源。将根据解决水供需失衡所需的天然水(例如地下水)或建造水(例如地表水库)，重新定义水的可获得性。因此，该指标将直接为水资源管理提供信息，包括地下水的可持续分配。由于地下水的获取往往不利于贫困的用水者，GroFutures将调查加强地下水治理和管理的途径，以识别和支持穷人获取地下水的机会。跨学科的GroFutures团队是唯一有资格承担拟议研究的人。它开展了开创性的研究，评估了影响地下水需求和供应的因素，因此，它拥有宝贵的长期和详细的数据集，并对制定强有力的未来预测和设想所需的国家发展计划有敏锐的理解，以确定不同环境下地下水资源的可持续性。在与作为项目合作伙伴的政府部门长期合作后，该小组还能够审查地下水治理和管理的关键问题。GroFutures提案的另一个关键特点是举办泛非研讨会，这将使讲英语和讲法语的非洲科学家有一个难得的机会分享他们的经验和专业知识。GroFutures项目的科学家和政府利益攸关方将与来自贝宁、布基纳法索、喀麦隆、乍得、科特迪瓦、尼日尔和尼日利亚的法语研究人员网络PICASS‘eau以及可能的其他UPGro财团和几位受邀的国际科学家共同举办研讨会，他们将审查GroFutures试点研究结果对SSA的更广泛适用性，并为随后针对UPGro方案提出的大型跨学科财团提议的研究提供信息。

The Groundwater Futures in Sub-Saharan Africa (GroFutures) project will assemble an inter-disciplinary team of highly experienced physical and social scientists from Africa and Europe to generate new scientific evidence and methods to enable groundwater to be used sustainably and equitably tom improve the lives of poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) by way of improved access to safe water for drinking and domestic purposes as well as water for agricultural production. As SSA is a region of small-scale farmers, sustainable year-round access to water for agriculture is a core component of poverty alleviation strategies in this region. GroFutures also recognises the importance of protecting the quantity and quality of groundwater discharges that sustain rivers, lakes and wetlands and the benefits (e.g. fish, hydropower) derived from these.Under a one-year catalyst grant, the GroFutures Team will work with government water ministries in Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania to conduct a series of pilot studies characterising and quantifying seasonal changes in groundwater demand under a range of potential development options including increased use of groundwater for irrigation as well as urban and rural water supplies in selected basins. Indicative changes in groundwater supply by way of rain-fed groundwater replenishment (recharge) will also be evaluated under this pilot research by examining relationships between climate and groundwater recharge in semi-arid (central Tanzania) and seasonally humid (northern Uganda) environments where long-term observational records exist. The evaluation will focus on observed recharge responses to changes in the intensity of rainfall that is projected to increase in a warmer world, under these contrasting climate regimes.A significant innovation of the research conducted under this catalyst grant is the development and trial of a new metric of water availability that, for the first time, explicitly considers groundwater resources. Water availability will be redefined in terms of water storage requirements, be it natural (e.g. groundwater) or constructed (e.g. surface reservoirs), that are required to address imbalances between water supply and demand. As such, the metric will directly inform water management including sustainable allocations of groundwater. Because access to groundwater often disfavours poor water users, GroFutures will investigate pathways to enhance the governance and management of groundwater that recognise and support access of the poor to groundwater.The interdisciplinary GroFutures Team is uniquely qualified to undertake the proposed research. It has conducted pioneering research evaluating factors that influence groundwater demand and supply and, as such, possesses invaluable long-term and detailed datasets as well as an acute understanding of the national development plans required to develop robust projections and scenarios of the future with which to determine the sustainability of groundwater resources in different settings. Having enjoyed long-term collaborations with government ministries who are project partners, the team is also able to review critical questions of groundwater governance and management.Another key attribute of the GroFutures proposal is the holding of a pan-African workshop which will enable a rare opportunity for scientists in Anglophone and Francophone Africa to share their experiences and expertise. Scientists and government stakeholders in the GroFutures project will run the workshop jointly with a Francophone network of researchers, PICASS'EAU, from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Niger, and Nigeria as well as potentially other UPGro Consortia and several invited international scientists who will examine the wider applicability of GroFutures pilot-study results to SSA and inform research to be proposed under a subsequent large, inter-disciplinary consortium proposal to the UPGro programme.