GroFutures: Groundwater Futures in Sub-Saharan Africa

撒哈拉以南非洲地下水期货项目（GroFutures）将组建一个由非洲和欧洲经验丰富的自然和社会科学家组成的跨学科团队，提供新的科学证据和方法，使地下水能够可持续和公平地利用，从而改善撒哈拉以南非洲（SSA）贫困人口的生活，改善饮用水和家庭用水以及农业生产用水的获取。由于南撒哈拉是一个小农地区，因此全年可持续地获得农业用水是该地区减贫战略的核心组成部分。GroFutures还认识到保护地下水排放的数量和质量的重要性，这些地下水排放维持着河流、湖泊和湿地，并从中获得利益（例如鱼类、水电）。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，开展一系列试点研究，根据一系列潜在的发展方案，包括在选定的流域增加地下水灌溉和城乡供水的使用，描述和量化地下水需求的季节性变化。通过研究存在长期观测记录的半干旱（坦桑尼亚中部）和季节性潮湿（乌干达北部）环境中气候与地下水补给之间的关系，还将在这项试点研究下评估通过雨水补给地下水的方式引起的地下水供应的指示性变化。评估将侧重于观测到的对降雨强度变化的补给响应，在这些不同的气候制度下，预计在一个更温暖的世界中，降雨强度将增加。在这项催化剂赠款下进行的研究的一项重大创新是开发和试验一种新的水可用性指标，该指标首次明确考虑地下水资源。水的可用性将根据水的储存需求重新定义，无论是天然的（如地下水）还是建造的（如地表水库），都需要解决水供需之间的不平衡。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。由于获得地下水往往不利于贫穷的用水者，GroFutures将研究加强地下水治理和管理的途径，承认并支持穷人获得地下水。跨学科的GroFutures团队是唯一有资格承担拟议研究的团队。它进行了开创性的研究，评估影响地下水供需的因素，因此拥有宝贵的长期和详细的数据集，并对制定可靠的未来预测和情景所需的国家发展计划有深刻的了解，从而确定不同环境下地下水资源的可持续性。由于与作为项目合作伙伴的政府部门有长期合作关系，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，这将为非洲英语国家和法语国家的科学家提供难得的机会，分享他们的经验和专业知识。GroFutures项目的科学家和政府利益相关者将与来自贝宁、布基纳法索、喀麦隆、乍得、Côte科特迪瓦、尼日尔和尼日利亚的法语研究人员网络PICASS'EAU以及其他可能的UPGro联盟和几位受邀的国际科学家共同举办研讨会，他们将研究GroFutures试点研究结果在SSA中的更广泛适用性，并为随后的大型项目中提出的研究提供信息。向UPGro项目提交的跨学科联合提案。

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.