Building understanding of climate variability into planning of groundwater supplies from low storage aquifers in Africa - Second Phase (BRAVE2)

非洲农村贫困人口获得安全用水是实现千年发展目标的关键。非洲有超过5亿人依赖地下水以及扩大使用的潜力，因此含水层在气候、人口增长和土地利用变化方面的弹性是关键。然而，有证据表明，在长时间的低降雨量期间，来自低储水量含水层的地下水供应可能会失效。因此，目前尚不清楚的是，计划开发大量地下水供应，作为满足预期需求大幅增加的手段，在撒哈拉以南非洲所有地区是否有效。在缺乏钻孔水位的长期历史记录的情况下，我们依赖于过程理解和建模来推断地下水供应的稳定性。在与国家和地方政府、非政府组织和研究人员的合作下，BRAVE项目将把对气候变化和观测能力及其水资源影响的新认识纳入沃尔特河流域地下水供应的规划和运行中。由于更好地了解了水如何在具有沃尔特河流域代表性的集水区中流动，结合最先进的气候、陆地表面和地下水模型的成果，新的科学知识将允许开发适当的工具，用于一系列尺度的规划：流域尺度的长期区域规划，用于家庭和生产用途的含水层供水；地方规模的长期和季节性社区地下水供应管理；并提供信息，以便在发生干旱的情况下及时制定应急计划。新的观察能力和对用户脆弱性的评估以及对将地方社区与国家政府联系起来的治理框架的理解，连同这一新的科学知识，将转化为能够作出参与性决策的形式。将把社区、从业者和决策者聚集在一起，在加纳和布基纳法索的8个社区开展一系列案例研究，对规划工具的应用进行试点。将与这些社区共同开发一套有意义的地下水管理工具，具体解决他们想要和需要的信息，并将其纳入现有的地方、地区、国家和区域治理结构。该系统在试点社区的使用将有助于了解这种方法在多大程度上能够支持可持续决策和公平利用。此外，在与我们的合作伙伴协商后，我们还将制定一种编制季节性地下水状况报告的方法，这些报告将与布基纳法索和加纳新运行的Rainwatch-AfClix干旱预警系统相关联。BRAVE将有助于建立贫困社区对沃尔特河流域气候变化和环境变化的适应能力。项目产出将与负责供水发展的政府部门以及人道主义和发展组织直接相关。从项目开始就积极地一起工作将鼓励所有权，最终在规划工具的共同设计和实施中达到高潮。这将带来未来国家减少灾害风险、适应和恢复力相关政策的战略转变，以支持加纳和布基纳法索最贫困人口加强水安全，并为更广泛的萨赫勒地区提供恢复力建设方面的经验。

Secure access to water by the rural poor in Africa is central to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. With more than 500 million Africans dependent on groundwater and the potential for expanded use, the resilience of aquifers in the face of climate, population growth, and land-use change is key to this. Evidence suggests however, that during extended periods of low rainfall, groundwater supplies from low storage aquifers can fail. It is unclear, therefore, whether planned development of substantial numbers of groundwater supplies as a means to meet the expected large increase in demand, will be effective in all areas of sub-Saharan Africa. In the absence of long historical records of borehole levels, we are reliant on process understanding and modelling to infer the stability of groundwater supplies. In partnership with national and local government, NGOs and researchers, the BRAVE project will incorporate new understanding of climate variability and observational capacity and its water resource impacts into the planning and operation of groundwater supplies in the Volta River Basin. As a result of improved understanding of how water moves through catchments representative of the Volta River Basin, combined with output from state-of-the-art climate, land surface and groundwater models, new scientific knowledge will allow appropriate tools to be developed for planning at a range of scales: basin-scale long-term regional planning of aquifer-based water supplies for domestic and productive uses; local-scale long-term and seasonal community management of groundwater supplies; and provision of information that allows timely emergency planning in the light developing drought conditions. New observational capacity and assessments of user vulnerability and an understanding of governance frameworks linking local communities to national government, along with this new scientific knowledge, will be translated into forms that allow participatory decision-making to be made. Bringing together communities, practitioners and policy-makers, the application of the planning tools will be piloted in a series of case studies within eight communities in Ghana and Burkina Faso. A set of meaningful groundwater management tools will be developed with these communities that specifically address the information they want and need, and which are embedded within the existing local, district, national and regional governance structures. The use of the system in the pilot communities will provide insights into the extent such an approach can support sustainable decision making and equitable uptake. Furthermore, after consultation with our partners, we will also develop a methodology to produce seasonal groundwater status reports which will be linked into the newly operational Rainwatch-AfClix Drought Early Warning System in Burkina Faso and Ghana. BRAVE will contribute to building the resilience of poor communities to climate variability and environmental change in the Volta River Basin. The project outputs will be of direct relevance to government departments responsible for water supply development, as well as humanitarian and development organisations. Actively working together from the project inception will encourage ownership, culminating in the co-design and implementation of the planning tools. This will deliver a strategic shift in future national disaster risk reduction, adaptation and resilience related policies to support increased water security for the poorest people in Ghana and Burkina Faso with lessons around resilience building for the wider Sahel region.