A GNA feature by Anthony Adongo Apubeo
Kparaboug (U/E), July 17, GNA – At 0300 hours, it is expected that most people, particularly school children will still be in bed to get enough rest in preparation for school, but that is not the same for 17-year-old Blessing Yahaya.
Daily, Blessing, a Junior High School pupil from Kparaboug community in the Nabdam District of the Upper East Region wakes up at about 0300 hours and goes out in search of water for domestic use and to be able to bath and prepare for school.
“Sometimes, when I get to school, I feel weak and tired and sleepy as well and I am not able to concentrate in class”, she told the Ghana News Agency, adding, “If I do not wake up early, I will not be able to get water for drinking, bath and cook.”
Blessing’s plight is not an isolated case. Almost all the students in school in the community go through the same ordeal as they will have to always queue for hours and compete with older persons before getting water from an old well, the only source of water, which is currently serving the entire community, to bath and prepare for school.
Lack of potable water
Kparaboug is one of the deprived communities in the Nabdam District, with a population of about 500 people. Thay are predominantly farmers engaged in only one farming season (rainy season).
The community also lacks many social amenities such as good roads, decent educational infrastructure and healthcare facilities and most importantly potable water.
Checks by the Ghana News Agency revealed that three boreholes drilled in the community did not have water and according to residents of the community, water did not flow from the three boreholes after their construction.
However, the fourth borehole that was constructed recently and serving the community for some time had broken down and not repaired.
This situation has therefore compelled the residents of the community to depend solely on a well, dug so many decades ago by their forebears.
Apart from the fact that the water from the well is not potable, the well dries up especially in the dry season when the temperatures are high, exposing the community to water crisis.
Struggling to cope
Ms Lariba Yemzeme, a 52-year-old woman from the community who shared her experience with the GNA said the water situation had a toll on their livelihoods and explained that the situation was worse during February, March and April thus the dry season.
“When we the women come to fetch water, sometimes we fight among ourselves as we compete for the water. During the dry season, if one is able to fetch one bucket or basin, we will have to wait for a while for the water to recharge before another person can also get water to fetch and it is affecting us a lot,” she lamented.
As result of the water crisis in the community, Ms Yemzeme who is a petty trader, had to abandon her business in search of water, thereby deepening the poverty cycle in her home.
Daniel, another resident noted that they were not able to tell the reason the boreholes did not have water flowing through them, adding, “our wives are suffering because they leave home about 0300 hours and the earliest they can return is 0600 hours, we are appealing for help.”
Water crisis amid climate change
Globally, two billion people, representing 26 per cent of the population do not have safe drinking water and 3.6 billion, representing 46 per cent lack access to safely managed sanitation, according to the report, published by UNESCO on behalf of UN-Water and released at the UN 2023 Water Conference in New York.
It said between two and three billion people experience water shortages for at least one month per year, posing severe risks to livelihoods, notably through food security and access to electricity.
According to UNICEF, water scarcity takes a greater toll on women and children particularly because they are often the ones responsible for collecting it and requires more time to collect, preventing girls from school.
There is nothing more essential to life on earth than water and yet there is a global water crisis, a situation which experts say is worsening by the impact of climate change. People continue to struggle in terms of access to potable water for drinking, cooking and bathing.
For Kparaboug community, the women and girls have been enduring most of the climate change impact because it is not only that the boreholes constructed did not have water, but that the well that they depend on also dries up during the dry season.
Access to potable water by all is a hindrance to achieving all the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set for countries in 2015 and with barely seven years left to the deadline of the SDGs, many rural communities are still battling to get sustainable potable water.
Low water table
Mr Douglas Tohugto, the Assembly man for the area told the GNA that the situation was worrying and burdened the residents especially the women and children.
He said stakeholders had dug some boreholes in the area, but water was not flowing through them and appealed, “If we can get support to mechanise the one that has water to the various houses, I think, it will help”.
Mrs Agnes Anamoo, the District Chief Executive for the Nabdam, noted that many areas in the district have low water table and the Kparaboug community happens to be one of them and the impact of the prolonged drought was exacerbating the plight.
For the mean time, she said, the Assembly would work on rehabilitating the broken boreholes while efforts are being made to resolve the issues but noted that it required a lot of investment.
“The water table there is low so if you want water you will have to travel far and it is the same with several communities within the area and some we struggled before getting water for them and sometimes the water source is far,” she said.
Addressing climate change
Access to safe water and sanitation is a global goal among the SDGs particularly goal six that needs commitment to be able to address inequality in that regard.
It is therefore not surprising when Ms Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO Director-General stated that “there is an urgent need to establish strong international mechanisms to prevent the global water crisis from spiraling out of control. Water is our common future, and it is essential to act together to share it equitably and manage it sustainably.”
Climate change has been the longstanding challenge to addressing water crisis especially in rural communities.
The SDGs particularly goal 13 puts emphasis on the need for all countries including Ghana to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impact but many countries including Ghana are yet to develop any viable framework in response to the global call.
The Conference of Parties (COP 27) held in Egypt last year called for increased funding for developing countries to fight climate change and its impact and there is the need to fight the climate change impact collectively.
Mr Sumaila Saaka, a Climate Change Expert said continuous destruction of trees without proper mechanism to replace them was one of the major causes of the devastating effect of climate change especially on water bodies of vulnerable rural communities.
He said although Ghanaian government had forest and landscape restoration strategies including the recent Green Ghana initiative which was meant to reverse degraded environment and help address climate change, it was not viable in Northern Ghana which had been experiencing long droughts.
“The people do not even get water to drink, let alone water their trees because in this part of our country, we experience about seven months of drought,” he said.
Mr Saaka who is also the Executive Director of Forum for Natural Regeneration (FONAR), an environmentally focused organisation, therefore, called for the adoption and scaling up of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) as a viable method to fight climate change.
FMNR is an easy and low-cost land and forest restoration technique used to increase the number of trees in the field without necessarily planting new ones but protecting and managing existing trees and shrubs through pruning to regenerate naturally.
The approach has been spread across about 25 countries.
Water crisis in rural communities continue to deny people access to good life including quality health, education among others and it therefore calls for urgent action to address climate change through strategic land and forest restoration strategies with sustainable funds allocated to the implementation of such strategies.
According to the United Nations, one in four children will be living in areas of extremely high stress, threatening their health and futures by 2040 if urgent actions are not taken.
Many rural communities in Ghana are to be among those areas and will miss out on the attainment of any of the 17 SDGs if the water crisis in rural communities exacerbated by climate change is not immediately addressed.
GNA