Report: Water Sources Inventory for Northern Somalia Posted on October 3, 2010 at 10:46:56 PM by mb3
Water Sources Inventory for Northern Somalia
Technical Report No W-12
January 2009
Somalia Water and Land I nformation Management
Ngecha Road, Lake View. P.O Box 30470-00100, Nairobi, Kenya.
Website: http//www.faoswalim.org.
Because of the civil strife in Somalia for the past 18 years, the Somali institutions that held important water and land related information have been destroyed. As a result most of the information on water and land resources were damaged or completely lost. The Somalia Water and Land Information Management (SWALIM) project was established with a primary objective of filling the gaps in the information necessary for water and land resources planning and management. The project has a long term goal of building Somali institutions’ capacity by providing crucial information on water and land resources for use in national planning and decision making.
As part of the SWALIM’s activities in information management, the Somalia Water Sources Information Management System (SWIMS) was developed. The SWIMS software, developed in phase II of SWALIM, was meant for partners working in the water sector in Somalia to collect and manage water sources information and contribute to a national database of the water sources. The software is designed to store and manage a wide range of data for different types of water sources used in Somalia: boreholes, shallow wells, springs, dams, and berkads.
The number of water sources information collected in SWIMS through partners implementing water projects in the field during SWALIM II was limited. Only 750 water sources data was received for a period of more than a year, and in many cases the data covered only a small section of the essential information. As a result it become necessary for SWALIM to move to the field and do an inventory of all water sources points in Somalia. A country wide survey was launched, in collaboration with UNICEF, for the strategic water points: boreholes, springs, dams and shallow wells which last long into the dry season. There are many point water sources in Somalia, which would take many months to survey. Majority of these sources are however seasonal, lasting only a few weeks after the rains. They include berkads and some shallow wells, and are used only during the rainy season. When they dry out the local communities look for alternative sources of water. The limited resources available for the survey could not cover all the water sources in the country. Only the strategic water points were surveyed, as they are the source of water for the local communities when the seasonal sources dry out.
The survey started in the Northern part of the country: Somaliland and Puntland, with plans of extending to the South/Central Somalia when security situation allows. As a way of capacity building in the Somali institutions, the survey teams were composed of the ministry staff. In Somaliland, the teams were from the Ministry of Water and Mineral Resources (MWMR) and in Puntland from Puntland State Agency for Water, Energy and Natural Resources (PSAWEN).