Harvesting fog to alleviate water scarcity in Kenya

Beatrice Kananu, 32, wakes up every morning in the spirit of a hunter-gatherer ready to seize the day. She picks up her tools—discarded polyethylene sheeting that she has scavenged from nearby rubbish bins and cleaned up for later use—and leaves her home in the village of Mutuati, near the Nyambene Hills in central Pakistan. Kenya. It doesn’t take long for her to reach the forest, where she will harvest a crucial resource: water. She wraps the polythene around the trunks of five trees, adjusting the sheets with expert precision and placing containers under them. The process can take a couple of hours, but when she returns at the end of the day, the containers can hold up to 100 liters of water.

“I feel like hunting and gathering times,” says Kananu, a mother of three. “At the end of the day I manage to have water to cook, wash and drink.” Kananu has been getting her water this way since a relative from a neighboring village taught her how to do it two years ago. The method consists of collecting, through condensation, the humidity contained in the fog that, especially in spring and autumn, floats densely among the hills of central Kenya. During those seasons, Kananu is able to collect enough water for her family’s daily use and for her two cows and her chickens.

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In the central regions of Kenya, it is most common to harvest fog using the trees. In the drier southeast, some communities lay polyethylene sheeting on the ground overnight and, in the morning, collect dew from the vapor that condenses in the atmosphere. In some areas around the capital, Nairobi, Maasai herders use specially designed moisture-trapping polyethylene mesh to quench the thirst of their livestock during prolonged dry spells. “This is a simple innovation to take advantage of water vapor in the atmosphere, which turns into liquid droplets when it comes into contact with the cold surface of the polyethylene mesh,” explains Bancy Mati, a researcher at Jomo Kenyatta University and an innovator. of the fog trap system. “This water is good for domestic use and also for cultivation.”

A luxury for the poor

Mist harvesting has become an increasingly popular innovation, often through word of mouth, in areas where climate change has contributed to water scarcity and where public supplies are poor. The method takes various forms around the world, from South Africa to Morocco to Peru and India. Water scarcity is a growing concern in Kenya, where only 59% of the population has access to safe drinking water. Climate change has exacerbated this problem, with droughts becoming longer and more severe, though many also blame government policies.

Throughout the day, the container fills with water piped through the polyethylene sheets that surround the tree.David Njagi

Skeptics say that the privatization of the supply has worsened the access of many Kenyans to water. Others blame poor governance and corruption, claiming that leadership positions in government agencies that manage this resource are awarded based on political loyalties rather than aptitude. “Corruption in the water sector is considerable and that is why there is mismanagement and unequal access to services among Kenyans,” denounces Malesi Shivanji, executive director of the Kenya Water and Sanitation Civil Society Network. “Water is becoming a luxury for the poor.”

According to a report by Shivanji’s organization, very little is invested in service delivery and most of the revenue goes to administrative overhead. Kenya’s Ministry of Water, Sanitation and Irrigation acknowledges the problems the country faces, but says it intends to solve them by expanding water infrastructure, investing in 100 mega-dams and 1,000 small dams by 2026. “The problems we have in the water sector are the legacy of a corrupt system that refuses to go away,” says Andrew Kinyua, a ministry official. “But we are working with other partners to see what can be done to get the sector up and running again.”

This desire only partially reassures experts like William Ojwang, program manager for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Kenya. He warns that many of the government’s infrastructure plans end up becoming “white elephants”, that is, ineffective and excessively expensive projects. Ojwang suggests that instead of focusing solely on building systems that draw water from natural sources, efforts should also be made to restore catchment areas such as rivers, lakes, and wetlands by planting trees and reducing water use. of agrochemicals. “Expanding water infrastructure to supply the inhabitants of towns and cities is a positive thing, but we must also remember the poor Kenyans who suffer because they get their water from polluted sources,” he stresses.

In this context, low-cost and simple local innovations, such as harvesting water from fog, have gained importance for many communities. However, the method also carries risks. Scientists warn that increasing air pollution can contaminate atmospheric water, which can be harmful to animals and plants if left untreated. Although average air quality in Kenya is reasonable compared to global levels, nine out of 10 people are exposed to air pollution higher than the World Health Organization (WHO) global health standards, according to measurements such as that of the IQAir platform. Soluble gases in the air can make the harvested fog acidic and contain potentially harmful substances. “The problem of acid moisture in Kenya should concern us because we have seen the damage it is causing to humans and the environment in places like Europe,” says Paul Njogu, an air pollution researcher at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta University.

These risks require further study, but in the meantime, Kenyans like Kananu have no choice but to continue harvesting the fog water. And they feel they have been forgotten for a long time, both by the government and aid agencies when it comes to access to clean water and sanitation. Climate change only aggravates the problem. “I can’t sit around waiting for something to be done,” Kananu says. “I will use my knowledge and the resources available to me to get water.”

This article was initially published in English by the ‘African Arguments’ portal.

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