Category: Optimising Road Development for Groundwater Recharge and Retention

  • Green Roads for Water- New World Bank Guide

    Green Roads for Water- New World Bank Guide

    Roads and water are generally seen as enemies, with water responsible for most of the damage to roads, and roads being a major cause of problems such as erosion, waterlogging, flooding, and dust storms. This tension, however, can be reversed. The concept of Green Roads for Water (also known as “Green Roads” or “roads for…

  • Can road design boost water security in rural regions?

    Can road design boost water security in rural regions?

    re-posted from GRIPP Roads for Water is integrating road construction and small water infrastructure to harvest rainwater from small catchments for productive use, while reducing road damage and simplifying road maintenance. Improving road drainage design is reducing soil erosion and increasing groundwater recharge. Furthermore, using roads for resource capture can prevent dangerous and inconvenient flooding, and…

  • Vote for Roads for Water!

    Vote for Roads for Water!

    Following an UPGro Catalyst Grant, over the last three years much work has gone into making use of roads for water management. Roads have in many areas an enormous impact on hydrology. Now often negative with roads causing erosion and sedimentation, or creating floods and water logging, this can be turned around to making roads…

  • Groundwater – the earth’s renewable wealth

    Groundwater – the earth’s renewable wealth

    By Sean Furey, Skat Foundation/RWSN/UPGro Where does wealth come from? At its most basic, it is the difference between how much you invest in a product or service and how much you get from selling it. If the difference is positive you get wealth, if it is negative then you get trouble. For a country…

  • On the road to resilience in Ethiopia

    On the road to resilience in Ethiopia

    by Barry Hague, NERC (re-blogged from NERC Planet Earth) It’s time to rethink roads. In the vital fields of flood prevention and water supply, they offer incredible potential to enhance and enrich the lives of some of the world’s poorest people. Dr Frank van Steenbergen of the Roads for Water consortium is helping to drive…

  • African aquifers can protect against climate change

    African aquifers can protect against climate change

    Floods and droughts, feasts and famines: the challenge of living with an African climate has always been its variability, from the lush rainforests of the Congo to the extreme dry of the Sahara and Namib deserts. In north western Europe, drizzle and rain is generally spread quite evenly across the year, as anyone who has…

  • Collecting Water With Roads – ground-breaking research wins Global Environment Award

    Water is short in many places but roads are everywhere – and when it rains it is often along these roads that most water runs, as roads unknowingly either serve as dike or a drain. By harvesting the water with these roads, water shortage can be overcome and impacts of climate change can be mitigated.…

  • Roads for Water – new research puts Ethiopian farmers in the driving seat

    Media Release World Water Day is an opportunity to reflect on the immense challenge that faces millions of people every day. Much of Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, is notably off-track from the Millennium Development Goals[i], which come to an end this year. Yet hope is emerging from unexpected directions: the UK is leading pioneering research…

  • How to… design roads for water harvesting and groundwater recharge

    How to… design roads for water harvesting and groundwater recharge

    Roads can devastate a landscape – scarring it, creating barriers for wildlife and accelerating stormwater so that valuable farmland, habitats and homes get washed away or polluted. What if didn’t have to be that way? What if roads would work with the grain of nature rather than against it? One of the UPGro teams, lead…

  • Roads for Water: Effecting Change in Tigray, Ethiopia

    from the WaterChannel: Question: How can dusty roads provide water? Answer: By harvesting and storing rainwater when it falls on them.  A 30 mm rainfall over a 1-kilometre stretch of road can produce up to 100,000 litres of water. This number points to a huge potential. And not one that has not been adequately tapped (around…